If you want to win a prize for snap shooting, you can, by practising constantly under identical conditions of distance, shape, colour, height of target, and lighting, get so mechanical that it takes an effort _not_ to hit the same spot continually.

For this reason, to learn snap shooting, not merely forming a habit, it is best to constantly vary the height of the target you shoot at, or try to hit various parts alternately.

Get someone (if you are shooting at a man target) to call out "head" at the first beat of the metronome (beating at 120 to the minute), and try to hit the head before the next beat of the metronome.

Then he will call "feet" and it is ten to one that you will swing too high; or if it was "feet" first you will not be able to get as high as the "head" next time.

You can put in your shots at great speed if it is always to the same spot, but if you have to vary and do not know where you are to hit, till you get the word to go, it is impossible to shoot quite so fast accurately.

For this reason it is well not to think one has mastered snap shooting when one has got into the knack of putting all one's shots on the same spot.

Snap shooting and shooting at moving objects, are the two sorts of shooting of real use.

Shooting long shots (which I will treat of next) may be useful at times, but deliberate shooting at minute bull's-eyes is only useful for winning prizes and getting a reputation for being a "Crack Revolver-Shot."

My world's record snap-shooting score was published in the newspapers with the words under it--"This is the highest at present, but it will, of course, soon be beaten."

Naturally, it was not as pretty a group as the target published next to it, which had been shot with deliberate aim, but this latter score has been equalled dozens of times. While my rapid-fire score is unbeaten (Appendix 10 and 11). The value of a score can only be judged if the conditions it was shot under are known.

If you want to be thought a good shot by the public, leave rapid, snap, and moving object shooting alone, otherwise your best scores will look so bad beside those of the man who aims, lowers his pistol, aims again, wipes his hands, and after half an hour of these antics, scores a bull's-eye.

CHAPTER XXI

LONG RANGE SHOOTING

The moment the bullet leaves the muzzle of the pistol, it begins to fall, owing to the force of gravity.

The faster it is going the further it goes before this drop is sufficient to be noticeable. Gravity acts through time, so if a bullet goes twice as fast as another, it goes twice as far before it has dropped the same distance as the slower bullet.

The big bullet of the duelling pistol has more air resistance than the .22 bullet of the American pistols, also it has comparatively a much smaller charge, so it begins to drop more rapidly and at shorter range.

The duelling pistol is sighted for twenty-five metres as that is the duelling distance (twenty-seven yards, three inches).

It hits where you aim, therefore, at that distance, it shoots practically the same at the nearer distances.

Beyond the twenty-five metres, however, it begins to drop very rapidly. I have watched where the bullet strikes when the man target is missed in an open field. The bullet strikes the ground less than a hundred yards off, showing that it has dropped the height of a man's shoulder (say over four feet).

The .22 hits the ground nearly two hundred yards off under similar circ.u.mstances.

I had exceptional opportunities to watch this, as my man target stood out in an open park, where there was no necessity to have a b.u.t.t behind it.

As it is not usual to shoot a duelling pistol beyond twenty-five yards, or a .22 pistol beyond fifty yards, there is no necessity to make any alteration in the sighting at that distance, but if extreme accuracy is desired at any one distance the hind sight can be filed for that special distance.

The automatic, however, has a very powerful cartridge which shoots accurately several hundred yards.

Now the way I use my "big game" rifle is: when at a distance at which the drop of the bullet would make it fall below the body of the game when I aim at it, I judge how much I must aim above and shoot accordingly.

The advantage of this is that you are ready at any moment to shoot. If the animal is close and therefore dangerous, you can aim straight at him. If he is far you aim above him.

If he suddenly comes close you merely have to aim at him. This is the principle on which the United States Army Automatic is sighted, one immovable back sight.

Most rifles and some automatic pistols are sighted differently.

They have leaves or other adjustments to the back sight, so that if you want to shoot at long range you estimate the distance, look at the hind sight which is marked in distances, and either raise the leaf marked for that distance, or else slide or screw up the back sight for that distance.

This is all very pretty theoretically, or for deliberate target shooting, but in practice it is dangerous.

As an instance, you are out shooting, and see a stag 250 yards off, as you estimate.

You fix the back sight of your rifle for that distance, and begin taking a careful aim.

At that moment there is a grunt, you look up and there is an old wild boar (a solitaire, very savage) charging at you from twenty yards off.

If you fire at him with your 250 yards' sight up, you miss him and he has you. But if you are shooting on my principle with a fixed sight for close range, you would be aiming two feet above the stag when the boar started charging, and all you would have to do is to shoot at the boar's chest, and he would drop and you could then fire at the stag, as he galloped off.

A leaf of the back sight may get put up accidentally, and you do not notice this when firing at short range.

The chief danger is from an enemy near you. You ought to have your sights right for him, the distant one is not so important to hit, if you forget to aim high for him.

How often soldiers are told to put up their sights for a thousand yards'

range, and then have to start shooting at a close enemy and _forget to alter their sights_.

My advice is to have nothing to do with elevating back sights.

As the duelling pistol has such an extreme drop, it will accustom you, if you shoot it at various distances, to aim high or low according to the distance.

When you come to the automatic you will find, except for very exceptionally long shots, you need not alter your elevation of aim at all; it shoots practically straight up to the furthest you are likely ever to have to use it.

Less than forty yards and generally at a few feet off is the range for pistols in actual combat.

The further the object shot at, the more accurate the aim must be to hit it.

It is difficult to do snap shooting with a pistol at one hundred yards, though one can do very accurate snap shooting with a rifle at that distance.

The reason is that the rifle has a longer barrel, so that a slight fault in the alignment does not so much matter, but with the short barrel of a pistol a hundredth of an inch wrong in the sighting, at one hundred yards, makes over twelve inches error where the bullet strikes.

In other words, an error of a hundredth of an inch in alignment in an automatic pistol at one hundred yards, would make the pistol miss a target twelve and a half inches in diameter, whereas a rifle at the same distance with the same error of alignment would graze the edge of a target two and a half inches in diameter.

The pistol is more than four times more difficult to shoot than the rifle at one hundred yards, owing to its short barrel magnifying the error nearly four to five times more than the long barrel of the rifle.

To compare a pistol with a rifle target at one hundred yards, the rifle target bull's-eye would have to be reduced to a fifth of its diameter, leaving the bullet holes where they are, or vice versa, the pistol target bull's-eye would have to be magnified five diameters, leaving the bullet holes where they are.

This means that in shooting a match at a hundred yards, the rifle would have to be given a bull's-eye a fifth the diameter of the pistol target, the outside rings of the target in proportion, or the pistol must shoot at twenty yards, against the rifle at one hundred, both having bull's-eyes the same size.

This confirms my experience that to hit a foot diameter bull's-eye with a pistol at a hundred yards, is about as difficult as to hit a two and a half inch bull's-eye at the same distance with a rifle. Of course standing position is meant. With the p.r.o.ne position for the rifle it is too great a handicap on the pistol.