Guns: What's the best shot you ever made?

[vtsnowedin]

I won't enumerate the things I have missed but with some practice and a bit of luck I have a couple of memorable hits. Once I was Bear hunting with my 7X57 Ruger and walking up the edge of a corn field when I saw something dark in the grass about fifty yards out and thirty yards from the corn. put the scope on it and it was a young of the year coyote that then broke for the corn at full speed through the wet foot high grass. I led and shot and worked the bolt and shot again just as he got to the corn. I followed the streak in the grass where he had knocked off the dew in passing. He was two rows in the corn with most of his neck gone.
Another was even better as there were witnesses. They have a field day at the local Fish and game club where they set up shooting contests with winner take half club take half $1.00 per turn. One contest is at a moving deer target at 150 yards ,target running down a wire at about deer speed. To hit it you need to lead with a deer rifle about under the nose to hit the chest. They allow you two shots as it runs by and add the score. 4 for lung shots 5 for heart or brain. I had my 58 caliber Zouave civil war replica and decided to try it even though I only had one shot so couldn't win. First shot I aimed well ahead and mid deer and hit way back and low. Next round I aimed a full deer ahead and top of the back. The guy behind the safety berm running the target radioed down "he only hit it once a 4 but you can stick you thumb through the hole.!!"

 

[toppop52]

Not mine, but my oldest brother in the 60's was in the backyard with my step dad. They were just target shooting, step dad had a Browning 12 ga., brother who was in his 20's had a bolt action .22. As they stood there 2 blackbirds flew overhead at about 40', step dad raised and knocked down the bird on the left and my brother raised the .22 and shot the bird on the right. These birds were flying at normal blackbird speed and of course like my rabbit shot was luck even though he is an excellent marksman, it was impressive for a 12 year old to see.:thumbsup:

 

[PILOON]

I was deer hunting with my 30-06, sitting with my back to a tree, just waiting near a pass.
Nothing came by and I was about to leave when I heard rustling noises behind me.
Was a partridge doing a dance.
Since I did my own bore sighting I knew my rifle's accuracy and decided to try my luck.
I did clean decapitate that bird!
Real bull's eye!

 

[MossRoad]

Honest, I did not just make that up..I did say, it might have been luck not skill..

Which brings up the point about luck VS skill. Personally, I define luck as trying something infrequently and getting it perfect. Skill is repeating the action again and again and getting it perfect.

I used to have quite the throwing arm. So did the kids I grew up with. We didn't have BB guns, so we used rocks. Lots of rocks. Over and over again. We got d*** good with rocks. So good that we could throw a rock up in the air and hit it with another rock fairly consistently. We could hit anything, anywhere, at any angle, moving or not. Then we graduated to snow balls and people. No one was safe. We felt like assasins. 150+ foot shots to the head were not uncommon. My best snowball shot was to the neighborhood bully. As I recall, he was a paper boy for the Chicago Tribune. He had a really nice Raliegh bike and would ride by and slap you in the back of the head or kick you in the rear. One particular day he and one of his toadies were stopped on their bikes about a hundred feet away. They were making disparaging and threatening remarks towards me and my friend. There had been a recent snowfall. The kind that doesn't stick to the street, but sticks to the grass. That real wet, heavy stuff that makes the perfect snowball. You that have experienced it know exactly the kind of snow I am talking about. The bully was sitting on his bike seat with both feet on the ground cackling away. I was armed and had had enough. I turned and fired as hard as I could. Now this was probably 38 years ago, but I still remember the force in my arm, the fastball leaving my hand, the nearly perfect arch of the trajectory of that snowball as it cruised maybe up to 8' off the ground then down over the top of his handle bars and right across the top of that finely crafted English leather seat directly into his crotch.

The unforgettable noise of that sloppy wet PLOP was overwhelmed by the two seconds of deafening silence that followed. The look on his face as his eyes squinched shut, his mouth forming a perfect O, his hands coming off the handlebars to form the tell-tale crossed X sign of a direct hit and he and the bike falling in slow motion to his right side will never leave my mind. He went down like a ton of bricks. He actually bounced when he hit the ground. The toadie kept trying to get him up. He tried to move but his legs were tangled in the bike and he could not get up. Goliath was slain. My name is David!

Of course, he did eventually get up, proclaimed he would kill us and we ran screaming like little girls. :laughing: He never did catch up to us and pretty much left us alone after that fine early spring day. I was looked at much differently by the younger kids after that. :thumbsup:

 

[BungeeII]

Great story! Wonderfully told.
:laughing:

 

[k0ua]

Which brings up the point about luck VS skill. Personally, I define luck as trying something infrequently and getting it perfect. Skill is repeating the action again and again and getting it perfect.

I used to have quite the throwing arm. So did the kids I grew up with. We didn't have BB guns, so we used rocks. Lots of rocks. Over and over again. We got d*** good with rocks. So good that we could throw a rock up in the air and hit it with another rock fairly consistently. We could hit anything, anywhere, at any angle, moving or not. Then we graduated to snow balls and people. No one was safe. We felt like assasins. 150+ foot shots to the head were not uncommon. My best snowball shot was to the neighborhood bully. As I recall, he was a paper boy for the Chicago Tribune. He had a really nice Raliegh bike and would ride by and slap you in the back of the head or kick you in the rear. One particular day he and one of his toadies were stopped on their bikes about a hundred feet away. They were making disparaging and threatening remarks towards me and my friend. There had been a recent snowfall. The kind that doesn't stick to the street, but sticks to the grass. That real wet, heavy stuff that makes the perfect snowball. You that have experienced it know exactly the kind of snow I am talking about. The bully was sitting on his bike seat with both feet on the ground cackling away. I was armed and had had enough. I turned and fired as hard as I could. Now this was probably 38 years ago, but I still remember the force in my arm, the fastball leaving my hand, the nearly perfect arch of the trajectory of that snowball as it cruised maybe up to 8' off the ground then down over the top of his handle bars and right across the top of that finely crafted English leather seat directly into his crotch.

The unforgettable noise of that sloppy wet PLOP was overwhelmed by the two seconds of deafening silence that followed. The look on his face as his eyes squinched shut, his mouth forming a perfect O, his hands coming off the handlebars to form the tell-tale crossed X sign of a direct hit and he and the bike falling in slow motion to his right side will never leave my mind. He went down like a ton of bricks. He actually bounced when he hit the ground. The toadie kept trying to get him up. He tried to move but his legs were tangled in the bike and he could not get up. Goliath was slain. My name is David!

Of course, he did eventually get up, proclaimed he would kill us and we ran screaming like little girls. :laughing: He never did catch up to us and pretty much left us alone after that fine early spring day. I was looked at much differently by the younger kids after that. :thumbsup:

That is the best "shot" yet:thumbsup:

James K0UA

 

[Artisan]

That was a fun read mossroad...

I had a run in w/ a local bully too. I was 150 wet thru high school, 225
now and the force is strong in this one, the bully walked into the pool hall
and started his sheet, I was leaning against a pin-ball machine w/ my
back, both hands at the corners of the machine, he started towards me
and I threw a full round-house clenched fist bomb landing square and solid
on his left cheek. BAM! It didn't drop him, and we wound up in a no man
win knot on the ground till pulled apart.

He NEVER screwed w/ me ever again...:thumbsup:

 

[vtsnowedin]

To the practice vs. luck theme. Back in the day they used to have us measure up the top soil, seed and mulch acreage on the sides of highway jobs. To do it you took a 100 foot cloth tape with a guardrail button bolt tied to the dumb end and swung it like Davids sling and let-her go down to the bottom of the slope hopefully to just beyond the edge of the seed and mulch then pulled it back to the edge then took your measurement. Move ahead fifty feet to the next station stake and repeat and repeat 106 times each mile each side. If you miss long it might wind around a bush and you would have to walk down to unwind it then climb back up. If you were short you would have to pull it back and re throw. I got pretty good at it. One day I was working my way up an on ramp when I saw a young woodchuck sunning himself on his doorstep about fifty feet down the slope. I took my best shot and hit that chuck right side the head and knocked him out cold.
Hand to eye coordination is something that really improves with repetitive practice. shooting a gun, operating a backhoe ,driving a car playing a fiddle etc. the mind learns from the repetitions and has an amazing ability to compute the speed of an object your watching and let you place your shot correctly or merge into traffic without anyone having to apply the brakes.

 

[Dr_Zinj]

Taking down a foot thick white pine with a single shot.

"Gun" was a brass cannon the Litchfield Connecticutt team were using at a Fort Ticonderoga black powder shoot back in the early '70s. They shot 2 inch diameter steel conduit filled with cement and capped with lead. Target was a 4 foot square sheet of cardboard about a half mile away with a thin strip of woods before the granite side of a mountain. I got to load, sight, and fire it. Missed the target, but the tree crashing down behind it was rather spectacular.
Of course the end of that weekend, that whole strip of trees was mowed down and looked like a war zone.

 

[MossRoad]

...Hand to eye coordination is something that really improves with repetitive practice. shooting a gun, operating a backhoe ,driving a car playing a fiddle etc. the mind learns from the repetitions and has an amazing ability to compute the speed of an object your watching and let you place your shot correctly or merge into traffic without anyone having to apply the brakes.

The old saying about practice makes perfect really applies. So does use it of lose it. :laughing:

You want to learn hand-eye coordination try taking a golf ball and throwing it against a concrete wall and catching it in a baseball glove. As you become better and better at it, start throwing it harder and harder. Once you work up to a good, fast throw, start taking a step towards the wall with each throw. If you miss, start over. Great drill for baseball and softball players. :thumbsup: