588 
FOREST AND STREAM 
October, 1918 
J T would be wearisome to go over the 
successive steps which have brought 
about the present perfection of 
marksmanship of the American forces. 
State after state fell into line. The first 
two interstate matches were between 
teams representing the New York and 
Connecticut National Guards. In 1875 
New York won with the lead by 181 
points, and in the year following Con¬ 
necticut was the victor with thirteen 
points advantage, and the “Soldier of 
Marathon,” which was the trophy fought 
for, went to Hartford for a while. 
The California boys saw a chance 
Photograph by Central News Service 
Student officers must know how to shoot, so that they can instruct their men • 
Detterment has been almost unbeliev- 
Photograph by Central News Scrvi 
Men being instructed in sharpshooting on the Model Rifle Range at Camp Gordon 
Ordnance Board, and other outside weap¬ 
ons, particularly those of English make in 
the hands of the rival Canadian team. It 
will not be fair to say that the Yankee 
was a party to it, but they certainly won 
a Fabian victory, and by losing their first 
match made the O. B. perceive that a rival 
nation had a weapon a bit better than the 
arm which that board had O.K’d for Uncle 
Sam. It was Wingate’s only defeat, and 
it was a great victory, for it brought to 
the front a study of the big rifle problem 
in all its details. The best efforts of a 
group of experts from the several private 
arms companies, Winchester, Remington, 
Stevens, Marlin, Sharps, and several others, 
were later contributed to a series of tests 
conducted by Forest and Stream over the 
Creedmoor range that developed valuable 
knowledge in regard to flatness of fire, and 
this study and experiment has continued to 
this day, so that now, in the expeditionary 
force on French soil, we have a group of 
men provided with the best arm found in 
any of the allied or enemy forces. It 
was really the impetus given by Win¬ 
gate to a scientific study of the whole 
theory of ballistics, as exemplified in 
the shoulder weapon, that put several 
million of the current U. S. A. rifle with 
its .30 calibre and its w'ell nigh perfect 
ammunition into the hands of our men 
in khaki to-day, and they fully justify 
by their performance the “amazement” 
of the French officers in the opening 
paragraph of this story. 
for a jaunt across the continent, and in 
1877 led with a score of 995 against 971 
for Connecticut, 967 for New York, and 
744 for New Jersey. In the succeeding 
year five teams competed, with New York 
leading with 974, Connecticut 906, New 
Jersey 864, Rhode Island 853, and Massa¬ 
chusetts 722. 
From that time on every command, reg¬ 
ular and militia, has included courses of 
rifle fire in the requirements of service. 
Every post has its rifle range; every state 
a similar provision, until at the outbreak of 
the present conflict over 1,800 rifle clubs 
were embodied in the National Rifle As¬ 
sociation, composed of civilians spread 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The 
marksman’s badge must be won by the 
man in uniform if he expects to hold his 
position in the ranks. The conditions for 
its winning have varied from time to time, 
but the requirements have steadily been 
made more and more rigorous and exact¬ 
ing as the weapons have improved. This 
able, and to Some of us, with memories 
running back to the days of the Win¬ 
gate vision, a look over a comparative 
armory suggests a comparison of the 
bow-and-arrow outfit of the American 
aboriginal with the instrument of pre¬ 
cision now placed at the disposal of the 
young recruit. (A view of a Civil War 
battlefield, with the man fussing with 
a powder horn, wadding, and then the 
bullet, each rammed down seriatim with 
a ramrod, looks almost like a bit of 
picturesque farce comedy, and yet we 
can find old G. A. R. men who narrate 
their personal part in such perform¬ 
ance.) The coming of nitro-powders 
revolutionized the art, and compelled 
changes in the entire contrivance, per¬ 
mitted the production of the magazine 
feature of the current weapon. 
So, in conclusion, it will not be unfair 
to say that 'while the Goliath Bismarck 
was busy in his ponderous Teutonic way 
r laying the foundations for “Deutschland 
fiber Alles” in making the German sol¬ 
dier a non-thinking automaton, our little 
David Wingate was outwitting him by mak¬ 
ing each American soldier a capable and 
efficient little skirmishing army of one, with 
a perfect co-ordination between the man 
and his weapon, and now in the final test 
of Wingate vs. Wilhelm the former comes 
to the front, while Willie the Boche heads 
for his merited oblivion of obluquy. 
FOREST AND STREAM has 
never lost sight of the importance 
of a nation being able to manufac¬ 
ture weapons of precision nor the 
necessity of proper training of men 
to handle them successfully. Under 
its auspices Captain Roy S. Tinney 
has built a range one hour’s ride 
from New York that is open to the 
public where instructions are given 
in gunnery and where weapons of 
various kinds can be accurately 
tested, sighted and adjusted. 
