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I was enjoying a cup of coffee this morning and reading through Jeff Cooper's latest commentary. He has a few thoughts in there on what criteria make a person a "good shot", and that got me thinking about the best shot I've ever personally seen. I decided to type up the story and toss it up here, first and foremost because I think it's a good story, and secondly because I think it might provoke an interesting discussion.
For as long as I can remember, my Uncle Jerry has used an old Marlin lever-action .30-30 for deer hunting. While the rest of us spend money on new guns, expensive scopes, and high-energy ammo, Jerry has stuck with the same gun and the same gear. He doesn't even have a scope on it. He just uses those old iron sights. Every year the week before hunting season we get together to zero in our equipment. While we're all tweaking and tuning and measuring groups, Jerry shows up, sets a 2-liter bottle on a stump at about fifty yards, knocks a few holes in it, then puts his gun away and watches us until we're done.
A few years back we were deer hunting up in West Virginia. We'd hunted hard all morning, and around lunchtime we met up in a clearing in the middle of a thicket to sit for awhile, discuss things and get a bite to eat. We probably hadn't been there for 5 minutes (we hadn't even sat down yet) when a big 4-point buck (big deer, small rack) walked out of the thicket no more than 30 yards away.
We froze. The buck froze. Hell, I think the birds in the trees froze. Things got pretty tense for everybody involved. The buck's problem was that there were 6 people with loaded guns not 30 yards away from him. Our problem was that we'd been standing in a circle, so half of us were frozen-in-place with our back to the buck, and the other half had a relative standing between us and our target. The only guy with a clear shot was my 14-year old cousin, who put his gun to his shoulder, took careful aim, and promptly got the worst case of buck fever I've ever seen. Seriously. It was bad. I mean, buck fever alone is bad enough, but can you imagine being 14 years old, with 5 grown-up relatives looking at you, and it's all on your shoulders? Geez. Poor kid locked up tighter than the Gold Depository at Knox.
So there we were. No one could move, and the one guy who could shoot wouldn't. Something had to give, and naturally, it was the buck. Hyperdrive, Mach 2, whatever you want to call it, the male North American whitetailed deer can go from not moving at all to moving very very fast in the blink of an eye. He'd turned slightly to his right to blast back into the safety of that impenetrable laurel thicket, and appeared to be doppler-shifting steadily into the red as he went.
Now, remember my Uncle Jerry? He's the point of this whole story, because he's about to make one hell of a shot. Two of them, actually. Jerry had been one of those guys with his back to the buck. In fact, he'd leaned that old .30-30 against a tree, and was in the process of lighting a cigarette when the buck made his dramatic entrance from stage left. When the buck started moving, I hollered "There he goes!" and before I got all three words out, Jerry had dropped his Bic, grabbed his gun, spun 180°, put his gun to his shoulder, took aim, and standing there off-balance and practically on one foot, drilled a running deer, quartering away in mid-jump, through the left lung, up through the heart and out through the right lung. Then, almost as if to add insult to injury, he racked the lever on that .30-30 and did it again. All of this, mind you, in less time than it took for that buck to cover about 10 yards, which was all that stood between him and that wall of laurel. The buck died and nose-dived into the ground right there like a big furry lawn dart, but slid at least 15 feet into the thicket before he came to a halt.
Now, I'd like to think I've seen some good shooting. A decade and a half ago, the Army considered me an expert marksman, and I went to a three-week sniper school in 1987. I've seen guys put bullets into tiny little bullseyes from the kinds of distances that are usually described as "way the hell over there", but I don't believe I've ever seen a shot like my Uncle Jerry made that day in the woods, with iron sights on a .30-30 at about 25 yards.
How about you?
For as long as I can remember, my Uncle Jerry has used an old Marlin lever-action .30-30 for deer hunting. While the rest of us spend money on new guns, expensive scopes, and high-energy ammo, Jerry has stuck with the same gun and the same gear. He doesn't even have a scope on it. He just uses those old iron sights. Every year the week before hunting season we get together to zero in our equipment. While we're all tweaking and tuning and measuring groups, Jerry shows up, sets a 2-liter bottle on a stump at about fifty yards, knocks a few holes in it, then puts his gun away and watches us until we're done.
A few years back we were deer hunting up in West Virginia. We'd hunted hard all morning, and around lunchtime we met up in a clearing in the middle of a thicket to sit for awhile, discuss things and get a bite to eat. We probably hadn't been there for 5 minutes (we hadn't even sat down yet) when a big 4-point buck (big deer, small rack) walked out of the thicket no more than 30 yards away.
We froze. The buck froze. Hell, I think the birds in the trees froze. Things got pretty tense for everybody involved. The buck's problem was that there were 6 people with loaded guns not 30 yards away from him. Our problem was that we'd been standing in a circle, so half of us were frozen-in-place with our back to the buck, and the other half had a relative standing between us and our target. The only guy with a clear shot was my 14-year old cousin, who put his gun to his shoulder, took careful aim, and promptly got the worst case of buck fever I've ever seen. Seriously. It was bad. I mean, buck fever alone is bad enough, but can you imagine being 14 years old, with 5 grown-up relatives looking at you, and it's all on your shoulders? Geez. Poor kid locked up tighter than the Gold Depository at Knox.
So there we were. No one could move, and the one guy who could shoot wouldn't. Something had to give, and naturally, it was the buck. Hyperdrive, Mach 2, whatever you want to call it, the male North American whitetailed deer can go from not moving at all to moving very very fast in the blink of an eye. He'd turned slightly to his right to blast back into the safety of that impenetrable laurel thicket, and appeared to be doppler-shifting steadily into the red as he went.
Now, remember my Uncle Jerry? He's the point of this whole story, because he's about to make one hell of a shot. Two of them, actually. Jerry had been one of those guys with his back to the buck. In fact, he'd leaned that old .30-30 against a tree, and was in the process of lighting a cigarette when the buck made his dramatic entrance from stage left. When the buck started moving, I hollered "There he goes!" and before I got all three words out, Jerry had dropped his Bic, grabbed his gun, spun 180°, put his gun to his shoulder, took aim, and standing there off-balance and practically on one foot, drilled a running deer, quartering away in mid-jump, through the left lung, up through the heart and out through the right lung. Then, almost as if to add insult to injury, he racked the lever on that .30-30 and did it again. All of this, mind you, in less time than it took for that buck to cover about 10 yards, which was all that stood between him and that wall of laurel. The buck died and nose-dived into the ground right there like a big furry lawn dart, but slid at least 15 feet into the thicket before he came to a halt.
Now, I'd like to think I've seen some good shooting. A decade and a half ago, the Army considered me an expert marksman, and I went to a three-week sniper school in 1987. I've seen guys put bullets into tiny little bullseyes from the kinds of distances that are usually described as "way the hell over there", but I don't believe I've ever seen a shot like my Uncle Jerry made that day in the woods, with iron sights on a .30-30 at about 25 yards.
How about you?