Close Up
Harding takes championship aim
Dick Harding, pictured above at the Sheridan-Transit Rod & Gun Club on Grand Island, came back to trap shooting this summer after a serious illness to win two championships. Photo: NANCY J. PARISI
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“After the year I’ve had, it’s particularly satisfying to be able to shoot very competitive scores. It told me that I could continue to do something I like to do.”
Determination and discipline are part and parcel of Dick Harding’s nature. When the assistant to the chair in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine sets his sights on a goal, he expects to achieve it.
When his sights recently were set on a major trap-shooting competition, however, Harding wasn’t sure how he would fare. This would be his first step back into a passionate interest of his since he was blindsided by a series of potentially life-threatening medical issues over the past year. Not being the norm for this physically sound individual, he had some doubts as to whether he still could shoot competitively.
He needn’t have been concerned. Not long after surgery, Harding stepped up in June to win his first event at a major meet in six years of competitive trap shooting—the Class C singles championship at the Pennsylvania State Meet, third-largest in the country, beating more than 300 other shooters in his class with a score of 194 out of 200 shots. “I missed the first two targets, then ran the next 112,” he shrugged with a smile. He prevailed in the evening shoot-off to win.
Harding then proceeded to bookend the summer with his second big win in August at the Cardinal Classic in Ohio, where he took the veteran’s class championship by shooting a 98 out of 100, beating 899 of the 904 other entrants and winning an evening shoot-off to claim the championship.
“After the year I’ve had, it’s particularly satisfying to be able to shoot very competitive scores,” he says. “It told me that I could continue to do something I like to do.”
Harding admits that trap shooting is a very addictive sport, describing it as golf with a shotgun. “It’s very mental. Ten percent is technique and the rest is concentration,” he notes. “From the time you call for a target until the time you hit it, you probably have a second to a second-and-a-half.”
It’s called trap, Harding explains, because of the box that sits 16 yards in front of the line of fire, throwing clay targets out in varying angles up to 30 degrees right or left of the center line. “The trap used to hold live pigeons that were released as targets,” he notes. “Clay pigeons have replaced the live pigeons, but the shooters still don’t know which way they will fly.
“People think it’s a loud, noisy sport, but I find it to be the opposite. I find it calming. You’re oblivious to what goes on around you,” he explains. “You’ve really got to be able to focus, keep your eyes where they’re supposed to be, stay still on your gun, let the shot develop for you and not rush it. When you miss, it’s usually because you’ve rushed or you brought your head up off the gun.”
Harding describes the attraction of trap shooting as being two-fold—you like to shoot and you like the people who shoot with you. “It’s a very eclectic group of people from every walk of life,” he says. “You could be standing on the line and on one side could be a neurosurgeon and on the other side a dairy farmer who just finished milking his cows before he came to shoot. Everybody’s got their story.”
Now with a clean bill of health, Harding also is resuming his other activities. He has been a ski patroller for 25 years at Swain Ski Resort and is a Level II avalanche instructor with the National Ski Patrol, teaching avalanche safety in the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire and outdoor emergency care for the Genesee Valley Region.
He also is hoping to continue scuba diving—a life-long passion—this winter. An avid photographer, Harding also takes aim with a Nikon 300. His photos of underwater beauty grace his office.
Harding attributes his varied pursuits in part to his military career and the travel and opportunities that came with it. He retired in 1989 as a lieutenant colonel after 21 years of active-duty Army service. He is both ranger and airborne qualified, a rated Army aviator and a graduate of the Army Command and General Staff College. He commanded two companies and performed military intelligence for 11 years in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He served on the Army staff in the Pentagon and has been awarded four meritorious service medals. He has lived all over the world, he says, having been offered opportunities not available to most.
Married and father of three grown children and grandfather to four little ones, the man of many interests—who joined the UB staff in 1991—is grabbing life with gusto again. “I recognize that life is fragile. I recognize that on certain days things are really going great and there are other days when you’re going to get dealt a bad hand. You can decide whether you want that to work for you or not,” Harding reasons.
He says his goal now is to shoot a perfect score at a state-level trap meet or higher.
Another target within reach for Dick Harding.
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