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by Hap Rocketto

It may be a small footnote in shooting history, but it is my footnote. I took Art Jackson to his Camp Perry finale. After several years of cajoling I finally convinced Art that he should shoot the prone matches at Camp Perry in 2000 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his storied, then record setting, 800X800 in the Dewar Team tryouts that year and the 25th anniversary of our first meeting. He agreed and what followed was a week in which I was awash in a flood of reminiscences about shooting history from the grand old man.

It seems that 2000 was also the year that the Olympics were to be held in Sydney. As Art participated in the last Australian Olympics in Melbourne in 1956, it seemed to me that it would be a neat trick of symmetry to hook him up with the US shooters who would be using Perry as part of their training. As luck would have it Perry was ripe with Olympians and medalists that year. In addition to Art there was his old team mate Art Cook, Jim Hill, and Lones Wigger, participated in they every Olympic games from 1948 through 1980-save 1976. Mike Anti, Tom Tamas, and Bruce Meredith were bound for Australia soon after Perry ended.
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by Hap Rocketto

I am fortunate in that I have known some of the great smallbore shooters of both the modern era and what might be called the “Golden Era” of shooting of the 1940s to 1960s. One of the things that make the two groups different is the way they talk about equipment and awards. Art Jackson, Art Cook, or Walt Tomsen will speak of a case of ammunition being 10,000 rounds and packed in a wooden crate. They will also tell of traveling to New Haven with their favorite Winchester 52 and having it mated to a particular ammunition lot by Jack Lacy in the test tunnel. The subject of a Remington 37 and Bridgeport ammo will sometimes be broached, and “Hey, what about old C.I. Shotwell’s Morgan being up for sale by his widow.” Later they will wax nostalgic about winning silver chalices, trophy rifles, cash money, and real gold medals at matches that cost just a dollar or two to enter.

A more modern shooter such as Wigger, Bassham, or Foth will tell of selecting ammo lots from three or four different manufacturers, barrels from several vendors, all screwed or pinned onto some German action, and gripe about there being no real US purveyors of quality rifles. The discussion of huge entry fees and little return, awards that are paltry, cash payouts that are small, that there is little in the way of merchandise awarded, and comments such as “just take a look at the stuff they award at shotgun events” color the conversation. They have also heard of the days of yore and yearn for generous prizes Continue reading →

by Hap Rocketto

The world is full many unusual coincidences, perhaps chief among them is the occasional shot loosed from my rifle that strikes the X ring as it meanders into the bullet’s path.  Another is the way that a series of seemingly unrelated historical occurrences seem to link up unusual and diverse events and individuals.  This is sociologist Stanley Milgram’s yet unproved “small world phenomenon,” The idea, first proposed in 1967, postulates that every person in the United States is connected by a chain of no more than six people.  It has morphed into a trivia game called ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”

My six degrees began in 1853 when France demanded from the Turks, who ruled the Holy Land, the keys to Jerusalem’s Church of the Nativity which was supervised by the Russian Orthodox Church. Turkey who allowed the Russians to oversee the church was caught between two major powers.  The French threatened military action if they did not turn over the keys and the Russians threatened military action if they did not.

In short order, as was the European custom right through 1939, nations took sides in order to beat up on each other and thus began the Crimean War.  Quickly the Russians burned a squadron of Turkish ships at Sinope, the British Army waded ashore at Calamita Bay which led to the investment of Russina city of Sevastopol, whose captured cannons provide the bronze for The Victoria Cross to this day, the Light Brigade charged at Balaklava, the British Army was decimated by cholera, the war was ended by one of the many Treaties of Paris, and a Muslim doorkeeper ended up with the keys to prevent disputes between the Christian sects.

Meanwhile, in the squalid Dickensonian London district of Soho, the Eley brothers’ factory on Broad Street was turning out percussion caps by the cart load to support the war effort.  A few doors down from the Eley factory was the Lion Brewery.  In between was a municipal water pump.

While the pump got a lot of use during the hot summer of 1854 the laborers at the brewery ignored it for they received part of their wages in beer.  The Eley Brothers, showing unusual compassion for Victorian employers, supplied tubs of water to refresh their employees.  It was drawn from the Broad Street pump because it was both convenient and because it enjoyed a reputation as a source of clean and tasty water.  It was not beer, but in Victorian England it was an unexpected kindness.  So great was the pump’s reputation that locals, who lived closer to other public pumps, would often go out of their way to fetch water at Broad Street.  Even the Eley Brothers were in the habit of sending bottles of it home to their mother, who favored it above all.

At 40 Broad Street, early on the morning of the 28^th of August, the infant daughter of Sarah Lewis began running noxious fluid from both ends; the early stages of the dreaded cholera.  Mrs. Lewis cleaned the doomed child as best she could and, as was the custom of the day, tossed the waste into a cesspit.  Within ten days 500 residents of Soho died of the disease.  The Herculean efforts of Doctor John Snow, the father of modern Epidemiology, determined that baby Lewis’ discharges had escaped the leaky cesspit and contaminated the Broad Street Pump. As Cholera can only be contracted by ingesting the bacterium the thirsty Soho residents lining up at the pump got far more than they expected.

The Eley labor force, drinking Broad Street Pump water, was seriously depleted by the disease, as was the Eley family. Mother Eley’s taste for Broad Street Pump water, fed by her doting sons’ attention, proved to be, quite literally, the death of her.  Things were much better at the Lion Brewery where the beer hydrated brewers were about as healthy as a Victorian workman might hope to be.  No pump water for them, just a bacterium free fermented fill up to keep the thirst down.

An unsuspecting family of six Prussian immigrants lived in a two room attic apartment on Dean Street, just a block or two from the Broad Street pump.  The head of the household whiled away most of his time in the Reading Room of the British Museum, devising a system of economic and social theory to right the wrongs he perceived the working class suffered that would eventually develop into dialectical materialism .  Called home from his intellectual ruminations the then obscure Karl Marx witnessed the horrors of cholera first hand as it took the life of his daughter.

A century and half later I wandered Camp Perry’s Commercial Row in search of the ever elusive “knot lot.”  I found a case of Eley EPS Black that was manufactured in the same year, on the same machine, and with the same muzzle velocity as the stuff I had been shooting with great success that year.  It was not the best way to test and select ammunition but I had two kids in college at the time and economics dictated my method, not madness.

Emerging from the store, bent under my load, I came upon my team mate and good friend Lenny Remaly and it was there that all the six degrees of history discussed so far converged: economic theory, the Eley Brothers, beer, Lenny, and me-everything but the cholera.  Remaly is a serious beer maker and drinker who shoots Eley while I am a recreational beer drinker who shoots Eley.  The major difference is that Len keeps healthy by drinking cases of beer annually while shooting a case of Eley ammunition while, on the other hand, I stay healthy by drinking a case of beer annually while shooting cases of Eley ammunition.

by Hap Rocketto

In smallbore prone shooting there seems to be an underlying current of thought that if you can’t win the match on the firing line you might stand a chance in the stat shack.  This belief seems to grow from the old statistical theory that given an infinite number of monkeys and typewriters one of the simians will hunt and peck out the entire works of Shakespeare. Using this as a logical starting point some shooters believe that given an infinite number of dollar bills and challenge cards the score will grow larger.  I do not subscribe to that school of thought.

I very rarely challenge a score. I very rarely win a match but I don’t think that the two are connected.  I don’t challenge because I believe that there are precious few errors made in scoring.  Unless winning the challenge will vault me into a medal position it is not worth the effort.  My eye is as good as the next and my estimates are usually the same as the scorer’s official count. I believe the folks manning the scoring tables are working in good faith and are fair enough to give me every point I have earned. Continue reading →