As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Good riflemen are rare in hunters or military men. One can be good at shooting at targets and not at game and it is a different matter in shooting at enemies who are shooting at you.
When I came across an account of General George Armstrong Custer's shooting. For all practical resource, General Custer had a repeating Spencer rifle which was not for hunting, but he had a Remington Rolling Block in 50 70, which was 50 caliber and 70 grains of black powder in a cartridge.
This was before the telescopic Sharpes rifles with German Vollmer sights and other such globe sights. Even though the General had his own custom Remington Rifle he wrote a letter full of praise to Remington later, I do not know if the rifle in the shooting below is this gun, but it certainly was of that type of open sights.
Buffalo Bill Cody had a Government service rifle, Lucritia Borgah, so named as the rifle was so deadly accurate, but Bill was shooting game close. The note below is of General Custer apparently measuring accurately as Theodore Roosevelt did the distance of shots, as most people exagerate the shot, relates some remarkable shooting.
These are not scratch shots or luck shots, because these are a series of shots of a marksman at quite great distances for open sights. Any shot with an open sighted rifle at 200 yards or more is a very good shot with a modern caliber, but when one is using a black powder load, with an immense amount of lead with a great deal of drop or "rainbow trajectory", it is beyond what a normal rifleman could accomplish.
Theodore Roosevelt burned a great deal of powder with his Winchesters 45 75 and 45 90's, but in stating that his long shots were scratch shots.
I do not mean to make this sound as if this were impossible, as if one elevates their sights for distance, takes a fine bead on the front sight, has a steady rest for aim, it is as possible for an old large bore rifle to consistantly put a bullet where it is aimed, as Elmer Keith the six gun pistolero of Idaho, to be able to "walk" a Colt 45 bullet with a handgun onto a hundreds of yards away target by simply marking where the bullet hits.
Granted General Custer was not pouring a dozen shots into the area a game animal was, and it was one shot, at perhaps a varrying of distances of 50 to 100 yards at distance which is indeed remarkable as a marksman needs to know his gun well to do this, but good shooting can be done with a steady rest, familarity with your gun, and a gun sighted to distance.
In Western vernacular, General Custer was a good shot where few people could shoot like that unless they had telescopic sights. He deserves veneration for that, as he was a Plainsman in every from in being a pathfinder, an Indian fighter, a horseman, a hunter and he could shoot.
George Custer was a remarkable man and never deserved the smears heaped upon him, because no one attacking him was half the Scout, Shot, Fighter, Equestrian or Huntsman.
"I wish that you could have been with me on some of my elk-hunts. I killed three in one run of four miles. A party of us killed sixteen in one day. At another time, without even stirring out of my tracks, I shot, off-hand, three antelopes the nearest of which was three hundred and twenty yards. I aimed each time at a single animal and not at a herd. Day before yesterday I saw a fine buck antelope standing full front towards me; I could see only his head and part of his heck above the grass. I fired, and dropped him; the distance was two hundred and sixty-seven yards, and the ball entered his neck as accurately as if I had been close enough to touch it with the muzzle of the gun."
-George A. Custer
Nuff said
agtG
