"A High School Rifle Club" by Orrie Hitt (New York State Education, May 1934)

As a teenager, Orrie Hitt not only wrote for outdoors publications like Hunter-Trader-Trapper and Fish-Fur-Game, but he was also an officer in local organizations, such as the local Port Jervis American Trappers Association, which was established in February 1934. Only seventeen years old at the time, Hitt was elected their first secretary.

Hitt was also one of the founders of the Port Jervis High School Rifle Club, which he helped establish in 1933, and for which he served as Range Officer. Hitt wrote about the club for a special issue of New York State Education, a publication of the New York State Teachers Association. Entitled "Children's Numbers," the May 1934 issue gave the opportunity for students across the state to submit articles about their own extracurricular activities. 

Ephemera such as this might not seem immediately related to Hitt's later paperbacks, but this information is important in helping flesh out the man who wrote those books, and it gives insight into his youthful ambitions and interests. As Orrie related, this article was a decisive moment in his life.

"During that last year in high school I was told that an educational book published once a year in Albany would consider articles on school subjects from students and teachers. I wrote about our rifle club and mailed the material to them. The teacher who told me I couldn't write selected some other subject. My article was published and the teacher's article was rejected. After that I was pretty sure that, right or wrong, the guy I saw in the mirror when I shaved was the man whose advice I'd follow." (Orrie Hitt, “My ‘Sex’ Books [part 1]” Men’s Digest, no. 31, October 1961, pp. 38.)

I think it's also fascinating to compare the cynical viewpoint of human nature and urban/suburban America in Hitt's later novels with the more rustic, outdoorsy, Americana of his teenage years. After the death of his father, Orrie worked at a hunting lodge to help keep the family afloat, so I know these must have been very difficult years both financially and emotionally for Orrie and his family, and the outdoors seems to have provided a haven for young Hitt, a place in which to find community, to practice writing, and to come of age. 

Sources: 

Edwin Hitt, “A High School Rifle Club,” New York State Education, vol. XXI, no. 8, May 1934, pp. 596–597.

“New A.T.A. Local Formed,” Fur-Fish-Game, April 1934, p. 47.

Orrie Hitt, “My ‘Sex’ Books [part 1]” Men’s Digest, no. 31 (October 1961), pp. 37–39.

1934 Port Jervis High School Yearbook.