Gold Medal Diary Entries

 Gary believes he was the first person in the USA to keep a shooting diary.  

The first diary he kept is in a small six ring binder;  it is mostly a log of scores and rarely includes commentary.   He titles it "Training Day Book" because that's what Bogdanov called his (see "An Article from the Archives").      Gary's first entry is May 25, 1957.  On that day, Gary received a Remington Model 40-X.    His dad gave him his first target rifle as a high school graduation gift.  Gary still has the Remington today, but it is well worn and "severely modified."

There are five more successive diaries in the same style binder, but a bit larger.   Gary calls the first one "Shooting Book-Daily Practice and Match Results."    These diaries are fully extended to include commentary on lessons learned in training and match conditions including wind, light, temperature, and mirage.    He mentions nervousness and endurance and tactics during all matches, including Pan American Games, Olympics and World Championships.

Tokyo Olympics 1964 Gold Medal diary entry:  

Mexico City 1968 Gold Medal diary entry:

The story of the Russian "harassment campaign" will be in an upcoming blog.      


The last entry in this style of diary is 19 September 1969 from Barcelona, Spain, where Gary fired an 1182 in an international competition with shooters from Spain, Mexico, and Portugal.     After this spectacular score, he retired from international competition.     The 1182 remained the highest score in the world until 1986.   The targets from this match are on display in our home.

In March 1963, Gary wrote an extensive treatise for the American Rifleman entitled "The Training of the Target Shot" which includes a reference to keeping a shooter's diary:


Keep a Shooter's Diary
     An invaluable aid in making my marksmanship evaluations has been keeping a shooter's diary.  By keeping this notebook I am able to record my daily results, my experiments and their results, and the sensations and feelings I have experienced in making my scores.  In this way I have been able to keep a running record of all my marksmanship experiences.  Now, whenever problems arise which I have faced before, I am able to refer to their solution.  Keeping a shooting diary is a distinct help.
     I keep careful records of the effects of atmospheric conditions and other influences which may direct the formation of my shooting tactics.   The shooter must be able to recognize the type of wind condition which requires sight changing and the type which requires the selection of one wind velocity to do his firing in.  The shooter must know what changing cloud and light conditions will do to the bullet's point of impact.   He must know what effect increasing temperatures will have on mirage and his own endurance; this may indicate a particular sequence for the positions.  He must know if wind will come into the booth and disturb the stranding position's stability during a certain time of day.  He must know how nervousness and endurance will affect the order in which to fire the 3 positions.  He but know whether on a certain range or in certain conditions it is advantageous to fire slowly or quickly.  He but know if and when he must take breaks in each position.  All enter into the development of the shooter's tactics and are things which must be learned during training.  Since I shun the use of a scorebook during actual firing, my observation of these factors becomes doubly important.  Once more the value of careful thought is clearly shown.

An Irony during the Cold War

Keep in mind that Gary had to teach himself how to shoot and he recognized that he had to learn a lot more about shooting techniques to reach his goals.  This kind of technical information simply was not available in the United States at that time.   The timeline was during the height of the Cold War when the best shooters in the world were from the USSR.  They were also the ones who had the most advanced coaching information.   The only publication he found to be useful in the beginning was the article in the American Rifleman by Anatoli Bogdanov, the great champion from the USSR (see "An Article from the Archives").

Once Gary was on the International Rifle Team at the Army Marksmanship Unit in Ft. Benning, he was eager to learn from his new teammates, but mostly he was blown off.     The culture then was not to share what you knew with other shooters because they might use it to beat you.  However, he remembers three great teammates who were willing to share what they knew in spite of the culture:  Bill Krilling, Martin Gunnarsson, and pistol shooter Bill Blankenship.


When Gary was an alternate on the Olympic Team, Rome, 1960, he used much of his time to photograph Russian shooters and talk to them.    He found them helpful and willing to answer his questions.  He found that cold war enmity did not carry over into sports.

A great breakthrough in his quest for advanced marksmanship knowledge occurred when Army leaders brought back a copy of a Soviet shooting text that Army Intelligence translated for AMU.  Each member of Army International Rifle and Pistol Teams were given an English translation of a 300-page book on advanced technique titled "Sportivnaya Strel'ba Iz Vintovki" by A. A. Jur'yev, with the English title "Competitive Marksmanship with Rifle and Carbine".   Gary studied the book meticulously and underlined in pencil much of the Russian advice.    Later he loaned his copy to another shooter and it was never returned, but we recently acquired another English copy from AMU's Bob Alyward.


It is ironic that during the height of the cold war, Gary found the shooters and coaches of the USSR to be his best and most open sources of information.  He readily attributes much of the shooting knowledge that aided his rise to the top to what he learned from the Russians.  


Interestingly, a copy of "Sportivnaya Strel'ba Iz Vintovki" by Yur'yev (in Russian, first edition, published in 1957) was given to Gary many years later by Yur'yev's daughter, a KGB agent who defected to the US.     She heard Gary was editing the third edition of a translation of the book, and presented him with an original 1957 edition, autographed by her father.    How all of that came together will be in a forthcoming blog.