The Hunting Rifle on Game - At Rest, On the Move and Long Range Shooting
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The Hunting Rifle on Game - At Rest, On the Move and Long Range Shooting - Theodore S. Van Dyke
Game
THE RIFLE ON GAME AT REST.
THE great difficulty in killing any sort of game with a single ball is that a miss is as good as a mile. To remedy this the scattering principle of the shot-gun was introduced. And the success of this depends upon a principle directly opposite to the fundamental principle of the rifle; to wit, that a miss is as good as a hit. That is, the true center of the charge never need exactly cover the game. And as a matter of fact it probably does not once in a hundred times, even when the gun is the hands of the very best shots.
The consequence of this is that the same aim that with a shot-gun would suffice to kill a thousand successive pigeons at twenty yards would not suffice to even touch one out of a thousand at twenty yards with a rifle-ball.
This fact is soon learned by a little target-practice with the rifle. The beginner finds that mere approximation, however near, will not do. Absolute accuracy only will suffice. But the beginner when he becomes a skilled target-shot finds when he first tries his rifle on game that the difference between shooting at game and at a target is as antipodal as the poles of the universe. The confidence with which he sets out to hunt is soon engulfed in amazement at the almost unappeasable appetite that lead exhibits for empty space. And this is the case upon any game. I have seen a friend who could cut the spots of a playing-card at twenty yards almost without fail for a long series of shots miss almost every shot at the heads of squirrels in trees not twenty yards high. And this was not because of excitement, but from causes I shall hereafter mention, such as overshooting, varying play of light on sights, dimness of marks, etc.
The insatiable appetite of lead for circumambient space becomes still more marvelous when it is fired at large game. Fire twenty shots at a target as carelessly as you please with a shot-gun, and you will find about every load scattered quite evenly around the bull’s-eye. You may of course notice that the bull’s-eye is not exactly in the center; but it is so nearly so that if the charge of shot had been a solid mass it would have hit every time within two or three inches of the center. This is, however, more apparent than real. Now what could be more reasonable than to suppose that the same aim with a rifle at a deer at fifty or sixty yards would surely hit him somewhere? The rifle is far more accurately sighted than a shotgun; it shoots far more accurately; you look at the sights and see them plainly on the body of the animal; there is a margin of ten or twelve inches for possible error; a clear miss seems impossible. Yet a person shooting a rifle as he would a shot-gun can miss twenty successive deer standing broadside at only forty yards with about the same ease and certainty that he could hit them with a shot-gun. For a whole year the very best target-shots will at seventy-five yards probably miss more deer than they hit; and at a hundred and fifty yards the very best game-shots will always do the same: and all this without any buck-ague
or nervousness entering into the question. This of course would not be so if the game were always in the same position, light, etc., and always standing full broadside. But as deer are generally seen it would be so.
You have already seen how a deer can be too close.
And now you can understand why overconfidence producing a little lack of care in aiming can make you miss a deer within a stone’s throw. And beware that you do not forget this, for even old and good shots are often deceived by a deer being too close.
Think it over and sing it over every time you start for the woods. And I recommend as a very suitable line for this purpose,
Thou art so near and yet so far.
In almost every miss you make for the first season or so, and in nearly all cases where the game is missed because of being too close,
your bullet goes above the game. This tendency to overshoot is the most universal and ineradicable error that exists