Shooter: The Life and Times of Bob Allen

Eakin Press, 2001. Hard cover. Very Good/Very Good. Signed by Author. In Very Good+ condition with Very Good+ Dustjacket. Inscribed "To Leo-It was great seeing you at the Grand American. Good shooting! Bob Allen 8/15/02". Bob Allen was a 13-time All-American, earned 14 Grand American awards, including the Doubles Championship and runnerup honors in the Clay Target, Champion of Champions, Doubles and All-Around races. Bob Allen Company was started in a parachute shop on the tiny Pacific atoll of Tinian towards the end of World War II. Bob Allen was a young, nationally known, clay target shooter before the war, who later parlayed his aerial gunner instructor duties into a combat assignment in the South Pacific. Bob s first product design was a long billed cap that helped keep the sun out of bomber crews eyes on their long flights to mainland Japan. Trading a ration of wartime Scotch in the parachute shop for each one of his prized hats, the Bob Allen Company was born. After the war, the hats found favor with shooters and soon Bob was selling hats, shooting vests, pouches and bags from the trunk of his car as he traveled the shooting circuit. Opening the first retail store on the grounds of the Grand American Trapshoot, designing the first shooting vest, and the first non-military camouflage pattern were just a few of Bob Allen s firsts. Sadly, Bob was killed in a car accident in November of 2004, but his legacy still lives on through the brand he started almost 70 years ago. In 1970 when Iowa’s Trapshooting Hall of Fame was initiated, Bob Allen was among enshrinees. He was Iowa’s average leader for several years, and at one time he was the only state shooter ever to hold both trap and skeet championships in the same year. Flyer shooting has always been one of Allen’s interests, and besides U.S. championships, events have been won by him in Cuba, Mexico, Monaco, Portugal, France, Italy and Mozambique.