“The year 1913 will stand for many years as the banner year in the rifle shooting annals of this country.”
—Report of Rifle Shooting in the U.S., 1913
Cover of the 1913 National Matches program.
Camp Perry was the place to be for shooter in the summer of 1913. The month of September, especially, was significant in that it marked the 100th anniversary of Commodore Perry’s victory at the Battle of Lake Erie. The National Matches were engulfed in fanfare as the United States hosted teams from South America and Europe in the international portion of the tournament, which included Palma competition and followed the firing of the NRA and Board events. Organizational efforts to commemorate the Perry anniversary in a “shooting tournament of extra interest and importance” had begun two years prior, while trips abroad by U.S. shooters in 1912 helped secure reciprocation visits by foreign teams to Camp Perry. This set the stage for “the largest shooting tournament which this country has ever witnessed.”
The cover of the match program this year read “International and National Shooting Tournament” and among the general information contained therein was the following:
“The shooting grounds contain 400 acres and it is the largest shooting ground in the United States. There are 210 rifle targets and 20 revolver targets, to which will be added a new range containing about 50 targets for the international matches where the shooting will be held at 300…
