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by Hap Rocketto

I don’t play golf but it seems to me that it is a game that, in many respects, is very much like shooting. They both have long history filled tradition, are practiced on similar outdoor venues, have participants from all strata of society, are a gadget lover’s dream, membership in a private club is important, and they both can eat up large amounts of time and treasure.

There are a lot more casual target shooters and golfers than there are serious practitioners of either art and there are precious few who do both well with a passion. Two of the latter are my old shooting mentors Dick Scheller and Roger McQuiggan. Roger is a better golfer than Dick while Dick is a better rifleman that Roger, but they both are pretty good at both. Certainly Roger has faced a 200 yard tee shot with less trepidation than he did when shooting off hand at the same distance. As a matter of fact, I swear that one day at a local match he pulled out a driver and ball and blasted a ball down range to relieve his tensions before he unlimbered his M14 for the offhand stage. Both are Distinguished and members of the Presidents Hundred, Dick having once won the prestigious match-taking home the trophy rifle and a letter signed by President Carter. The mantles of their living rooms are laden with National Record certificates and trophies and medals won at Camp Perry, Fort Benning, Camp Robinson, and a hundred placed in between.

Dick and Roger tell me the games are very similar. They are both contested internally against the competitor’s envelope of comfort and externally against the range and course layout and weather conditions. Equipment plays into the equation but because the best of equipment is readily available to competitors in both sports and that make the playing field pretty level. Shooters and golfer both visualize and maintain a proper amount of physical fitness to help them succeed.

Because both sports are best when played out of doors dealing with the elements become, well, a key element in winning. When it rains it rains on all pretty equally. Those of us who wear glasses can be a slight disadvantage but the rain eliminates mirage and can be a pretty good wind indicator.

Extremes in hot or cold certainly make both games a bit tougher. Heat and sun can drain your energy, but drinking plenty of water will help reduce the effects of high temperature. Sweat running down your face and in the eyes is uncomfortable and a real distraction but a good headband can help solve that problem. The most innovative method to avoid the stinging in the eyes was once told to my brother by Jerry Kozuch, a Marine shooter, who rubbed anti-perspirant onto his forehead to keep it dry. When it gets cold you just have to work at keeping your body limber and your hands warm enough so you can feel the trigger. As long as you have a good position the effects of heat and cold can be dealt with and should have little impact on your performance. Dealing with the weather is pretty much a mental battle.

However, on the other hand there is the wind, which we all know will affect the flight of both golf balls and ball ammunition. I once read, in a source long forgotten, that human physiology reacts to wind, causing the metabolic rate to increase, blood vessels to dilate, and pupils to widen. A study of general blood vessel disorders found that fully half of all myocardial infarctions and strokes occurred when the wind was blowing. I can attest to the truth of that statement for when an eight showed up on my 100 yard target at one year at Camp Perry I broke into a cold sweat, felt a shortness of breath, my left arm and hand grew numb, and a tightness developed in my chest. Fortunately the symptoms disappeared when I returned to the sighter bull and confirmed a nasty wind shift.

When all is said some of us are very sensitive to the wind and if there is an evolutionary advantage to such sensitivity, perhaps is that windy days are inherently more dangerous, in all ways making the world less predictable. And yet for some, wind seems to increase the powers of concentration.

While the wind blows on all equally it still makes every shot an adventure. As consistent as a condition may be there are subtle differences in the ebb and flow of the air and it is different for each shot. That is why a 400-40X, any 1600 or 3200, and a National Record all require the perfect combination of skill, rifle and ammunition, and luck. You can be the best in the world and have a rifle and ammo combination that shoots ten shots into a 3/8^th inch group at 100 yards time after time but if you squeeze the trigger just as a condition decides to either pick up or drop off you are going to be staring down your spotting scope at a nine.

When it comes to shooting in the wind I am reminded of Napoleon. One characteristic of a successful shooter is a generous is a slice of good fortune. Naturally, this must be served up at precisely the right moment. Napoleon was poised to go into a major battle and his aides recommended a particular general. The general seemed to be an ideal candidate for he was a military genius, personally brave and tactically inspired. “But is he lucky?” asked the Emperor. Good luck, as Napoleon knew, is crucial for victory be it in a battle or shooting match. But then again, isn’t good luck simply the residue of good preparation?

by Hap Rocketto

The study of United States history is one of my great pleasures and the more obscure and mysteriously obscure the greater my enjoyment. I revel in the trivial minutiae of our nation’s rich past.

For example do you know that the USS Merrimack and the CSS Virginia were the same ship?

How about that fact the first battle of the Civil War, Bull Run, took place on William McLean’s farm, the Yorkshire Plantation, in Manassas, Virginia. McLean then moved his family westward to avoid the war and bought a farm near Appomattox Court House. When General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant he did so in the parlor of McLean’s house.

What of the curious juxtaposition of Major Robert Rogers, Colonial American hero and commander of Rogers’ Rangers of French and Indian War fame-the precursor to our modern US Rangers, capturing Revolutionary War hero Captain Nathan Hale of Connecticut’s Knowlton Rangers.

Speaking of Rogers, did you know that competitive marksmanship, shooting at a mark, is almost as old as the nation and involved some rather colorful figures in our nation’s history?

Captain-Lieutenant Henry Pringle of the 27^th Foot wrote that Rogers’ Rangers “shoot amazingly well, all Ball& mostly with riffled barrels. One of their officers the other day, at four shots with four balls, killed a brace of Deer, a Pheasant, and a pair of wild ducks-the latter he killed with one Shot”

The Rangers often went out in small parties to hunt and sharpen their marksmanship skills, a habit of which their British commander, Colonel William Haviland, took a dim view. Off course he regularly looked down his long aristocratic nose at what he perceived were undisciplined provincial troops and, in his particularly parsimonious military administrative mind, their excessive use of scarce powder and ball. He forbade them from “shooting at marks” in their encampment. In response the Rangers simply went off a distance and practiced, but well within earshot of Haviland.

Dueling was a popular past time in the new republic and it was reported that politician and filibuster, not to mention third vice president of the United States, Aaron Burr,…”spent several hours a day for three months shooting at a mark until “he could cut a ball every time the size of a dollar at ten paces” in his run up to his duel on Weehawken Heights with Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, on July 11, 1804. It was a bad choice of venue by Hamilton as his son Philip had fallen in a duel on the same spot three years earlier. But, then again, who of has not returned to a range where we had a shooting disaster in hopes of bettering our performance?

Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, was a marksman of sorts. Wilford Woodruff, who would succeed Smith as a leader of the church, wrote, “I first met Joseph Smith in the streets of Kirtland. He had on an old hat, and a pistol in his hand. Said he, ‘Brother Woodruff, I’ve been out shooting at a mark, and I wanted to see if I could hit anything.’ And, said he, ‘Have you any objection to it?’ ‘Not at all,’ said I. ‘There is no law against a man shooting at a mark, that I know of.’

Then there was the ‘enfant terrible of the US Army, George Smith Patton. Known for packing a pair of ivory handle pistols, a 45 caliber Model 1873 single action revolver, serial number 332088, equipped with a lanyard loop with the right hand ivory grip bearing an interlocked vertical “GSP” while the left displayed a rampant eagle. The 4.75 inch barrel and the frame were covered with scrollwork and filigree. The other was a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, serial number 47022, with a 3.5 inch barrel, fitted with ivory handles and a lanyard loop to more-or-less match his Colt. The right hand grip carried the same style interlocking “GSP” monogram as the Colt but the metal had a simple blued finish with no engraving.

Patton was one of the earliest shooters on record to fall out of medal contention because of a tight group. Patton placed fourth in Pentathlon at the Stockholm Olympic Games of 1912. Out of five events, he placed second in swimming; third in cross-country riding; first in fencing, but a dismal 27th in pistol shooting. A better showing in shooting might well have assured him an Olympic medal.

The probable reason for his poor score was that Patton bull headedly insisted on using an issue 38 caliber military revolver; after all it was the Military Pentathlon. There were no requirements as to what pistol had to be used and the other entrants chose to shoot 22 caliber pistols for a host of good reasons, chief among them being the reduced recoil. Patton’s ten bullets had torn out one ragged hole in his target and as a result only nine of his ten shots could be identified and scored. To his credit he took the loss with good grace.

The British would come up with the idea of a backer to locate shots in a tight group in the early 1920s, too late for Patton but, perhaps that delay was the cause Patton’s antipathy toward his British counterparts during World War II.