Gun Week, Jan.16, 1976 – Article: shooting with Gary Anderson. “Murdock named ‘Shooter of the Year’ 1975”. Gary writes, “The first rifle match I ever attended was the Eastern Kansas Gallery Championship at Manhattan, Kan., in January of 1958. One of the junior competitors there was a 15-year-old girl from Topeka named Margaret Thompson. I don’t remember what kind of scores she had and probably recall that she was there only because she later became one of the world’s greatest shooters. My next real competition with her came in 1966 when she shot her way onto both the USA 50-meter and 300-meter three-position teams in the World Shooting Championships at Wiesbaden. Margaret shot both of those matches on the firing point next to mine and I couldn’t help but be aware of the tremendous pressure that was on her because she was the first woman ever to be on a team that had a chance to win a world championship in three position shooting. She came through beautifully too! Our team set world records in winning both events and she placed seventh and fifth in the individual championships. Now, at the end of the 1975 shooting year, Margaret Murdock is standing at the head of a long list of distinguished shooting champions as my selection for 1975 Shooter of the Year. Ms. Murdock earned the nomination this year not just because she is a woman who shoots well, but because she was truly the best shooter in the United States this past year. The choice for 1975 Shooter of the Year came down to a close decision between Ms. Murdock and pistol shooter Herschel Anderson. Etc. FINAL CHOICE, between Anderson and Murdock came down to who’s scores ranked best among shooters all over the world. A comparison of scores between the Pan American Games and the 1975 European Championships points out why Ms. Murdock won. Anderson’s 387 in air pistol would have tied for second place there while his 559 in free pistol would have placed only sixth or seventh in Europe. Ms. Murdock’s 1166, on the other hand, topped the winning 1164 in Europe and included an impressive new world record, something no American pistol shooter had done since 1963. First Woman – She became the first woman to win a major international shooting gold medal in open competition when she won the Pan American Games smallbore three-position championship in Winnipeg in 1967 and this year became the third woman to hold an open world record.