A moment's thought will show that, unless a man is as near-sighted as an owl in daylight, he cannot shoot with the back sight resting on his nose.

A pistol fitted with a rifle stock must be used with great caution. You are apt to put the fingers of your left hand over the muzzle, as the end of the muzzle comes just where one puts one's hand with the fingers round the fore end, to steady a rifle or shotgun.

CHAPTER XVI

RUNNING SHOTS

The pistol being meant for use at close range at objects one sees only for a moment, or which are in rapid motion, I do not advise getting too much into the habit of taking long, deliberate aim at stationary targets.

When you can handle the pistol with safety to others and yourself, it is better to begin to learn shooting rapidly and at moving objects.

I think it is well to begin to shoot at moving objects at first, instead of rapid shooting. You can begin at slowly moving objects, which does not hurry and fl.u.s.trate you as shooting against time may do.

Above all do not attempt to shoot as many people tell you to.

The greatest bar to shooting at moving objects with the rifle or pistol is the way most men shoot at them.

What they do is to aim at a spot and shoot when the object arrives there.

Shotgun men do not make this mistake, but men used only to lying on their faces like a squashed frog in rifle shooting invariably do.

Wherever you go to a rifle meeting where there is a compet.i.tion at a moving target, "Running Deer," "Running Man" or "Gliding Man," etc., it is always the same.

A few men shoot as they ought to, and win all the prizes. The bulk of the compet.i.tors lie on their faces, as they were taught to do at stationary targets, take a deliberate aim at a spot on the background, and wait till the target gets opposite their aim.

Then--boom--the dust flies up where the target _was_ a moment before, but it is now--elsewhere.

It is as if you tried to catch a fly by putting a finger on him when he is on the table-cloth. You will put it where he _was_, not where he _is_.

The correct principle (the one with which I won the Rifle Running-Deer World's Championship at the Olympic Games in 1908) is to treat the rifle or pistol exactly as if it were a shotgun.

a.s.suming you are not familiar with shotgun shooting, get a man who is a good shot with the shotgun to coach you, when practising with the pistol at moving objects.

If you are a shotgun man you do not need to be told what follows.

At a stationary target, however rapidly you are shooting, you try to hit _that object_.

In shooting at moving targets you try to make two moving objects (the target and the bullet) meet.

The target is moving. The bullet also takes time to get where the target will be. You have to get the bullet to arrive simultaneously with the target at the same spot.

If you aim at the object, the bullet will arrive at the spot after the object has gone further on.

To give an ill.u.s.tration:

An ill.u.s.trated paper showed an engraving of a man on a motor bicycle going at fifty miles an hour, at six hundred yards' distance.

There was a cross made on the man's chest which, it was explained, was the spot to aim at in order to hit him.

If the rifle were correctly aimed for this cross, a man could shoot millions of shots and never hit the motor-cyclist.

The bullets would reach the spot where the motorist was a moment before, but he would be yards further on when the bullet arrived.

Now the way to overcome this missing behind is to "swing" and "time."

These are shotgun men's terms, never used or understood by pistol or rifle shots, and this is the reason so few riflemen can hit moving targets, and chase them with the bayonets instead.

Suppose you have a shotgun in your hands and a pheasant comes flying across you. The thing is to hit him in the neck with the centre of the charge so as to make a clean kill without a flutter in midair--"neck him,"

as we call it.

Most men try to shoot without moving their position and so hamper and cramp themselves unnecessarily by having to twist the body if the bird is pa.s.sing them at an awkward angle.

Turn like a soldier does in "right about face" to either side, so that the bird gives you the easiest crossing shot. Whilst doing so, follow an imaginary point in front of his head with your eyes, the distance in front varying with the bird's speed and distance from you. Whilst doing so bring up your gun (_not_ looking at the gun), the gun swinging as your body swings in the direction the bird is travelling. As the gun comes to your shoulder press the trigger.

If you look at the bird, you will shoot _at_ the bird, and consequently shoot behind where he was at the moment the trigger was pulled. If the bird was forty yards off you will have missed clean behind him.

If nearer, owing to the shot spreading over a thirty-inch circle, you may have hit him far back in the body, what is called "tailored him," and he will go off and die a lingering death.

If you shoot forward enough, you will either kill him clean or miss him clean (a miss in front).

_That_ is the great thing. If it _must_ be a miss let it be a clean miss, _in front_. Not shooting far enough forward is the chief cruelty in shooting--wounded animals going off to die in agony.

Always remember this when shooting at animals and birds. The forward end is the vital end; hitting it causes sudden, painless death, so _swing far enough forward_.

To hit bird after bird, animal after animal, too far back, as one sees some men do, to an accompaniment of screams of hares and rabbits, and fluttering birds, is disgusting.

If you shoot well forward, none of this happens. You may not have so much game down, but each one of them drops stone dead without a sound. There is no calling out, "Bring a dog, I have a 'runner.'"

I think it would be as well, before trying moving shots with a pistol, to do a little shotgun shooting at clay pigeons, so as to get into the idea of swing and timing, if you are not a shotgun shot already.

When you can swing your gun to an imaginary spot, in front of a moving object and press the trigger at the moment the sights are aligned, without stopping your swing, you can shoot the pistol with success at moving objects, provided you treat it exactly as if you were using a shotgun.

Have a moderately large object which the bullet will either break or leave a visible hole through, arranged to pa.s.s you at a slow speed.

It can either be dragged by a long string, run on a trolley (the trolley shielded behind a bank so that a bullet could not strike it) or some other slowly moving target.

A swinging object is of no use. It makes a difficult curve to follow, for the beginner, and its pa.s.sage lasts too short a time.

A swinging object also makes the shooter try the objectionable method of waiting and aiming at the spot the object swings to, which I want to avoid.

If your target travels slowly enough, and is large enough, and at only some twelve yards' distance, there will be no necessity to aim in front of it. Its forward edge is far enough.

Fix your eyes on the front part of the target. As it traverses bring your pistol up without looking at the pistol, as it comes level with your eye and the sights get aligned. Keep on swinging your body and pistol and press the trigger, while still swinging.