Long Shot

There is no particular prejudice against an 18-year-old girl who enters a national trapshooting contest. But she is not supposed to win. In the Grand American Trapshoot at Vandalia, Ohio last week, to the utter consternation of a 98% male field, one of them did just that.

Against the champions of the other 47 states (and Cuba), Florida's Joan Pflueger of North Miami handled her 12-gauge gun with the ease of an old infantryman. From a 16-yd. handicap mark, blonde, self-contained Joan "smoked" (shattered to dust) 100 straight clay pigeons. That gave her a tie with four others. In a 75-bird shoot-off, Joan tightened up a bit: she missed one. The others missed more. Joan won by one shot from sharpshooting Texas Champion Dean Blank.

Joan earned the right to compete in the champion-of-champions event when Florida Champion Clyde Wells was unable to make the trip. Joan was runner-up to Wells this year. Her coach, Fred Etchen, once a pupil of the great Annie Oakley and captain of the 1924 U.S. Olympic trapshoot team, was inclined to regard Joan's Annie Oakley feat as a fluke. "It wouldn't happen again in a thousand years," he said. In the 51 years of the Grand American Trapshoot, certainly, nothing like it had ever happened before.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.