An Article from the Archives

When Gary talks about getting his start in shooting, he always mentions an article in the American Rifleman by Anatoli Bogdanov of the USSR.  That was a time when USSR shooters were dominating international shooting competitions.  

We were able to find the article in an archive,  published in April 1955, entitled "The Training of the Target Shot."     The article was originally published in the Deutsche Schuetzenzeitung and translated by Col. E. H. Harrison USA (Ret'd) of the NRA staff.     The article was published about a year before Gary started any serious training, but when he did this became his primary inspiration and source of information about how much training was required to be a world class shooter.

In Gary's words:  The Bogdanov article is important because he became the only hero I have ever had.  He won two Olympic Gold medals and six World Championships in the 1950s.  He was the best rifle shooter in the world at that time and my goal was to better his record.  It is probably important to note that I began my serious training during my last year of high school and that Bogdanov was my inspiration and his record became my objective.  


I've never been back to Axtell HS to confirm this, but my memory is that towards the end of our senior year we (all 12 of us) were asked to list our ambitions, etc., for the school paper.  By then I had been training seriously for about a year.  I said my ambition was to become the "best rifle shooter in the world."  Clearly, no one took it seriously at the time, but....

It should also be noted that the Army Marksmanship Unit was formed in 1956.   Col. Tom Sharpe (reference "No Coach, No Team, No Money") and other officers provided the impetus to form the unit to bring America back to international shooting prominence, something that had not happened since the 1920s.