The Dixie Highway and the National Road, two chalklines drawn across the smooth slate of Ohio, meet ten miles north of Dayton at a village called Vandalia. At Vandalia are the $100,000 grounds of the Amateur* Trapshooting Association of America, where, late every August, with eleven freight carloads of clay targets (made of sand and plaster of Paris) and $32,000 worth of shotgun shells, are held the most important trapshooting events in America. The Vandalia firing line is nearly a mile long. Shooters fire in squads of five over 27 traps, each manned by a corps of trap loaders, pullers, referees, scorers, with expert accountants in the manager's office to keep track of scores. After a week of minor events, Vandalia's shooters gathered last week for the biggest prizes in the two oldest events, the Preliminary Grand American Handicap and, a day later, the Grand American Handicap proper.
In the Preliminary last week, first shooter in the field to post 25 straight was 17-year-old Bobby Olds of Lansing, Mich., who had a special desire to win. Last spring his family was evicted from their farm. Young Olds hawked vegetables, cultivated an onion patch, spent his spare time loading traps for the North Lansing Gun Club whose members taught him about shooting and gave him his entrance fee and transportation to Vandalia. At 50 and at 75, last week, young Bobby Olds was still firing without a miss, from 21 yd. Running up a perfect score is more a matter of steady nerves than skillful marksmanship, which most Vandalia shooters take for granted. It gets harder with every target. Young Olds was relieved when he missed his 96th. Then he hit three more for 99 and the $1,000 first prize, with two marksmen tied for second at 98.
Only a half-dozen first-rate marksmen—men who consistently break more than 95 out of 100 targets—have won the Grand American. No one has ever won it more than once. In the huge field—722 last week—high-class shooters have an almost insuperable handicap in firing from as far away as 25 yd., 9 yd. farther than those with the lowest ratings. Last week, Rev. Garrison Roebuck, United Brethren minister of Defiance, Ohio who won last year, finished with a wretched 71. A heavy rain made the visibility so poor that from time to time all firing ceased.
Strings of 100, common enough in other events, are almost unheard of in the Grand American. When Arthur E. Sheffield, railway postal clerk of Dixon. Ill., firing from 21 yd., broke 98 out of 100 last week he felt fairly confident about it. An experienced trapshooter but hitherto unfamed, he started shooting in 1912, gave it up in disgust at his inefficiency in 1917, started to shoot again four years ago. Last year he won his first big tournament, the Illinois State Handicap. Last week, after waiting for several other shooters who knew his posted score to crack when they had a chance to tie it, he won his second, and the Grand American purse of $2,000.