December, 1921 
your game if you can hold right on his 
heart, his back bone, his spine where it 
passes along the neck, or his head. 
I know a shooter who has killed game 
of the big type and he always tries to 
hit them in the head. He is a skilled 
marksman and has shot the same rifle 
for two score years. He has his own 
method. For me I have got to take 
along a rifle that will knock them clean 
off their feet if I hit at all and so give 
me a chance to slow them down and get 
in a sure shot later if necessary. 
I certainly would do all in my power 
to get in a heart shot if I could, but 
there is the problem of sighting through 
trees; probably the game is moving; the 
light may be poor; the shot may be a 
long one; the time given for aiming 
probably is short; all of these and many 
more considerations that confront the 
shooter make it almost impossible to 
place your bullet just where you would 
like it. 
O N THE sketch the circle at No. I, 
would certainly be about an ideal 
place to plant one’s bullet if you had 
your game tied to a ten foot rope and 
the end of the rope secured to a stake, 
provided the animal was considerate 
enough to stand pretty quiet for you, the 
distance was not too great and the light 
and other weather conditions were 
favorable. I have seen a good many 
FOREST AND STREAM 
game animals brought down because a 
lucky shooter had gotten in the heart 
shot at No. i, and surely every hunter 
ought to try for it. But I have seen ten 
animals killed by other than heart shots 
to one by that shot. For that matter I 
have seen an animal run a quarter of a 
mile with the tip of his heart shot away. 
A good many shooters who go into 
the big timber and bring home trophies 
every season say that they always aim 
for the circle at No. 2, if the circum- 
stances permit of more than a hasty 
bead on the front quarters. The advan- 
tage of a bullet placed in this location 
cn moose, caribou, goat, bear, sheep or 
deer is that the bullet is pretty liable 
to shatter the shoulder as well as rip 
open the cavity of the vital organs. 
Hence for two reasons it is a good 
place to hit game. It not only is a shot 
that has in it all the possibilities of a 
kill but also it disables the game so that 
he isn’t so liable to crawl away into the 
bogs with the last ounce of fading 
strength and get away from you. An- 
other advantage of this shot is that it 
makes any rifle furnish the whole power 
of its blow to the game. The bone 
breaks the power of the bullet, probably 
causing it to burst, and so the whole 
momentum of the missile is stopped by 
the body of the animal. 
Another pretty deacuy location to 
place a bullet is in the circle at No. 3. 
551 
Of course you have here the double pos- 
sibility of the big neck artery and the 
spine. To hit either will cause a sure 
kill. In fact with a high velocity rifle 
any location in the neck where the bullet 
can be placed is sure to be effective. 
Last fall I saw the neck )f a small deer 
practically cut clean off with the speed- 
iest sporting bullet on th market. I 
once shot a buck at two hundred yards 
standing in a swamp where the alders 
concealed all but his head. The bullet 
hit him in the neck. He was looking 
straight at me and stood with the body 
ended in my direction. The power of 
the exploding bullet caused him to sum- 
mersault in the air so that I plainly saw 
his feet over the top of the bushes as 
he was whirled over. I found him in a 
heap right in his tracks. The high- 
velocity bullet had spent every ounce of 
its energy right in his neck and that 
was enough to kill him instantly and on 
the spot. I have not indicated the head 
shot in the sketch because few shooters 
prefer it and certainly it will not be prac- 
ticed by anybody who is after trophies. 
I suppose it was popular with the meat 
shooter of half a century and longer ago. 
The circle at No. 4 might be a bad or 
a good place to hit your game. If it 
was lower it would be a lung-shot and 
so not get your game until he had gone 
some distance. At least not if you shot 
( Continued on page 565) 
THE TWENTY GAUGE SHOTGUN 
THERE IS THE SAME DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TWENTY AND A TWELVE 
BORE GUN AS THERE IS BETWEEN A TROUT AND A BASS ROD 
I T is a fairly safe assumption that 
nearly every upland hunter who uses 
a 12-gauge gun in the field has at 
some time or other toward the end of 
a hard day’s hunting vowed that the next 
time he went out he would carry a 20- 
gauge. The reason is that by evening an 
eight-pound 12 feels too heavy to “tote” 
and shoot with comfort. 
The 20 weighs about two pounds less 
than the average 12 and the shells, inci- 
dentally, are considerably lighter. As a 
result, a tired hunter can swing his gun 
much more successfully on the difficult 
snapshots that sometimes present them- 
selves at the most unexpected and, from 
the hunter’s standpoint, unfortunate mo- 
ments. It is really astonishing to note 
the number of grouse or quail that are 
flushed and missed just as the gunner 
staggers out from a fifteen-minute strug- 
gle through a dense chopping or as he 
tops a hill that took hard climbing to 
reach the summit, or after he pushes, 
crawls and fights his way through a 
briar thicket on a hillside or in a ravine. 
Under such circumstances many men get 
badly winded, especially if the weather 
is warm and they are too near exhaus- 
tion to think or act with the same quick- 
ness and precision that they would evince 
if they were shooting chickens or quail 
on open wheat stubble. Dense patterns, 
high velocity and maximum ballistic 
By C. S. LANDIS 
qualities in the weapon or load are not 
required under such circumstances. What 
is needed is a light, snappy, perfectly- 
fitting weapon that can be thrown on 
the game like a flash and which will 
made a pattern that is big enough and 
yet dense enough to make snapshots on 
dodging grouse, quail or rabbits at 10 
to 30 yards. A 20-gauge fills the bill. 
A featherweight 12 or 16 will also do 
it very acceptably, but for some reason 
the American public does not take kindly 
to featherweight 12’s. This is very 
likely due, in a large measure, to the fact 
that most factory loads of shot sizes 
larger than 7’s that are carried in stock 
by dealers contain 3)4 to 3)4 drams of 
powder and 1 % or 1)4 ounces of shot. 
This is because most of these loads are 
used for duck and goose shooting. They 
develop too much recoil in a 6 to 624- 
pound 12-gauge to be used comfortably 
by the average hunter who does most of 
his shooting during the hunting season 
and who has no opportunity to become 
toughened up beforehand. 
A MERICAN sportsmen have had the 
high - velocity craze for several 
years, and as practically all of the high- 
velocity hunting rifles are small-bore 
weapons, due to the excessively heavy 
recoil of big-bore, high-velocity rifles, 
many are inclined to believe that all 
shotguns are built accordingly. As a 
result, the 20-gauge is supposed by many 
to develop much higher velocities and to 
give greater penetration with the same 
size shot than the 12. The truth of the 
matter is that the larger bores are nearly 
always superior ballistically to the small- 
bore shotguns. 
It is much more difficult to get close, 
even patterns with high velocity in the 
20-gauge than in the 12. The 10-gauge 
will outshoot the 12 for both evenness 
and closeness of pattern and for velocity 
when loaded in proportion to its gauge. 
The reason is that a higher percentage 
of the shot in the smaller gauges is de- 
formed by being jammed against the 
surface of the barrel of the gun while 
being driven through the cone and the 
choke. Deformed shot pellets will not 
hold their velocity and will drop behind 
and usually below the center of the nor- 
mal pattern. Being deformed, they will 
not pattern as evenly as the spherical 
pellets. To overcome the disadvantages 
of thin patterns, due to a small number 
of shot pellets and also to cater to the 
wishes of the public, the majority of 
20-gauge loads are comparatively high- 
velocity loads ; that is, high-velocity loads 
for a 20-gauge, but not for a 12 or a 10. 
In the 20-gauge, we might as well elimi- 
nate all shot sizes larger than 6’s, ex- 
cept in extreme cases, because three- 
