Some Old-Time Rifles and Rifle Shooting 
An Interesting Account of Two Rifle Contests a Century Ago—The Weapons, and How They Used Them 
Below I give extracts from some Southern pa¬ 
pers of 1818 and 1819, relative to rifle shooting 
at that time. The first is from the Milledgeville 
Journal, of Georgia, 1818, and it is headed 
“Sharpshooting": 
The Americans are unquestionably the most 
expert gunners in the world; of this we recently 
had a most convincing proof. A shooting match 
between a party of gentlemen from Baldwin and 
another from Jones, with rifles, 100 yards, three 
on a side, for $1,500, commenced near this place 
on Thursday last, and continued with various 
success till late Saturday evening. The latter 
beat every match, one with ease, the other two 
were closely contested. About 350 balls were 
fired during the three rubs (best 31 in 60) four 
out of five of which, we are informed, struck a 
circle of three inches in diameter. Each shot 
would have killed a man, and many were within 
half an inch of the center of the target. Well 
may all enemies dread American riflemen. As 
sharpshooters they are unrivalled. 
It is to be regretted that the paper was not a 
little more explicit in several particulars. First, 
as to whether this was off-hand or rest shooting, 
and second, exactly what they meant by “best 
31 in 60,” although with reference to the latter 
I think I know. For six men to put four-fifths 
of their balls in a circle three inches in diameter 
would certainly be extraordinary off-hand shoot¬ 
ing, though I am not prepared to say that it is 
impossible. It is evident from the stake that 
each man put up $500. They must then have had 
a good deal of confidence that they were not 
likely to meet anyone that could beat them. No 
ordinary shot is going to back himself in this 
way. 
This does not seem to be string measure, for 
string measure would be the shortest total string 
measurement for each rubber. It looks partly 
as though it might be bull’s-eye shooting—that 
is, the greatest number of hits in the three-inch 
circle in sixty shots per side, and if tie by nearest, 
or possibly each shot of one side counted against 
the next shot from the other as to which is best, 
without regard to average or string measure. 
The next instance is from a South Carolina 
paper, the Wingaw Intelligencer, of June 19, 
1819, headed “South Carolina Riflemen.” 
Some gentlemen in the vicinity of Orange¬ 
burg met agreeable to appointment, and shot for 
a wager. The target was about three inches in 
diameter, the distance 100 yards, and the shots 
limited to. eighty. Of this number thirty-eight 
were within the circumference of this paper and 
many near the center of the circle. Though 
these marksmen had previously given satisfac¬ 
tory testimony of their skill, yet the foregoing is 
seldom excelled. 
If both were under the same conditions, it will 
be seen that the shooting of the Georgia riflemen 
By “Back Number.” 
was much the better of the two, as they put in 
four-fifths into the three-inch circle while the 
South Carolina marksmen only put in half. 
The next inquiry is what kinds of rifles were 
used. Though nothing is stated as to this, I do 
not think that there is any doubt that they were 
the old Kentucky pea rifles, with round balls and 
flint-locks. I also think there is no doubt that 
they had open sights, as peep sights, though known, 
were very rare. But we must remember one 
thing, that open sights, as made and used on 
those long Kentucky rifles with barrels forty 
inches to four feet long, were a very different 
thing from the factory open sights we get on a 
breech-loader thirty inches or less in the barrel. 
Now, while I believe a fine muzzle loader care¬ 
fully wiped and loaded, with attention to properly 
made bullets, and patches and every little detail, 
may be slightly superior to a breech-loader, or 
at least the earlier rim-fire breech-loaders up to 
100 yards, I do not think that, as usually used, it 
was as accurate as the breech-loader with factory 
cartridges, if kept clean. Yet I believe that nine 
men out of ten will do better shooting with the 
old long muzzle loader at distance under 100 
yards than they would with a breech-loader as 
usually made, and both having open sights. 
There was a difference in holding the two 
rifles, to begin with. You did not have to hold 
the old rifle either so long or so tight to be cer¬ 
tain of your aim. You could let it rest easily in 
your left hand (nor was it as necessary to hold 
the stock tight against the shoulder, as with the 
modern gun), raise the sight deliberately on the 
object, and touch the set trigger as soon as it got 
there, without feeling much doubt about the 
ball going to the proper place. 
Now, if you have a front sight one-thirty-sec¬ 
ond of an inch in diameter at twenty-two inches 
from your eye in one case, and in the other case 
a sight one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter at 
forty-four inches from your eye, they ought to 
cover up the same space on an object and, theo¬ 
retically, give the same shooting. But in prac¬ 
tice the larger sight at double the distance will 
be both seen clearer and caught quicker. In 
fact, the finer sight would actually be seen 
quicker and clearer at the end of a long barrel 
than of a short one. This is due to the fact that 
the eye, being focused upon the target at a dis¬ 
tance, is better adapted to focus the sight at the 
same time if farther from the eye. 
The same thing is still more clearly to be no¬ 
ticed in the rear open sight. In the short barrel 
you cannot have it very far from the eye. In the 
long barrel you can, and still preserve the dis¬ 
tance from the front sight. On account of the 
weight on the end of the barrel, the slower twist, 
and consequent less recoil with its lighter ball, 
the gun would hold itself steady where it went 
off, and what recoil there was was generally 
back in a straight line. 
When you are obliged to hold a gun very 
tightly to prevent its jumping or twisting itself 
in some other direction as it goes off, you com¬ 
municate a nervous tremor to it, which is preju¬ 
dicial to the very finest shooting. The same con¬ 
dition exists when you have to hold a gun very 
tightly in pulling a hard trigger so as not to jerk 
it off the mark. 
I am something of a crank on recoil, and until 
a man loses his eyes and his nerves, I believe 
more unexplained bad shooting is due to recoil 
that is not properly understood, than to anything 
else. The weight of the old Kentucky rifle being 
almost entirely in the barrel, and the weight of 
the stock below the barrel being very little, the 
center of recoil would be very nearly in the bore 
or bottom part of the bore; hence it need not be 
held tight. 
But the breech-loaders with larger charges and 
quicker twists to make not only greater recoil, 
but more wrenching strain in the hand, have 
stocks and actions in general weighing more than 
the barrel, with all kinds of bunches and lumps 
of metal in different places on the gun, with 
notches cut in the barrel for magazines and all 
such things as that. The recoil in such guns can¬ 
not be expected to be so straight back and so 
little affected by the degree of tightness with 
which you hold the gun in the hand or to the 
shoulder. 
From experiments with double rifles, both side 
by side and over and under, I am confident that 
the muzzle recoils away from the centre of grav¬ 
ity of the piece. One of these rifles, a muzzle- 
loader, I shot with such charges that I melted the 
soldering of the ramrod pipes until one of them 
came off. It was a double rifle with over and 
under barrels and increase twist about fifty-five 
round balls to pound, and yet it preserved its ac¬ 
curacy, execpt that the upper barrel shot a little 
higher. Whether this was due partly to recoil, 
and partly to the natural flattening of the trajec¬ 
tory from their being less drop to the ball, I can¬ 
not be quite sure. But from some other circum¬ 
stances that I may detail at another time about 
these two rifles, I think it due to both. 
As late as thirty years ago I found in the moun¬ 
tains of western North Carolina rifles substan¬ 
tially the same as what I believe these two 
matches to have been shot with, except that they 
were percussion instead of flint lock. They were 
409 
