610 
FOREST AND STREAM 
December, 1917 
The Enfield breech 
field uses five grooves, and these are the 
same width as the lands. 
For the draft army soldier the rifle is 
much superior to the Springfield, because 
of its better rear sight. It is a better man¬ 
killing weapon for anybody. It is better 
finished, and better designed in some re- 
Care must be taken to avoid raising the 
bolt handle with the knuckles 
spects, and uses better material, such as 
nickel steel in the bolt and receiver. 
The fates were kind to us in having the 
machinery available to make such a splen¬ 
did rifle, just as they were in giving us 
Loading the Enfield 
time to get ready, with the stout arms of 
the British and French between us and 
our enemy on the Western front. 
If it be that some relative of yours is 
in the draft army, and peace does not 
come before he goes to the front, rest as¬ 
sured that in the rifle he carries, he has 
the finest man-killing weapon ever put into 
the hands of the soldiers of any nation. 
MAKING SCORES BY THE BANG-BANG SYSTEM 
I 
By CAPTAIN ROY S. TINNEY 
T HE present war is by no means an 
unalloyed evil, but is destined to be¬ 
stow certain lasting benefits upon 
these corpulent United States that will far 
outweigh the price we must pay both in 
men and money. Already it has brought 
about moral and economic reforms of per¬ 
manent and incalculable value, and Mr. 
Average Citizen is due to be stripped of 
his fleece-lined cloak of smug complacency. 
To prick the bubble of American Conceit 
has become a necessary operation, and one 
that Mars alone can perform. 
One afternoon I visited a rifle range 
where the only remarkable thing to be ob¬ 
served was the utter lack of skill displayed 
by the shooters. There was much activity, 
a constant stream of expensive ammuni¬ 
tion was being rapidly consumed; in fact, 
the one objective of the men on the firing 
line was to deliver a maximum number of 
shots in a minimum space of time. Scores 
were being made in quick succession, 
scores that a school boy would be ashamed 
to have placed after his name on the rec- 
• ords of th Boy Scouts. 
Out of the twenty-odd men who were 
firing there was just one chap who was 
playing the game and getting results. Be¬ 
ing an engineer he studied the handling 
of his rifle exactly as he would any other 
prpblem involving mechanics and the hu¬ 
man element. He fired each shot with 
care and deliberation and accurately re¬ 
corded the result in his score-book. Then 
he would search out the cause of his error 
before firing again. This man is a rifle¬ 
man ; the others are mere cartridge burn¬ 
ers, disciples of the fad of the day. 
The engineer followed the only system 
that will bring results, but he did not de¬ 
velop speed, so the Range Officer betrayed 
his utter unfitness for the post by telling 
the engineer to either shoot faster or quit 
the firing line. With an expression of 
utter disgust he came over and sat down 
beside me. 
“What do you think of our range?” he 
inquired. 
“Fine.” 
“And the club ?” he added—after a pause. 
I could not suppress a smile. “Judging 
from this afternoon’s work they are 
headed exactly nowhere and arriving there. 
“Exactly,” he agreed, “would you mind 
walking home with me?” 
When we were some distance from the 
grounds my friend led me to a comfort¬ 
able seat under a large maple. 
“What, in your opinion, is wrong with 
that club?” I inquired as I filled my pipe. 
The engineer also produced a briar. 
“Conceit, that peculiar brand of conceit 
that masquerades as modesty. The club 
does ninety per cent, of its firing at 200 
yards on the “B” target and as soon as 
they have made Marksman nothing can 
hold them. They know it all. I some¬ 
times think the Marksman Course pre¬ 
scribed for civilian rifle clubs by the Na¬ 
tional Rifle Association, has ruined more 
potential shots than we can count. That 
20-inch bull’s-eye and 37-inch four-ring 
make the course so easy it is like tossing 
stones into a bucket. A dub comes on the 
range, fires a few hundred shots under our 
bang-bang system and out of some fifty 
or sixty five-shot strings manages to pick 
eight that, when mortised together, will 
count up to 150 plus. Presto, he is a past- 
master of the rifle and his head slides 
right out from under his hat. He is quali¬ 
fying in a manner that is at once unfair 
and unsportsmanlike, and over a course 
that is one colossal cinch. Then he goes 
after Sharpshooter and doesn’t get it; 
cusses his gun and disappears from the 
range. He has qualified, why shoot any 
more? He doesn’t need to, he knows all 
there is to know about the army rifle, he 
will tell you so himself. Out of a thou¬ 
sand men who belong to our club less than 
a hundred have done any firing at all, 
and not more than twenty-five ever appear 
on the range at one time. We spent a lot 
of money to build that range and are 
spending more on rifles and ammunition, 
and look at the results.” 
A large percentage of the men who do 
come out here never make a pretense of 
studying their shots but simply shoot up 
a lot of ammuntion in a haphazard way. 
i 7 HAT you fellows need are some 
competent instructors,” I sug¬ 
gested as a trial shot. 
The engineer blew a ring of smoke into 
the quiet air. “Those boys over there 
know you are an old service man and a 
veteran rifleman, that you have been 
coaching tyros for years, yet you were on 
the range this afternoon for three mortal 
hours and never once offered a suggestion 
or gave a pointer. Why? Because no one 
gave you an opportunity and would have 
cut you mighty short if you had volun¬ 
teered any information. It’s that cussed 
conceit of theirs that blocks all progress. 
Why, would you believe it, the best scores 
yet made on our range is five consecutive 
bull’s-eyes from the prone position on the 
8-inch bull of the “A” target at 200 yards. 
Good shooting, but nothing to crow about. 
They regard the chap who did it as a hero 
and he swallows all the gush they hand 
him with disgusting condescension. And 
to date the only one ‘possible’ has been 
made at magazine fire on the ‘B’ target 
at 200. For goodness sake lead me to a 
range where I can learn something. I 
can’t stand this nonsense any longer.” 
I was in a strange country, but I used 
the telephone, and the following Saturday 
the engineer and I spent the day on a 
range conducted by a club that does not 
repeat the errors of its neighbor. In less 
than two hours he had doubled the “record 
score” of his home range and became the 
possessor of a certified target center with 
ten bullet holes inside an 8-inch bull’s-eye, 
made prone at 200 yards. 
The following week he informed me he 
had changed his membership to the club 
where he had shot on Saturday. 
“Why the migration?” I asked. 
“They wouldn’t recognize that target be¬ 
cause it was not made on their range, so 
I resigned. Say, will you take me over 
the slow fire and skirmish this afternoon.” 
I did and he qualified as a Sharpshooter 
without wasting ammunition. And this 
morning I received a letter from him tell¬ 
ing me he is now an Expert Rifleman. 
That is how this story came to be written. 
