Popular Science Monthly 



733 



instantly as the sights are alined on the run- 

 ning mark and yet go smoothly and 

 accurately, not with the convulsive jerk 

 on the trigger by which the untrained man 

 fires the rifle 



careless with rifle sights; the matter of care 

 is a habit. Moreover, the use of the 

 transit and the tape and the stadia rod 

 make for delicacy of touch and training 

 of the muscles. 



Here is the trained eye, the trained hand and the perfect 

 command over the muscles which the rifleman needs 



hurriedly. This 

 sort of shooting 

 forms the 

 greater part of 

 rifle shooting in 

 trench warfare, 

 outside the 

 highly special- 

 ized pursuit of 

 sniping which 

 calls for the 

 highest skill of 

 the trained shot. 



Wherefore we 

 find by theory, 

 which is borne 

 out by practice, 

 that the men 

 with highly 

 trained hands and eyes make the best 

 rifle shots, or else they make good rifle 

 shots more quickly than the untrained, un- 

 skilled man from civilian life. Sometimes 

 the man who is stubborn enough to per- 

 severe, gets the training of muscle and eye 

 he needs with the rifle itself, and 

 turns out to be a fine shot, but 

 his path is always more difficult. 



Surveyors make good rifle 

 shots. One of the best rifle 

 shots I ever saw, a man 

 who practiced but little 

 but still shot on the 

 American Pan-American 

 rifle team of 1913, was a 

 surveyor. Considering 

 the amount of rifle 

 shooting he did, he 

 came near being under 

 the mythical classifica- 

 tion, "born rifle shots," 

 but a study of his work 

 in civil life removed the 

 time-worn legend as ex- 

 planation for his skill. The 

 surveyor possesses to a 

 high degree the ability to 

 aline the sights accurately 

 and to repeat the process 

 from shot to shot. Care- 

 fulness is acquired by him 

 by long practice. The man 

 who can run out a series of levels for 

 twenty miles for a canal is not likely to get 



Some of the finest shots in 

 the army were formerly dentists 



Why the Den- 

 tist and the Sur- 

 geon Ought to 

 Be Crack Shots 



Surgeons and 

 dentists make 

 fine rifle shots. 

 More of them 

 than of any 

 other one pro- 

 fession, are 

 found in the 

 ranks of skilled 

 marksmen and 

 some of the 

 finest shots in 

 the country 

 wield scalpel or 

 the various electrical dental instruments 

 during their business hours. Here is the 

 trained eye, the trained hand, and the per- 

 fect command over the muscles that have 

 to do with alining the rifle and letting it 

 off. No man able to work neatly around 

 the exposed nerve in the back of a tooth is 

 lacking in hand-training and co- 

 ordination. No man who can 

 cut skillfully around a pulsat- 

 ing tube carrying the life 

 stream is going to be both- 

 ered long in mastering the 

 quick but smooth release 

 of the trigger when the 

 eye says that the mark 

 is perched on the front 

 sight. 



The mechanic (the 

 skilled mechanic, not 

 the butcher) has the ad- 

 vantage over the man 

 who has used the pick 

 and shovel to make his 

 daily bread. Here again 

 is eye training, the care- 

 ful use of accurate tools, 

 and the ability to make the 

 hands do what the mind 

 tells them to do. 



One of the best "natural 

 born" woman pistol shots 

 of my acquaintance was a 

 girl who had done china painting for years 

 and who had acquired the smooth, certain 



