Monday, May 19, 2008 Rama: Of Hathcock and training By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
A HAWKER of DVDs operating along Fuente Osmeña did right by me last week, selling to me a DVD entitled “Ractical Shooting.”
shelled out P60 (discount demanded over the missing P) and played it on the machine the following day. The label promised 39 different features compressed in one disk but it only had four.
As things turned out, I should have asked for a larger discount. Nevertheless, of the four features, two were okay, one was informative and entertaining, but the last was great.
It was a feature about military and law enforcement snipers and of what they do and had an on-cam interview with Carlos Hathcock II, the only one he ever gave.
For those who haven’t heard of him, Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Norman Hathcock II (May 20, 1942 – Feb. 23, 1999) was considered to be the best marine sniper of the Viet Nam conflict.
His record 93 confirmed kills, vis-à-vis the extraordinary details of the missions he undertook, made him a legend within the military, law enforcement and weapons community, and among the lead developers of the United States Marine Corps Sniper training program.
One of his most famous accomplishments, witnessed by his spotter John Burke, was shooting an enemy sniper sent to hunt him through the latter’s scope, hitting the enemy in the eye and killing him.
As a shooter, he won the prestigious Wimbledon Cup--long-range shooting’s most prestigious prize-in 1965. And in 1967, he set the record for the 20th century’s longest combat kill, 2,286 yards on a Browning M2 .50 BMG machine gun with a Unertl optic sight.
The record was broken only three years after his death when, in 2002, a Canadian three-man sniper team from the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, shot a Taliban fighter 2,430 yards away. The shot was taken by Corporal Rob Furlong from a McMillan TAC-50 Long-Range Sniper Weapon.
On the video, Hathcock was interviewed by Maj. John Plaster, himself a sniper. Here are snippets:
Plaster: What makes a good shooter? What are the kinds of skills and controls and attributes...
Hathcock: Well, you got to have a good head on your shoulders to be able to absorb everything around you. In competition shooting, you have to absorb everything, uh, going on around you and to bring your skill up to the utmost.
And I call it getting into my bubble. ‘Counts for nothing but pure, absolute, utter concentration on the job you’re doing’ at that time, which is what I did when I was sniping. I learned it when I was competing.
In another portion of their recorded conversation:
Plaster: What kind of advice do you give to young, aspiring snipers?
Hathcock: Pay attention to detail; detail being what you have to do to produce that one well-aimed shot after your observation. Pay attention to detail, especially in your observation and in your shooting. It all goes together, hand-in-hand, to make one well-aimed shot. For the police snipers, continue your training. Continue training on the certain aspects of sniping.
You cannot do it too much. You can’t do it too much. So do as much as you can. Put your mind and your body into it. When you’re training, don’t just go out to be trained. Be quality trained; quality, quality.”
Hathcock emphasized the message: Pay attention to detail, pay attention to detail, train, train, train.
Good advice even ordinary shooters should heed.
ADVANCED COURSE. And speaking of training, International Firearms Instructor Rey Abad is holding the much-anticipated second tier of the firearms seminar he held late last year in cooperation with Cebu City’s Kamagong Gun Club Inc.
The one-and-a-half-day course will open on May 24 at the King of Kings Sports World and Resort Cebu City Office along Zapatera St. R Registration fee for the class is P1,500 per person and only those who took the course last year may qualify. For inquiries, one may call 253-8412. (knrama@gmail.com)
