He's won national championships, but he's loading hundreds of cartridges every day and shooting them almost as fast as he can make them, because he's practicing for the big time.

Frank Cook, age 63, of Butte, is a shootin' fool. He's shot everything and won hundreds of trophies in the process. However, pistol-shooting games sanctioned by the International Practical Shooting Confederation are his favorite. If you have ever watched "American Shooter" on TNN on Saturday mornings, you may have an idea of what's involved with practical shooting. Shooting events are a mixture of speed and accuracy. Courses are laid out with obstacles that shooters have to shoot around or from behind. They shoot at a set of targets, run to the next set and shoot again. Many of the shooting tests are geared around law enforcement type exercises. It's physically and mentally demanding.

Frank was born in Arkansas and grew up in Texas. Starting with a .410 shotgun, he has shot just about everything. In his youth, he specialized in archery. In 1960, he entered the Army, and at the shooting range qualified with both rifle and pistol. His scores were high enough that he was invited to join the base pistol team. He was just getting ready to go to his first big match when trouble in Cuba began. The base's commanding officer disbanded the team as an unnecessary activity.

After leaving the Army, Frank started working for E Systems, a Texas-based defense contractor. His job enabled him to spend two years in Europe. Based In Germany, he found new shooting experiences, including air rifle competitions. He also passed Germany's rigorous qualifications receive a hunting license and hunted pheasants, red deer, fallow deer and chamois.

Fishing brought Frank to Montana.

He was working at a Phelps-Dodge copper mine in Arizona. On weekends, he'd go fishing in mountains 90 miles away and catch small hatchery trout. One of his coworkers hailed from Anaconda and told him about Montana and the Big Sole River. He took a vacation trip to Montana and was hooked. He sent out a bunch of resumes and job offers started coming in. He accepted an offer from MSE ("It was closest to the Big Hole.") at the beginning of the MHD program in 1979 and has never looked back. "I'm really a native of Montana. It just took awhile to get here," he says with a smile.

Cook gives credit to another Butte resident, Bob Munden, a nationally known exhibition shooter, for getting practical shooting competitions started in Montana in the early 1980s. "He asked me to try it, and I was hooked. I really love the competition."

Since retiring, Cook has been able to spend more time shooting and has been accumulating championships. Among the more prestigious are both the 1999 and 2000 limited Nationals High Super Senior. Competition is divided into classes and age levels, and the Super Senior division is for shooters over age 60.

Another super senior national championship came from the American Handgunner World Shootoff Championships.

Cook's next challenge is the Open Pan American Pistol Championships to be held next month in Quincy, Ill.

This competition is billed as the Hemispheric Championships, and more than 700 shooters from around the world are expected. Cook will be there and expects the competition to be hot and heavy. " A lot of the champion shooters are graduating into the Seniors and Super Seniors. It's going to be a tough bracket."

Cook says, of all the shooting sports - and he's done them all, including archery, rifle, black powder, trapshooting and air rifles -pistol shooting is the most demanding. "You just can't take any time off"

In 1997 he developed heart problems and had heart bypass surgery. His doctor gave him several options, and Cook recalls, "I decided if I'm gonna live, I wanna play. So I decided on new pipes."

The surgery was obviously successful. With daily practice sessions and frequent competitions, he shoots at least 15,000 rounds per year. Montana Gold, a Kalispell bullet manufacturer, provides him with bullets. There have been few weekends, since early March, when he wasn't competing somewhere. He also plays tennis to keep in shape and sharpen his hand eye coordination.

"How many are there, Grandpa?" asked one of Cook's three grandchildren, recently, after seeing all the trophies and other memorabilia in his reloading room.

"I don't know," Cook told him. "Why don't you. count them." It was too many to count. I suspect there'll be still more when he comes back from the Pan American.