March 30, 2008

Steady on the Trigger
Jack Bird sets a tough standard for marksmen to live up to

By RODGER NICHOLS
of The Chronicle

Jack Bird’s rifle frankly doesn’t look like much. The finish is dinged up, there are strips of tape on it, and the stock has a big keyhole-shaped empty space.
But competitors around the state and the nation have reason to respect the rifle and the man behind it and its predecessors.

“You never know what he’s going to bring,” said Ron Hillis, a fellow member of The Dalles Rifle and Pistol Club, adding that Bird is always tinkering with his equipment.

Bird agrees. “When I get ahold of something, by the time I get done, nobody else wants anything to do with it,” he said.

But Bird knows what he’s doing.

Last year, he received a trophy with the following inscription: “Presented to Jack Bird, honoring 50 years of achievement, Columbia Willamette Rifle League, 1957-2007. Top ten 46 years. Top five 36 years. League champion 18 years.”

And that’s just part of his success story. This 85-year-old won his first Oregon State title in 1952, the same year Dwight D. Eisenhower first ran for president. To prove that was no fluke, Bird racked up 14 more state titles through 1981, when he shot a score of 799 out of a possible 800, tying a national record in the process.

Though he has other titles, Bird has primarily competed in the smallbore event. That’s shooting 20 rounds from a .22 caliber rifle in four different postions: prone, sitting, kneeling and offhand, or standing.

In each position, there’s a target with 10 bulls, and one shot is fired at each. The 10th ring is 15/100ths of an inch in diameter, which is 7/100ths smaller than a .22 bullet.

“To get that 799 score, he had to touch that bull with each shot,” said Hillis. “He did it 79 times out of 80 shots. And the last shot was less than a quarter inch off.”

Then there’s the time in 1963 when Bird was part of a four-person team that took the national title, defeating 367 other teams from around the country, not to mention 1967 when he won two state championships and set two national records.

But it’s not all about his personal triumphs.

“Jack is a gentle giant in the shooting sports world,” said Greg Weast, a fellow team member. “He’s always willing to help anybody.”

Scott Mengis, who holds three league titles himself, agrees.

“He’s meant a tremendous amount to the whole Columbia Willamette Rifle League.” Mengis said. “There isn’t anybody in the league that he hasn’t helped to better their skills.” Mengis also said Bird keeps the range in the basement of the Mid-Columbia Senior Center open for the club and community to practice safely.
“Two or three nights a week, every week, 52 weeks out of the year, Jack’s got that thing open,” he said.

It’s been a pretty good life for a guy who started his education in a one-room schoolhouse in the Coos Bay area. The family moved to The Dalles in his senior year of high school, and Bird graduated from The Dalles High School in 1940.
He stayed to pick up a few additional technical courses, then signed up the following summer for a six-year hitch in the U.S. Navy.

“I signed up in June,” he said. “The Japanese got so excited, that they attacked us by December,” he said with a chuckle.

Bird ended up training as an aircraft mechanic, working on the Navy version of the B-24 heavy bomber. He was stationed mostly in San Diego, but then was attached to a service unit that was sent to the South Pacific. He ended up with a detached unit, nominally assigned to the Hawiian Islands, that operated out of Johnson Island.

“I was down there for seven months, and it was the nicest vacation I ever had,” Bird said. “That’s as far as I got; I never got out to where the real tough stuff was going on.”

At war’s end, he chose reassignment in the Northwest, to be able to get home once in a while, and ended up stationed several months in Kodiak, Alaska.
It was after the war also that Bird took up shooting competitively.

“Dad started me out when I was 12, back in the ‘30s,” he said. “I was interested in shooting squirrels and that sort of thing.”

Starting in 1947, Bird competed in the interservice championships at Quantico, Va., as a member of the Navy reserve and in the national championships at Camp Perry, Ohio.

Always a tinkerer, Bird said his best improvement was an electrically-operated trigger and arming device operated by a photo battery, and with less than 5,000th of an inch movement.

“It was the best trigger I ever had,” he said. “But the guy who made them retired, and when it stopped working there was nobody that could fix it.”

Scott Mengis said that experimentation with equipment isn’t unusual for Bird.
“Jack will try anything to better himself and his abilities,” Mengis said. “He shot barefoot one year, and these ranges we shoot at sometimes are 30 degrees.
They’re really cold and he’s out there shooting barefoot because he thought he might get another point or two out of it.”

These days, Bird said, he has arthritis in his back, so he can’t shoot from the prone position any more. A doctor’s certification allows him to shoot his prone points from the sitting position.

He said he’s also developed a tremor, which makes the kneeling position tough.
“When you’re shooting properly,” he said, “you get to the point where the sight picture will start to center in and almost stop. Then all the training you’ve been doing will pull the trigger for you. You don’t have to pull it yourself. The idea is to get in there and line it up. But in mine these days, there’s a mad little dance down there.”

Mengis said in spite of Bird’s age, he’s still a superb shooter. “I’ve always wanted to have a nationwide challenge to put Jack up against anybody,” he said.
“There’s nobody in his age group or even quite a bit younger, who could keep up with him, even at 85 years old.”

And Greg Weast agreed.

“If at 85 years old, I can remember the combination of my safe, I’ll be happy,” he said. “And this cat’s still out there doing it.”