Pot Shots at Perry

Women, soldiers, an Indian chief and a clergyman, children, sailors, cowboys, a chemist, a Japanese, a Chinese, an Hawaiian--all these lay in a 5-mi. firing line at Camp Perry (Ohio) last week. They were shooting, for the most part in rain and mud, in the 58th annual National Rifle & Pistol Matches. The three-week Camp Perry shoot is the biggest in the world, dwarfing England's Bisley. This year 3,000 competitors broke all previous Camp Perry records in attendance.

There are 100 contests shot at Perry, where the nation's best riflemen and riflewomen display each year the sort of shooting that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, more than 100 years ago, showed the British at Put-in-Bay 13 mi. away. No shooting records were broken at Perry this year, largely because of the wretched weather during the first two weeks. But some paradoxical things happened in the early service cup matches. Firing under the aegis of the National Rifle Association but under the direct supervision of the War Department, the Infantry team won the Coast Guard cup. Then Corporal H. F. Stemen of the Ohio National Guard won the Navy's trophy. The Navy retaliated by winning the Chemical Warfare match. In the Infantry's skirmishers event (teams advancing against targets) the Washington National Guard team-- three schoolteachers, four University of Washington undergraduates, three salesmen, a policeman, a farmer, a motion picture operator--outshot all the rest of the civilian groups as well as the services.

Most important and final matches--the national individual rifle match and the national rifle team match--were run off under bright sunlight. These matches are shot under like regulations with the standard U. S. Military Springfield 30 calibre: 50 rounds rapid and slow-fire at 200 yd., rapid-fire at 300 yd., slow-fire at 600 yd., 100 rounds slow-fire at 1,000 yd. Squinting in the glare, 1,727 contestants sooted their sights with candles, tightened their slings, commenced firing at 5:50 a. m. over glistening grass. When the last shot cracked out, split the target, was marked by the pitmen and valued by the statistical officer, the winner became known. He was Lieut. Emerald F. Sloan, 30, of the Infantry Barracks at Vancouver, Wash. Lieut. Sloan, never before a sensation in his two years of national competition, came up from behind to make a score of 97 out of a possible 100 on the long range.

Because they usually bring home more than their share of trophies, the Marines are called "pot-hunters." Accustomed to Central American rain and slime, they did not seem to mind the early bad weather, won more cups than any other unit. Equally acclimatized to tropic sun glare, they won the team match for the second consecutive year, for the eleventh time. The only branch that consistently gives the Marines a run for their money is the Infantry, which still holds the match record of 2,838 out of a possible 3,000, established in 1927.

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