
Standing shots come but rarely. 
HOOTING at game is a vastly 
different proposition than shoot- 
ing at a target. A shooter able 
to score 95 or better at the targets 
might easily find himself scoring 100% 
misses in the game fields. The funda- 
mental principles are, of course, the 
same, and the man who is a good target 
shot has a big advantage over the man 
who has had no shooting experience at 
all. Just the same all the details are 
so very much different in the woods 
from what they are on the range, that 
often the target shot will find himself 
quite as helpless as the fellow who is no 
shot at all. What the target shot, who 
wants to be a hunter should do, is to 
make himself as familiar as possible 
with the kind of shots that are common 
in the woods. The man who has learned 
to shoot on the range has been accus- 
tomed to shoot at a stationary target 
which is plainly visible. Generally, he 
is perfectly comfortable, that is, he is 
not cold, wet, or out of breath. He has 
all the time he needs to get into a com- 
fortable position. The light is good, 
and his sights are made to show up 
clearly against the target—what he has 
learned, is to “hold” and to “press the 
trigger.” 
With the hunter shooting at game it 
is quite different. He is often out of 
breath, wet or cold, or both, and he has 
to shoot from all kinds of positions— 
and do it quick—or lose the game, and 
he doesn’t want to do that. Maybe he 
has worked hard several hours—pos- 
sibly days—to get the shot, and he must 
make it count. Often the game is half 
hid by trees or brush, and more often 
yet it is moving. 
A LARGER per cent of hunters fail 
to get their game because of poor 
marksmanship in the woods than all the 
other reasons put together. Some 
hunters fail to find their game, but 
more fail to stop it when they do find 
268 
it. Once in a great while the hunter 
will get an open standing shot—then is 
when the good shot at the. targets 
should score. However, to be a real 
hunter you must score on the more com- 
mon and difficult shots. 
There are three ways, that is, three 
good ways of shooting at moving game. 
One is to swing with your game, the 
same as in shooting a shotgun at mov- 
ing game. That is you follow the move- 
ment of the game with your front sight 
until you get it in the exact spot, then 
pull. Of course in all shooting you 
must keep your front and rear sights 
correctly lined. I believe the majority 
can do this the easiest with a rear peep 
sight—it should be a small disc with 
a large hole. With a low power rifle, 
or one with a slow lock it will be neces- 
sary to hold ahead of your game in 
order to hit it. With a modern high 
velocity arm the bullet will hit pretty 
close to where you hold—unless it is a 
long range shot. 
NOTHER method is “snap _ shoot- 
ing’”’—to do this accurately requires 
a lot of training and skill. We will 
suppose you jump a deer. The instant 
you see game -you line your sights in 
its direction. You see the deer bound 
or leap and you know what its course 
will be for the next few feet (until it 
hits the ground again). You throw in 
ahead with your bead to spot where you 
think the deer will be at the exact in- 
stant your bead gets there, and pull. 
When you become expert at it, the 
throwing of the gun to the shoulder, 
lining the sights, and then throwing to 
the exact spot, and pulling, will be just 
one move, and just about as quick as 
you can throw the gun to your face. 
You must pull the instant your bead 
gets where you want it—you can’t wait 
to be sure it is on the deer, if you do, 
it surely won’t be! Asa rule, when one 
has learned snap shooting, he can tell 
Game Shooting 
With the Rifle 
Practice Is Necessary to Attain 
Proficiency in Running 
Game Shots 
By BYRON E. COTTRELL 
when he pulls whether or not he hits. 
Some say a snap shooter doesn’t use his 
sights, but I will say as a rule he does, 
if he can really shoct and hit. A good 
shot will do surprisingly accurate shoot- 
ing this way, but it requires a lot of 
training. The eye, the arm guiding the 
gun, and the trigger finger must do per- 
fect team work. 
HE third way is to hold ahead of 
your game in some open spot, and 
shoot just as the game comes into the 
sights. This also is hard to do, but it 
is one of the most useful and deadly 
ways of shooting in a thick brush or 
timbered country. Even users of the 
scatter gun will find that when shoot- 
ing game ahead of a hound in very 
dense brush this method cannot be 
beaten. One old deer and bear hunter 
when watching for game on a runway 
would get in such a position that he 
would be in line with a big log that he 
was sure the game would jump. When 
he sighted the game coming he would 
sight down this log and about twelve to 
eighteen inches above it, and just as 
the game jumped the log he would 
shoot, and he generally got his game. 
If you can find where a fox or a 
rabbit is circling ahead of a hound when 
there is snow on he ground, get where 
he has run through once or twice, and 
went under a log or bunch of brush, 
get in line so he will be coming directly 
towards you. When you see your game 
coming, hold under this log in the place 
where he will come through, and when 
he starts through shoot. After you 
have tried it a few times ‘you will be 
surprised how easily you can hit them. 
ND now for the ways to practice 
these different systems—and it is 
best to be able to shoot all three ways. 
The first can be learned by shooting at 
large objects thrown up in the air by a 
friend. If this proves too difficult at 
