New Distinguished Rifleman

First topic message reminder :

Congratulations to John Bickar on his recent Distinguished Rifleman

Thanks everyone. Even you, Chris

john bickar wrote:Thanks everyone. Even you, Chris

haha  no worries it started in 2001, if you could have i'm sure you would of gotten one. Now sell me your rifle gear so i can go work on service rifle.

John,
My heartiest congratulations on the achieving DR, and a very late but sincere congratulations on the other 3 badges. My own trip to DPS is much rougher and going to be longer than the trip to DR. Man, I never knew how hard it is to pull a trigger ( correctly )!!! Best wishes and hoping we can share a range sometime.

Mike

John,
You mentioned being the youngest to achieve the pistol badge, how old were you and is there a minimum age? 
As you know there is an "able bodied" req. When I 1st went to Perry I requested to shoot HB and was refused. Several of the Ohio Masters got word to me to fill out the papers and the range personnel would take care of me. They did.

You have put up a great record, one to be proud of, I am VERY HAPPY for you John.
Ron Habegger

Hi Ron,

I didn’t know that story, that’s pretty cool. It’s indicative of that crew at the time, as is the following story.

I shot my first 2700 at age 13. By the next summer, at age 14, I had a SS card, which is about the point that many pistol shooters start thinking about Distinguished. The DCM at the time had a minimum age of 16 for competing in pistol leg matches. I was shooting all iron sights at the time, and I started shooting some hardball (it was hardball back then, with 230gn ball) in league and team matches.

I remember shooting on a McKinley Club team at the Canton Regional that summer. I had a 277. My uncle Ray was there shooting that year. He asked me what I shot in the team match, and I told him. He exclaimed, “Shit, that woulda legged!”

My dad and uncle decided to have some fun with me. Dad was talking to Frank Goza, and said, “John, Goza had a 277 too.” Excitedly, I asked Frank (Goza), “How many Xs did you have???” (the idea that I could have bested Frank Goza with a pistol was more than my 14-year-old brain could handle).

In his slow Tennessee drawl, Frank said, “I didn’t have but 19 of ‘em.”

I think it took me 10 years to get that joke.

But still, at that point, we thought that the 16-year-old minimum was a hard and fast rule. (Remember, no WWW to look things up on in those days.)

Anyhow, the next year (at 15) we found out that the DCM allowed exceptions to the 16-year-old minimum, at the discretion of the match sponsor. Their guidelines were something like, “...demonstrated ability to handle a pistol safely, or a Sharpshooter classification”.  By that point I had my Master card. 

That must have been at Perry or shortly before that we that we figured that out. I shot a 360 in the P100 and came back to the hut. Dennis Jayes asked me what I shot, and I told him, and he said, “That just might frickin’ work.”

It did, and I made President’s Hundred at 15. (I’d have to look back at my scorebooks to see if I shot the NTI that year. I must have, and not legged, because it seems odd to me now that I would be allowed to shoot P100 and not the NTI.)

I recently went back through old scorebooks and I earned several legs that fall in leg matches in OH, PA, and WV, (including a hard leg somewhere) and then got my final leg points at Canton when I was 16 plus about 2 months.  Unbeknownst to me, my dad and Jack McJunkin were watching my match through binoculars, and I got a Gatorade cooler full of water dumped on my head by my father and his buddies after my last string of rapid fire. I let out a four-letter word in surprise.

Good times, back then.

hi John,
Thanks for sharing those memories. It was different back then. I never heard of a hard leg until a few mon's ago on here. Not sure  what  makes it hard yet, leg that is, Perry is, regardless of shooter's score, but not sure if to be hard at say Canton or Bristol a shooter needs 10 pointers.
The OH shooters were pretty much unaware of the whole program early on. We had an old marine and  BP who spoke of it and had a coupla legs. When we started talking about points he was lost. 
He was a story teller and talked about some kind of practical police matches the BP shot against the Detroit PD in Harry Reeves heyday. The course was at least partially through a woods with the shooter riding on a car fender. The drivers were from the Detroit PD team and they managed to swerve into ruts etc when approaching a target! 
He had a story about pursuing a cop killer, cornering him in a haystack which was fired. There were 5 officers, all armed w/ revolvers, and when the miscreant ran out he was shot and later found to have 29 bullets in him. Good shooting for the circumstances.
I knew him when he was in his late 60's & 70's and he had gotten away from match shooting. With the hardball, ahem, scores I see today he likely could have gotten whatever he needed at Perry. He lived just several miles from Perry and vol'd there for several years.
Interesting to read your early shooting history. Will you be @ Perry this year? I hope you come as often as pos. I would like to see you get the Champs!
As your dad used to say "more axes"!!
Ron