pronematch.com

by Hap Rocketto

I am not much of a pistol shooter and I prefer rifle but I have shot a little .45 and that means I have to reload. I am not much of a reloader either and I prefer reloading rifle to pistol because it is harder to make an error with the larger cartridge case. You can’t double load a .308 with 4895 but you sure can stuff a lot of Bulls Eye powder into a .45 case and the results of that kind of inattention will make a believer out of anyone. The thought of double loading a pistol case brings to mind a like tale of muzzleloaders.

In the early days of the Republic the local militia, men between 16 and 45, turned out to drill one Saturday each month to practice the martial arts and after the day’s exertions gathered at the village tap room to knock back a tankard or two as they swapped lies about past military adventures.

There lived a young man of sixteen in one New England village, whose mother, widowed at Bunker Hill, was determined that none should exceed her son in devotion to civic duty. Unfortunately, her only child was also pampered. She did not see that she had turned him into a bashful lad, shy, introverted, and afraid of lightning and loud noise.

When Enoch reached sixteen his mother proudly insisted that he join the men of the Militia drilling upon the village green. The Committee of Safety musket that his father had carried in the Revolution was taken down from its place of honor above the mantle and reverently placed it into his hands. Reminding him of his father’s sacrifice and admonishing him to act in such a manner as to honor his memory she hung his powder horn over one shoulder and a “possibles” bag filled with spare flint, pick, and 20 rounds of ball which she had neatly wrapped into paper cartridges.

As she chivvied him out of the door he turned and reminded her of his poor preparation, “Momma” said he, “I don’t know even how to load it, let alone shoot it.”

Raising her right index finger to her lips she said “Shush! You’re a right smart lad. Just listen to the sergeant, watch what the others do, and you’ll be all right.”

Arriving at the village green Enoch softly answered to his name when the muster roll was called and then joined the rearmost rank, all the while trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Bring a bright lad he was able to follow the manual of arms, albeit with jerky movements, a half beat behind the others, by sneaking peeks out of the corner of his eye. He acquitted himself well enough and had gained a bit of confidence. Best of all, and much to his relief, he had escaped notice.

In the late afternoon came the culminating activity of the drill session, live fire. With a day’s practice he had become pretty adept at copying the moves of those about him and he dutifully mimicked the motions of his comrades in arms as the sergeant bawled out the commands. Enoch primed, tore his paper cartridges open with his teeth, poured powder down the muzzle, rammed home the lead ball and brought the ungainly musket to his shoulder. As they presented and fired each volley Enoch flinched uncontrollably at the unaccustomed noise and concussion and could not bring himself to fire. In the excitement of blasting off volley after volley no one noticed in the din and the rolling clouds of smoke that one musket had not discharged. After each volley Enoch dutifully followed the sergeant’s commands and his fellow militiamen’s motions, monkey see monkey do, and reloaded.

After six volleys the men presented arms, gave three cheers for the young Republic and were dismissed by the captain. The drill was over and Enoch had managed to get through it with little more than a ringing in his ears and six unfired charges in his musket. While most of the men repaired to the local tavern for a few draughts to wash away the salty taste of gunpowder Enoch quietly slipped away and headed home to face his mother.

“Well, was drill so bad?” inquired his mother.

“Momma, I did all I could as well as I could and brought no dishonor upon the family name, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger.”

Before he could stop her his mother grabbed his father’s musket from his hands and pulled back the cock saying, “You silly boy, all you have to do is…”

A great blinding flash, followed by a deafening clap of thunder, and a dense choking cloud of powder smoke filled the small cabin. A flock of starlings roosting in an apple tree in the front yard to exploded into the air in a squawking detonation. Dishes fell from the shelves, chinking was blown out from between the logs, and the cabins shutters swung wildly on their hinges. Only the fact that it was summer and the windows were open saved the precious and irreplaceable panes of glass from destruction.

Blackened by the smoke and shocked by the force of the detonation young Enoch screamed a warning to his deafened mother, “Hang on, Momma!! Hang on! You’ve got five more coming!”

And that is why I am uncomfortable reloading pistol ammunition.

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 27th 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.

by Hap Rocketto

Their names ring through history with a musical quality reminiscent of a New England college carillon on a crisp fall afternoon. The East India Company, The Hudson Bay Company, and The London Company all formed by bourgeois businessmen with pockets full of gold as a result of the economic expansion of post-feudal Europe. The Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and French soon joined the English middleclass in this frenzy. Cartels quickly formed to mount expeditions to the Far East and New World in search of gold, precious stones, spices, and silks and, most importantly, the rich profits that followed trading in these luxuries. These early venture capitalists set the stage for the creation of the modern nations of the New World.

A half of a millennium later these forces would come to culmination at The Great Pumpkin Match on a bracing autumn day. On a day two months earlier, and 60 degrees hotter, Bell City was the site of the New England Metric Regional. The suffocating heat and wilting moisture lead to a mild loss of lucidity that resulted in the (in)famous Backer Match. On that day the match management was talked into running a special match that involved scoring air rifle targets that were printed on the cut-rate backers the club had purchased. On this day Nicole Panko would exhibit an unusual lack of judgement when she skipped up to me and asked a favor.

“Could you come up with an interesting non-fired team match if I gave you 24 hours?” she asked as we were changing targets after the first stage of the 50meter match.

“Twenty four hours!” I boldly retorted. “Just give me 24 seconds and I’ll have a match for today.” Quickly riffling through my mental Rolodex of the eccentric, outlandish, and inane I, chivvied along by my brother Steve’s musings, came up with the idea of a four-man match fired in the first stage of the Dewar. Each shooter would be randomly assigned a bull, one through four, on his target that would count towards an aggregate score of 200. Each bull number had to be used meaning that if shooter number one used bull one no other shooter might. The idea immediately was accepted and teams formed.

Unbeknown to everyone an anonymous sponsor selected a team named “The Team Sponsored by Venture Capitalists” and paid the entry fee. It turned out that the unknown shooting venture capitalists was my very own brother Steve “Donald Trump” Rocketto and good friend Patty “Lenora Helmsley” Clark. When the scores were posted it turned out that their team won. They accepted the $20 prize money, deducted the two-dollar entry fee as expenses, took half of the remaining money as their just reward, and split the remainder among the shooters.

On the surface this appeared to be a good thing except it turns out that Steve was shooting on a different team and Patty was the range officer. The conflict of interest involved an ethical breach of titanic proportions. By odd coincidence Bell City is located near the Giammati Little League complex. Bart Giammati was the Commissioner of Baseball who banned Pete Rose from the national pastime for life because he bet on baseball. The juxtaposition should not be lost on the first half of the venture capitalists. As a member of the National Rifle Association Board of Directors and the NRA Smallbore Committee the distaff side should simply not involve herself a practice banned by the shotgun community. I refer to the gambling ritual known as “buying a Calcutta”.

The ultimate sanction would be, ala Pete Rose and Bart Giammati, to ban the two from shooting for life and insure that they be removed from consideration from the Connecticut Shooter’s Hall of Fame. However, they are already in the Hall of Fame so that negates both options. And, because they are sterling individuals and I have known both my entire shooting career I will grant them amnesty. After all, we are all entitled to one ethical crossfire in the match of life.