You May Talk O’ Gin An’ Beer
by Hap Rocketto
There probably isn’t a shooter in the world that hasn’t been through some sort of cessation of fire. The most common reason is severe rain. Matches are often held up, and sometimes cancelled, because the rain is so intense that the targets become unscoreable. A couple of days ago a rather unusual event at a rifle match got me to thinking about all of the different reasons I have heard of, or experienced, that have caused a break in fire.
Many years ago I was shooting standing at a Connecticut Big Bore League match and the shooter next to me was kneeling. I happened to look over and was taken aback to see him drop his rifle and keel over. I plopped my rifle on my stool and bent down, with a couple of others, to help him. He was purple and, despite our best efforts, the old gentleman had fired his last shot. The Great Range Master in The Sky had called time on his relay. As we futilely tried to revive him the line was shut down and shooting did not resume until the ambulance had taken him away.
Many old belly shooters will remember, with some nostalgia, the matches shot at P.J. O’Hare’s in central New Jersey. It was a nice range and the competition was always fierce in that hotbed of prone shooting. It was the domain of Miss Winnifred Carr. Winnie was a prone shooter of some repute and worked for O’Hare. She was prim, proper, fine boned, and thin. The perpetually serious expression on her sharp-featured face always made me think that she believed I had just violated some grave and obscure aspect of the shooting canon. She was the physical embodiment of the stereotypical high school librarian. Well, to get back to the story, a set of railroad tracks ran through the complex and it was not uncommon to hold up shooting as boxcars trundled across the range.
Ranges in New York have offered some unusual delays. At Camp Smith I have had to stop to wait while a helicopter flitted in and out from a small landing pad between the 600-yard line and the targets. Various types of fauna also inhabit the range and not much is thought about the flocks of geese that foul the grass. However, the deer that browse the area are off limits and shooting stops whenever they wander into sight. At Colonie the 1,000 yard firing line is not readily seen from the area between the line and the butts. Matches there have been stopped as hikers or dirt bikers strayed onto the broad grass field.
While my brother Steve was living in Peru he was active in the local shooting club. One morning, while out practicing his 300-meter skills, with an original Peruvian 1909 Mauser with a Lange sight, when he caught the sight of the range help scurrying about and shouting. His Spanish was not that good and he was wearing earmuffs anyway so he just kept on shooting. He noticed that his less than rock steady hold was deteriorating. He stopped to adjust his sling. After getting back down he again had trouble keeping steady. The Range Officer delicately lifted his earmuff and politely asked him, in better English than Steve’s execrable Spanish, to leave the shooting booth. It was at this moment he realized that it wasn’t his hold that was shaky. It was the ground and he was in the midst of an earthquake!
There are legions of shooters who have spent a good many minutes sprawled on the grass of Vaile, sorry I am just too old to get used to Viale, Range at Perry while the United States Coast Guard chivvied a boater out of the impact area. The area is well marked and I can never understand how folks drift in there. One school of thought leans toward the fact that the splashes look like those of the area’s favorite game fish, the walleye, and the boaters who stand into danger are not locals but tourists from Cleveland or Cincinnati.
The incident that reminded me of all this happened this past week my brother Steve took his high school rifle team to a match at a local rod and gun club. This place is one of those old New England clubs that slowly has been taken over by card and bingo players, adding a bar to accommodate the new clientele. The club is in a rural area and serves as a social center for the area. Unfortunately, it has become less of fishing and shooting club and more a social club. Shooting now seems to disturb the main function of the club that revolves around hearts and clubs and gin and suds, rather than revolvers. It must be noted that the club is civic minded and generous. It has a junior rifle club and also hosts the local high school’s varsity shooting program.
During the match, right in the middle of a relay, the side door of the basement range banged open and a bright shaft of light split the darkness. Two huge guys rumbled in from the bright sunshine rolling beer barrels. They had broad shoulders, tattoos on their arms, and hair on their knuckles. These tough teamsters were unloading a brewer’s dray to make the weekly beverage delivery. Here was another unusual reason to cease fire to be added to our growing list.
Isn’t it is rather ironic that this little tale about shooting delays on the range starts with a story about a shooter’s bier and ends with a story about a shooter’s beer?
