Going Out With A Bang

The performance picks up. Bob grabs a shotgun. Matt picks up the 7 mm. rifle. They begin-blasting the large fruit and vegetables. Allen drives a golf ball straight up out of sight with a 12-gauge shotgun. As they prepare for the finale, exploding jugs of gasoline that make spectacular fireballs, Allen holds up two bullets to the crowd, a .22 short and the deadly 7 mm. magnum. He explains the differences. Assistants have set plastic gallon jugs of gasoline over newspaper fires in metal barrels. They run for the safety of the hand-grenade pits.

Bob and Matt, side by side, fire the big loads into the jugs. With a delightful whoosh! miniature Nagasakis erupt in the humid air. The heat is intense. Insects drop all around. The photographer is screeching that he missed the shot. His auto-drive Nikon was set up behind the gasoline, and in his fear that a 15-year-old boy was pointing a huge-bore rifle at the lens he forgot to touch off the remote-control shutter release. The shot will have to be redone. But the crowd, sweating, orange-faced, is satisfied.

It makes one wonder, standing there in dead insects, black smoke and the littered salad of exploded food, what possible demonology possesses otherwise sane men and women to shoot at things that can be thrown into the air before crowds of gawkers. Trick-and fancy-shooting demonstrations were plentiful (and profitable) into the 1950s. Held on fairgrounds and at sportsmen's shows around the country, shooting demonstrations drew large and appreciative crowds. Most of the professionals were in the employ of large arms manufacturers, but the expense of supporting these shooters was finally too much for the gun companies. They threw their advertising budgets into high-powered, opulent magazine advertisements as a better way to reach the shooting public. And public opinion has turned against gun sport to some extent. The slaughter of public figures, the unearthing of mass graves, Vietnam, have dulled our appreciation of marksmanship and excellence in shooting.

From the early 19th century through World War II, the come-on for shooting shows like the Allens' was simply a "see-what-I-can-do" attitude. The use and function of firearms was well enough implanted in the public mind that no further explanation was necessary. But as the old pros faded out in the face of new attitudes, Allen stayed contemporary. He began calling his act "The Power of the Gun," which brings out both the old-fashioned fascination of man with the fire stick and emphasizes the more modern concern with gun safety.

One of the values of history, if it is valuable at all anymore, is to remember processes that are no longer practiced—the way a whale gets raised from the water or the use of tools to split shingles. In its flashy way, the rise and fall of trick and fancy shooting parallels the rise and fall of the American West. The beginnings of trick and fancy shooting follow a familiar pattern: the professionalizing of enjoyment.

In the early 19th century holiday turkey shoots, squirrel "barking" and muzzle-loader contests were natural celebrations for frontiersmen whose lives and livelihood depended heavily on firearms. Popularized by men like Boone and Crockett, the ability to shoot well was necessary, and friendly competition—or the not-so-friendly kind—was natural, the way lumberjacks today still have logrolling contests long after the necessity to walk on floating logs has disappeared.

By the 1850s things were getting fancy. The shooting of live pigeons in contests, nail driving at 50 yards, candle snuffing and "drawing pictures" were popular shooting sports. And back East the tales of frontier prowess were generating interest. The outsize myths that grew around the gaunt, misty figures of gunfighters, gamblers, buffalo skinners and Indian campaigners were rampant forms of a national hysteria of self-interest. The good folks of Philadelphia and Kansas City wanted to hear the roar of the Winchester and feel the buck of the buffalo gun.

Since buffalo were scarce in Philadelphia and killing Indians was prohibited within the city limits, sharpshooters beginning to make a living entertaining the public had to find something else to shoot. And for every better mousetrap, there's an inventor.

His name was Captain Adam H. Bogardus. He had been a market hunter in Illinois, and in 1869 the good captain shot 500 pigeons with a single muzzle-loader in less than nine hours. Bogardus shot well and often. By the next year he issued a challenge "to any man in America to shoot a pigeon match, 50 single and 50 double rises, for from $500 to $5,000 a side." He soon began calling himself "The Champion Wing Shot of the World" and barnstormed the Midwest like a broken heavyweight offering the old "one-round-with-the-champ" routine.

Bogardus was no slouch as an enterprising capitalist, either. He patented the glass balls that he used as targets when he wasn't shooting pigeon, and the trap that threw them. The hordes that watched his performances bought these items at an amazing rate. The sport continued in different ways to sell the equipment that it used. In fact, trick and fancy shooting probably has the longest run in America as a product-endorsing sport. Bogardus was making more money than Ted Williams autographing all those fiber glass gunwales.