Surprise: you're the grand senior champ!

Samuel Garee of Canton, Ohio, was the High Grand Senior last year at Perry. But he didn't even know it. When I came across him, one of the few spectators on the field yesterday, I had to stop. He was watching through his scope so intently I almost didn't want to interrupt him. But I'm glad I did!

Garee is over 70 years old -- you have to be, to qualify as a Grand Senior -- and he told me he doesn't remember when he first started coming to Perry. Now, with daughters and granddaughters involved in shooting as a hobby, Garee comes to Perry with some friends each year to compete. He wasn't shooting in the Palma Individual Match yesterday because he wasn't feeling great, but he was behind the Ready Line watching his friends.

Last year, about two weeks after Perry's conclusion, one of those friends asked Garee why he had left before the awards ceremony. "I hadn't stuck around," Garee recalls. "'You won the grand senior championship,' he said. 'That's crazy,' I said."

He won the Tompkins trophy and the Canadian cup as well.

Garee's biggest concern is that the competitive shooting world is able to bring enough new shooters to the sport. "In school, and on television programs for young people, they are indoctrinated against (guns) of any kind. They have that pounded into them for so many years that it's hard to change them," he says. "Unless they have a parent that brings them up to shoot ... I don't know how any other young people will get interested in competitive shooting."