My long time best friend passed a little over a year ago on my birthday. We started running around together in 1960. Went to school together and afterwards Skydived, shot and hunted together. We lived 150 miles apart but shot a match once a month and talked several times per week. Made the annual trek to deer camp each fall and spent almost every weekend from Nov to the second weekend in Dec hunting something or maybe nothing if the weather was bad. There was always beer to be drunk and food to eat.
He started shooting Long Range Muzzle Loaders in 09 and was extremely good at it. He made every US national team from the day he started until his death. Lee Shaver asked another of his shooting buddy's and me to give him some ideas for a memorial article for the organization, this is the article Lee put together. Dick was also a member here but didn't post much just read.
Dick Hoff memorial.
Once in a while someone enters your life rather unexpectedly and then leave their mark on your world. Such was the case when Dick Hoff started showing up at the long range muzzle loading matches. I could tell by looking at him that he was a high power shooter by the way held his rifle. Most of those guys come along thinking they are going to show us how it is done and then leave disappointed shortly after that, but there were several guys around that knew Dick from the Cincinnati club where he was a long time active member, and they all thought he was a pretty good fella, so I decided I would give him a chance and not automatically lump with the rest of those high power shooters. As it turned out he was at least a pretty entertaining sort of fella with a good story or two and a slap on the back when you need it. He seemed like he might fit right in after all.
As I got to know him I found that he was indeed our kind of guy. He came from a family of shooters and shot on his high school small-bore team. He built and shoot muzzle loaders for many years and actually used to go up to Bill Large's shop back in the late 70's and 80's to pick up barrels for his latest project rifle and hang out to soak up a little knowledge and the barrel making atmosphere while he was at it. In time he learned to freshen barrels out and build a nice rifle. Somewhere along the way he got involved in high-power rifle shooting because he was corrupted by his lifelong friend Bob Boswell. He earned his distinguished badge with a service rifle in 1993. Fortunately he was a black powder shooter first and foremost so he drifted back to the black powder sports.
Of the many stories I have heard him tell over the years, some of the best were of the years he, Bob, and Kenn Heismann were skydiving together. They won the national free fall team championship back in 72, and Dick went on to be a demonstration jumper and jumped into Kings Island amusement park every night till about the time his first born came along. I wish he were here now so he could tell you the story about the night the wind caught him when he was coming in for a landing at a mall opening or some such, and ended up plowing through the crowd and landed face down in a water fountain. Not many could tell a story like Dick and we will miss that as much as anything. Bob said recently that “I was there for many of the stories he told, and while they did not bear much resemblance to what really happened, they were always spell binding and humorous as hell”..... “He could could turn a trip to the convenience store for milk into an adventure tale”. In those few words Bob really explained why Dick was a very popular and a much loved competitor.
Dick was not just a great story teller though. He was a truly fine shot, a family man, and a gentleman of the highest order. He looked at the shooting sports with the eye of an engineer or inventor, in that he was always tinkering and figuring out how to make things better. Sometimes trying new things that just “should work” but didn't and loosing a match because of it. In his mind it was always worth trying though if there was any chance it might be better. When he wasn't regaling us with stories of wild escapades, or talking about shooting or some little thing he was occupied with at the time, he would talk of his girls, and how he had taught them to shoot and how they and his wife ganged up on him to rule the roost at home. Though I sometimes wondered if he might have stretched that point a little.
After he had been shooting LR muzzle loaders for about a year and making a bit of a splash in the sport he entered his first MLIAC world championship with team USA. After the first day of practicing and a target or two for score, I asked him how it was going, and he said he was stringing shots high and low. I just told him to quit holding the rifle like a high-power shooter and get it up on his shoulder where it was supposed to be and the problem would go away. That night he told me I was right. He also shot a lot better after that, and was a lot harder to beat. That was one of the things that I loved most about Dick. He was not afraid to ask a question or try out a suggestion, and then he would come back later with things he had tried related to the suggestions given him and sometimes it was better yet. In other words we learned from each other and everyone benefited from it. He was a true team player.
He had intentions of going to Bisley England with us for the 2011 long range world match but was unable to go because he was diagnosed with cancer in the months before the trip. He beat the odds that time and came back to shoot with us again just long enough to be able to go to South Africa for the 2013 world match. As always the trip was better for him being there, and he shot well enough that he was selected for the mid range team event where I was fortunate enough to coach him to the highest 300 meter score ever fired by an American. It was his last truly great score. He suffered the next day in pain and I asked him that night about his health and he admitted that he was going home to start cancer treatments again, but he did not want the guys to know about it. He wanted to be a member of the team and give as much as he could to the team and not have everyone feeling sorry for him. So that's the way it was.
One evening I gave him a set of my super secret wind charts that I had spent years perfecting for long range shooting, and after all he had done for the team he was flabbergasted that I would share them with him, but that is they way he was, never thinking about himself, just everyone else. A few months after our return from the match he asked me if he could rework my charts to make them a little fancier and put them in digital format so they could be shared and printed easier, “besides” he said “it will give me something to do”. We chatted about it a little and I told him he could do it as long as he put mine and his names on them. To this day I'm not sure if I let him do that to give him something to occupy him while he was so sick, or if I was just wanting to have his name near mine on the charts. Either way, I was proud to shoot with or against him, I was proud to coach him, and I was proud to let him do one last thing for the guys he shot with. He finished the charts a couple of weeks before he passed.
There is no way to really share the Dick Hoff that I knew and loved in this short memorial, but I don't need to for those that knew him, and for those that didn't... well you just missed out. He was one of the greats in this sport and his friends did the only thing they can do for someone like him, they named a shooting match after him. I am one of the least qualified to write this, but with the help of some of his lifelong friends I hope to have done him justice. He is gone, and we miss him, but we shall not forget him.
Bob
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Originally Posted by obssd1958
