obert Hight swings his customized 12-gauge shotgun

obert Hight swings his customized 12-gauge shotgun
on target in a smooth, well-practiced arc with the
kind of ease and comfort that you or I might point
the remote control at the TV. The differences are
two: first, Hight isn’t aiming at some 48-inch plasma
screen; second, when Hight twitches his finger, the channel doesn’t
change — instead, a loud report is followed milliseconds later by
the obliteration of a six-inch clay disc trying in vain to make a 45mph getaway from his keen eye and quick trigger finger.
Hight, known now to drag racing fans around the world as
the driver of John Force’s Automobile Club of Southern
California Ford Mustang Funny Car and the NHRA POWERade
Drag Racing Series’ top rookie last year, was a champion long
before he hit the quarter-mile to start 2005. He’s a former state
champion trapshooter with a long list of impressive credentials
and accomplishments. Now he’s trying to teach me how to shoot
trap.
When the National DRAGSTER staff huddled this winter for
its annual planning meeting, during which we explore our
strengths and opportunities and how to best utilize them, we
focused on our great working relationship with the racers and
our unprecedented access to them, and we hit upon the idea for
a series of articles we informally began calling “teach me,”
wherein we’d get the top Pros to share their non-drag racing
hobbies with us.
Hight’s shooting fame was well documented during his rookie
20 ✦ National DRAGSTER
campaign, and because I’ve fired a few handguns,
shotguns, small-bore rifles, and even an honest-togoodness World War II .45-caliber tommy gun, it
seemed a natural for me. Of course, I’ve never shot
at anything that was
moving.
We’re at Redlands
Shooting Park in Southern
California, a range owned
by Terry Bilbey, Hight’s
longtime shooting buddy
who has let us in ahead of
opening time to make whatever humiliation I encounter
a private affair. At least
that was the plan. Before I
know it, our “private lesson”
has become quite public.
When Hight rolls up in his Ford
(naturally) pickup, I’m surprised to
see Force with him. Minutes later,
Tom McKernan, president of the
Automobile Club of Southern
California and an avid skeet
shooter, also drives up. Beating
them all to the range was the
camera crew for Driving Force, the
upcoming A&E show on the Force
family. No pressure, right?
Trapshooting Basics
rapshooting is but one of many sports based on
shooting small disks launched into the air. The
“trap house” contains a machine that throws the “birds”
into the air in a random pattern limited to a 44-degree
horizontal arc. The birds exit the house at about 45
miles per hour and will travel about 50 yards before
hitting the ground. Each trap field has five shooting
stations in an arc, each 11 degrees away from its
neighbor. The shooting stations are paths radiating out
from the trap
house with
distances marked
from 16 to 27
yards. A round of
trap is 25 birds,
five birds shot from
each station in
rotation. The most
common forms of
trapshooting are
“singles” and
“doubles.” Singles
are single birds
shot from the
closest distance, 16
yards from the trap
house. Doubles are
two birds launched
simultaneously, also
shot from 16 yards.
A round of doubles
is usually 25 pairs,
or 50 birds.
T
Top Fuel star Cory
McClenathan, one of my all-time
favorite racing buddies, is also
present, at my invitation. He, too,
A typical trap field: five stations in a small arc. Robert Hight, far left, is at
has been shooting for years, and
station two and already has fired in this round. That’s me shooting in station
when I shared with him earlier
three, waiting for the target to come out of the trap house (the small
this year my plan to shoot with
rectangular box at center) while Automobile Club of Southern California
Hight, he asked to be included.
President Tom McKernan and Top Fuel veteran Cory McClenathan, both
Cory Mac has brought along his
experienced shooters, stand at the ready in stations four and five.
own piece, a $4,000 Browning, and
“Pull” he says again, and another one bites the dust.
while we awaited Hight’s arrival, he gave me the first
“Pull.” Three up, three down.
basic tips on what to expect and how to shoot.
“Your turn,” he says.
Bilbey chips in his advice, too, and he’s clearly
someone to listen to. He has been shooting
Hight has been shooting since his teenage days in
competitively since 1970, is a member of the
the Northern California burg of Alturas, population
California Golden State Trapshooting Hall of Fame,
3,500, and admits that initially he wasn’t a shooting
and in 1978 became just the 20th person to shoot a
star, so to speak.
grand slam, nailing 400 straight targets: 100 from the
“I was more into baseball back then, and I wasn’t
16-yard line, 100 from the 27-yard line, and 200 in
very good at shooting when I started, so I kind of lost
doubles (see Trapshooting Basics at right). He met
interest in it real quick,” he recalled. “My brother
Hight through shooting, which led to a business
started out good, and when he would beat me, it
relationship with John Force Racing. Bilbey is general
would make me mad, so I really started trying harder
manager of Aard Spring and Stamping in Temecula,
and even quit baseball.”
Calif., which makes nozzle springs, clutch springs,
By age 15 he was a California state champion and
valve springs, and other goodies for JFR.
shot competitively until he went to college in the
Hight pulls from the truck cab his gun, and it’s no
Plymouth Belvedere he restored at age 16. Always a
Wal-Mart special, that’s for sure. From a polished
gearhead, he put aside the AA degrees he earned, one
case bearing an engraved name tag comes an Italianin business and one in accounting, and worked for the
made Perazzi MX2000. Hight, like any good hot
fuel teams of Roger Primm and Tommy Johnson Jr.
rodder, has customized it with an adjustable stock
before joining Team Force in 1995 as a clutch
and has vented the barrel to adjust how it shoots.
technician; his first race with the team was the 1995
Value? A cool $10,000.
Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals, which Force won.
In 1999, he married Force’s eldest daughter, Adria,
We stand at position three, directly behind and 16
and was off the road for several years and continued
yards from the “trap house” from which the “birds” are
to shoot. He bagged his first and only grand slam in
launched. Hight steps up to demonstrate. Bilbey has
2000.
fixed the target-hurling device so that it will only throw
The Hights made Force a grandfather with the
targets straight ahead.
birth of Autumn Danielle in September 2004, during
Gun at his waist, Hight composes himself, focuses,
cradles the gun to his cheek,
and calls “Pull” into a speaker
affixed to a waist-high pole in
front of him; the voice-activated
system launches a fluorescent
green disc into the sky.
BLAMMO! The disc has barely
left the trap house before it
disintegrates into a shower of
green clay, the bits and pieces
joining a carpet of green
already littering the ground.
which time Hight also was serving as the team’s test
driver. He made his leap to full-time driver last year
and impressed immediately. Because much of the
credit for his success was given to his ability to
concentrate, honed by years on the firing line, team
publicist Dave Densmore gave him the somewhat
hokey nickname “Top Gun.”
He proved an apt student of racing, winning two
races in his rookie campaign and finishing fifth in the
Funny Car standings, but what kind of shooter tutor
would he be?
After a requisite safety lesson (the only time you put
a shell in the gun is when it’s your turn to shoot; the
gun’s safety is ignored; the gun is either loaded and
ready to shoot or unloaded)
and basic instructions on
loading and unloading the
gun — a simple $400 pumpaction Remington 870 — I
step up to the firing line for
the first time. Hight has
loaned me a pair of redtinted shooting glass and a
“holster” that holds a box of
to page 22
The student and the master. The “range gun” that I used was
an inexpensive Remington pump; Hight’s weapon is a
custom-made Perazzi MX2000. Note that the breech of
Hight’s gun is open and unloaded while I shoot. Check out
Hight’s bitchin’ gun and the cool Perazzi blinders on his
yellow-tinted shooting glasses.
July 21, 2006 ✦ 21
next six straight, several of which
disintegrate with a satisfying
poof of lead shot and clay. I’m
stunned and quite proud of
myself until I’m reminded that
the targets were locked to
shoot only straight ahead.
from page 21
25 shells. If nothing else, I certainly
look the part. (Not surprisingly, Hight
and McClenathan are wearing shirts
touting their major sponsors, AAA and
Fram Boost, respectively. Me, I’m
wearing a National DRAGSTER
Challenge T-shirt that bears the slogan
“Do you have what it takes?” Do I?)
I came into this adventure with
mixed expectations. Twenty years of
video gaming has given me what I
consider above-average hand-eye
coordination and, because I mostly play
what are called “first-person shooters,”
the concept, at least, of hitting a
moving target is not totally foreign.
Hight had told me that if I could hit
18 of the 25 targets that constitute a
round, I’d be doing well. (“I didn’t do
that my first time,” he told me, doing
nothing to inspire my confidence.) I’ve
already begun to compose a long list of
excuses. There are the fingers on my
left hand that I broke in January. Oh,
and the blister in my right middle
finger from assembling my grandson’s
birthday-present “fort” the weekend
before. And, oh yeah, I think I have a
rock in my shoe.
Hight seeks perfection in all that he
does. He’ll watch videotapes and pore
over computer data of every run he
makes in his Funny Car. “Frank
Hawley taught us there’s no such thing
as a perfect run; you can always
improve something,” he says. “That’s
why I study every run closely.” Now
he’s watching me with the same
intensity.
I bring the shotgun up to the
prescribed position, stock firmly
wedged against my shoulder, cheek
resting slightly against, eye trained
down the barrel, which is aimed just
to the right of where we know the
target will emerge (so that I can see it
more easily and quickly) and at a
point just above horizontal.
“Let me see one,” I ask, using my
newly learned cool shooter lingo, and a
green disc flies from the house so that I
can actually see what it’s going to look
like. “Get focused and take your time;
there’s no rush,” says Hight. “Whenever
you’re ready …”
Top Fuel racer and avid
shooter Cory Mac shot well
with his medium-priced
Browning. McKernan, who
looked very great white
hunterish in his dapper hat,
shot as well as he looked.
“You have to compose yourself
before you call for the bird,” advised
Hight. “It’s just like before I stage
the Auto Club Mustang. You take a
deep breath and draw your focus. You
block everything else out. Then you
roll in there.”
Hight doesn’t dispute the notion
that his shooting background has
helped his driving.
“When you’re shooting, if your mind
wanders for just a second, you’ll fail.
You have to maintain focus for twohour periods while you shoot more
than 200 targets.
“In drag racing, you only have to
keep that focus for two minutes, but
I’ve been part of the crew, and I know
how hard these guys work, night and
day. If they give you a great car and
you drive it out of the groove or you’re
late on the Tree, you’re not just
affecting yourself — it’s the crew and
the sponsors, too. There’s a lot of
pressure in driving that I wasn’t aware
of until I began doing it.
“What I really like about shooting is
that you can’t blame anything if you
miss; you can’t blame the track, the
clutch, anything — it’s all you.”
Okay, it’s all me. “Pull,” I call into
the speaker. The disc soars out a ways,
and as I track it, it somehow stays in
my sights. I squeeze the trigger and
knock two small chunks off the bottom
of the target. A hit in my first at-bat!
“You hit it a bit low,” says Bilbey,
standing directly behind me but in
perfect position to bring me back to
earth; Hight is off to my right. “When
you hit it square, you’ll know it.” Still
flushed with confidence, I reload
the gun, racking the slug into
firing position with an ain’t-Icool? motion and call forth
another target. And promptly
miss it. “Low again,” says Hight.
“Make sure you’re really seeing
the target when it leaves the
house and tracking it. Most times
when you miss it’s because you
lifted your head before you shot
because you couldn’t see the
target.”
As if learning a new sport weren’t tough enough,
“Pull!” BLAM! “Pull!”
I had to do it in the camera’s eye when the video
BLAM! “Pull!” BLAM! “Pull!”
crew for the upcoming Driving Force real-life
BLAM! “Pull!” BLAM! “Pull!”
television series unexpectedly showed up to
BLAM! Somehow I nail the
chronicle our adventure.
22 ✦ National DRAGSTER
Hight asks if I’d like to
try it for real using his gun.
It’s kind of like someone
asking you if you’d like to
drive their Maserati. I defer.
Maybe later. For some
reason I’m afraid of hurting
his gun. Actually, calling it a
gun is a little like calling the
Mona Lisa “a painting.”
Perazzi is a world-renowned name in
the shotgun biz. According to Hight,
the gun that Vice President Dick
Cheney was using when he wounded a
fellow hunter earlier this year was one
of four “field guns” of a custom-made
$120,000 set of four presented to him
by Perazzi.
The stock of Hight’s gun is made
from beautiful Turkish Walnut and can
be adjusted for max comfort. It’s
preened and polished and one bad-asslooking piece. If it were a car, it would
win Best In Show. Hight was able to
purchase the shotgun and upgrade it
with his shooting winnings, which gives
an idea of how good he was.
Now it’s for real. The trap machine
is set to fly targets at random angles
(it oscillates in a 44-degree arc), so
now we’ll see what we’re made of.
C-Mac and McKernan also have taken
some warm-up shots, Cory going four
for four and McKernan, who prefers
skeet — where the targets fly right to
left and left to right in front of you on
a predictable path — bagging three of
five. Hight takes station one, at the far
left, one of the more difficult spots
because you get the acute angles.
I’m in station two, McKernan in
three, and McClenathan in four.
Everyone will shoot five targets
from his position, alternating with
the other shooters, then we’ll all
move one place to the right. After
shooting five times at all five
positions, the round will be over.
“Pull,” calls Hight, and he blasts
the target easily. I get a couple of softballs the first two throws, not exactly
straight ahead but not wild angles.
Everyone goes perfect through two shots
and Hight hits his third in a row before
I blow the streak on my first real angle
shot. I’m devastated. Then McKernan
misses. At least it won’t be a “beer
frame” on me.
We go through all five stations.
Hight, proving human, misses two for a
score of 23. McClenathan is impressive
with 21, McKernan nails 19, and I get
17, missing three of five from station
five, the hardest station because you’re
at the far right already, and when a
bird flies out at a strong right angle,
you can lose it behind your barrel.
I’m surprised that I’m doing this
well, as are ND photographers Marc
Gewertz and Richard Wong, who came
with me to chronicle the episode.
Apparently, though, the fact that I
know my score before Wong announces
it is a problem.
“If you start to count, you change
your whole routine and it screws you
up,” Hight tells me later (much later —
thanks, pal). “You’ll have 23 in a row
and start thinking, ‘Oh, only two to go,’
and then you’re done for. It’s all about
the concentration, forgetting everything
else.”
I tell him that as I was shooting,
even through my earplugs, I could hear
Force a good 50 yards away, talking
loudly into his cell phone (well, loudly
to me; to Force, I’m sure it was
normal volume). Hight never heard
him.
“Just like in drag racing, you can
help yourself by watching your opponents,” he says. “If the drivers in
front of me are getting out of the
groove in my lane, I can adjust. In
shooting, you watch for problems the
(Above) John Force taught Hight how to
drive, so it’s only fair that roles were reversed
in Hight’s world. (Below) Range owner Terry
Bilbey also helped improved Force’s form
when Force wasn’t on his cell phone (left)
doing business. “I told John, ‘Give me that
thing; I bet I can hit it,’ ” joked Hight.
I took the handle of Hight’s high-dollar gun and
blasted some targets. Hight has added an
adjustable stock and made other modifications
to fit his style of shooting.
other guys are having: how the wind
affects their targets, if they’re moving
up and down and recognizing it
before it’s your turn. It’s all about
having your head in the game.”
Hight leaves to join Force a few
fields down to shoot scenes for Driving
Force, so McClenathan, McKernan, and
I shoot a couple of rounds in his
absence, stealing glances over at Force,
who at one point hits three in a row.
I’m impressed. After Hight returns, we
try a quick round of skeet shooting,
different from trap in that the birds fly
from left to right and right to left in
front of you on a set course. That part
makes it easier; the fact that they’re
whizzing past you instead of sailing
away from you, as in trap, makes it
harder. I pretty much sucked at this,
hitting maybe half the targets while
McKernan was clearly the ace,
routinely pegging the birds
and doing well on doubles,
where birds are launched
simultaneously from both the
left and right and you hit
them with successive shots
before they disappear from
view. Hight, of course, also
was outstanding.
We bid farewell to Cory Mac, who
heads off to a doctor’s appointment to
check lingering effects of his Bristol
tumble; there, they discover he has been
walking around with a couple of broken
ribs. Gewertz and Wong put down their
cameras to join Hight, me, and
McKernan for another round of trap.
I can’t believe this, I think to myself:
two stations and 10 shots into the
round, and I’m a perfect 10 for 10. I’m
matching Robert Hight shot for shot!
The others have missed a few, and I’m
suddenly finding this way too easy. It’s
become automatic. Relax. Concentrate.
Position gun. Call. Find target. Follow.
BOOM! Damn, I’m good.
Okay, so I know I’ve nailed 10 in a
row, right? So obviously I’m eschewing
Hight’s sage advice, right? Do I
need to tell you what happened
next?
(Above) We also shot a round of skeet, where the
targets fly left to right and right to left across your
field of fire. The window in the building at left is the
“high house” and flies the target high and to the
right, followed by a target from the “lower house”
(not seen off to my right), which squirts out lower
and to the left. (Below) Skeet is McKernan’s
preferred form of shooting, and it showed. Under
Bilbey’s watchful eye, he clearly was the star here.
First shot, station four.
Steady. “Pull!” Miss. Grrrr.
“Pull!” Hit! “Pull!” Miss.
Double grrrr. I know I’m still
counting and, worse, know
that station five, my weak
point, is coming up next. I
close out with two more hits
and reluctantly sidle up to
five. Despite my best “self
talk,” five pulls later, I’ve
broken only one bird. I rotate
all the way back to station
one, where in practice I had
hit seven straight. I make a
deal with myself: I’m not going
to count. I know I have only
five shells left in my box, so
I’ll know when I’ve shot five,
and I’ll only count the ones I
miss. Still, I know I need to
hit four to reach Hight’s goal
for me.
Between my shot and the
time it takes the next four to
shoot, I have maybe 20 seconds, so I make the most of
them, recycling every bit of
advice I’ve received. One
down. Two down. Three down.
That’s 17. I’m still counting,
dammit. I silently ask the shooting
gods for a kind angle but get a
screamer that sails hard to my left. I
track it for what seems like forever
before drawing a bead and squeezing.
It disintegrates. My last shot is a
cream puff, almost right up the middle,
and I nail it dead center. Nineteen!
We shoot a little more throughout
the day, even trying out some trap
doubles (using Robert’s gun, I’m able
to hit both targets in three of 10 tries
and at least one on the other seven),
but the highlight is watching Hight go
head to head with Bilbey in a round
of 25 doubles. Bilbey shoots a perfect
50, plucking the targets from the sky
within milliseconds of one another;
Hight shoots a disappointing-for-him
“Once you’ve done it and you’ve got
the basics and your gun fits you right,
it’s not hard to break 100; my last
couple of targets I was a little nervous
because I knew I hadn’t missed any
and had only two shells left,” he
admits. Hight counting? Tsk tsk.
So, “Teach,” how did I do?
“You probably did better than 90
percent of the people who come out the
first time,” he said kindly. “But I’ll tell
(Above) The final shootout: Burgess versus Hight.
Final score, Hight 50,
Burgess 27. Guess I’d
better stick to writing.
(Left) Do you think these
guys were making fun of
me?
42. “I’m rusty,” Hight admits. “I’m jerking, not at all smooth.” Then again, it’s
been a while since he has shot, and
Bilbey shoots pretty much every day.
Hight says it’s not unusual in a
large shoot that eight or 10 shooters
will finish the first round with perfect
scores of 200, then move on to
subsequent rounds of 25 with only the
perfect scores continuing to advance
until the champion is crowned, just like
in drag racing, he notes.
“Last year, it surprised me how
close the racing had gotten,” he
admits. “This year is more of the
same. John’s been to how many finals
and only won one? The reigning world
champ hasn’t won a race and has as
good a car as anybody. It’s very tough
out there. The racing is so close.”
The day ends with the trapshooting
equivalent of a match race: Hight versus
Burgess. We’ll shoot a round of 25
from 16 yards and then, because I’m a
glutton for punishment, a round from
27 yards. Robert dusts off a perfect 25
for 25 at 16 yards while I lag behind
with 17, struggling to compose myself in
the shortened time with just two
shooters.
We move to the 27-yard line,
reserved for the sport’s best shooters. It
takes a much steadier hand because
every gun movement is magnified and,
obviously, the targets are 33 feet farther
away. To top off my anxiety, the range
is now open to the public, and I’m
being watched with curiosity by the
locals. Hight, being the show-off, hits 25
again, making for 50 straight. I hit 10
of 25, making double digits only through
back-to-back hits on my last two tries
once I found a rhythm.
you, once you break like 23, then you
want 25; it’s addicting. Having the
right gun and having someone show
you how to do it is a big part.”
Amen, Robert. Praise the Ford guy
and pass the ammunition. ND
With our ammo spent and all
of the targets reduced to
kibble, my admiration
for Hight’s skills,
poise, and
patience
reached new
heights. It was
a great time.
July 21, 2006 ✦ 23