Late Evening
Shooting With the Small-Bore
By
C.
S. Landis
THE AMERICAN
RIFLEMAN April,
1930
ENGLISH
shooting journals are giving quite a bit of space to
accounts of night shooting with small-bore rifles, which is
becoming fairly popular in Great Britain. It is a sport
which has never been pushed in the United States, but there
is no reason why it should not be, because weather
conditions are so absolutely ideal as a rule for accurate
small-bore shouting in late evening or the for part of the
night that it is a wonder that American .22 cranks have
never taken up the idea.
There is no rifle range in this country to my knowledge
that is properly fitted up with electric lights for outdoor
night shooting. If there is such a place it should be
written up for this magazine, because our small-bore
shooters should know what can be done with the .22 outdoors
in those hours between quitting time at the office and
bedtime at home or that hour in the morning when the
man of the house quietly sneaks in and upstairs.
The
targets shown with this article may, I hope, help to
impress small-bore shooters with the extraordinary degree
of accuracy with which a small-bore rifle will shoot,
between the hours of 5 p. m. and midnight. Whether you
shoot by daylight or by artificial illumination makes very
little difference. Conditions as they affect the
shooter are ahout the same. The light is nearly always
uniform, and whatever change there is is due to a slowly
fading light which has but one effect upon the target, and
that is to make your group fall slowly out of the 10-ring
at 6 o'clock. If you are not shooting directly east
or if there is a wind blowing, your group will probably
slide out at 5 o'clock or at 7, due both to a decrease in
the amount of light and a gradual falling off in the wind.
The group will slide out in the direction of your absolute
zero for that range as the wind decreases.
Late
evening shooting is practical at any time of year at which
the shooter can fire in comfort. Late evening shooting in
winter or early spring or late fall means, of course,
before 5 o'clock in the evening on account of the short
evening, Late evening shooting by daylight in summer may
mean anything from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. and, of course, that
whole period from 4:30 up until this time. After that
period you must use artificial illumination or quit. As
most of us get through work at 4 to 5 p. m., there is ample
opportunity for late evening small-bore shooting almost all
over the United States. From the time one arrives at the
range until at least 7 or 8 o'clock a person can shoot
every evening except when there are thunderstorms; and it
is possible to do very accurate work from 7 to 8 p.m. by
dayight when using a telescopic sight, provided you are not
in a dense wood, and you can often shoot up to 7:30 p.m.
with iron sights with comfort and great accuracy.
As the longest day is about the 21st of June, June and July
will of course give the longest evenings. The period for
late daylight shooting will gradually decrease as the
summer passes, and then about September 22 days and nights
will be equal again and one can not see to shoot later than
5.30 to 7
p.m..
The actual time of stopping will of course depend upon the
light of the range in question, the direction in which one
is shooting; the amount of shade, if any, on the target,
the kind of sights one is using, and whether it happens to
be a clear or cloudy day.
About 1922, I believe, the reentry matches at the Sea Girt
Tournament were arranged so as to form 100-shot
competitions. There was a special prize; and, of
course, the attending honor of winning high score for the
whole 10 targets in the iron-sight match at 100 yards; and
the corresponding prize for the whole 10 targets which
could be fired in the telescopic reentry at I00 yards. I
determined to win those matches, if possible, and was
successful in both because I fired 5,000 shots in practice
previous to the matches, shooting 200 to 500 per afternnon
or evening in strings of 100. There is no more similarity
between the effort to shoot a 100 shot match and a 20-shot
competition than there is between running a 2-mile race and
a 100-yard dash. The reason these competitions are
mentioned here is because they gave me the best opportunity
I have ever had to see exactly how much a shooter's average
will rise as the evening progresses. The decrease in the
size of the groups, especially at 100 yards, is often
astonishing. The reasons they affect the average
shooter are about as follows: First, the heavy 3
o’clock mirage dies down. The result is a smaller
vertical and a very much smaller horizontal. Next, the wind
dies down. It often drops off quite sharply at about 4.30
in the summer, and from then until it is too dark to see
(eliminating the evenings, of course, when there are
thunderstorms), conditions are almost constant.
You don’t have to dope anything, except, of course, a
slight and continuous decrease in ihe amount of
illumination. This can be easily remedied by coming up a
half minute or so in elevation as the shoot progresses. You
may be using two or three more inches of elevation by the
time you quit, but just the same you make more 10's.and The
targets shown with this article may give a little better
idea to those who have not tried it of the kind of 10-shot
scores it is possible to shoot at 100 yards in the late
evening. The two groups which are numbered 68 were
made by L. J. Miller, Captain of the Frankiord Arsenal
Rifle Club, at one of the Sea Girt Small-Bore
Tournments. He was using iron sights, and
finished at 100 yards during that period which is commonly
known as the "golden hour" on the Sea Girt
range. The light was practically perfect. There
was very little wind. The targets speak for themselves.
Anyone who has shot on the Sea Girt range knows what a
beautiful light there is on the targets late in the
evening. No further explanation is necessary. For
iron-sight shooting this pair are hard to beat. The othcr
20-shot score is one made between 7:30 and 8 p.m. on
the 10th of August some years ago, Wind and light
conditions were practically perfect. The range was along
the southeastern edge of a very dense
wood.
The
timberr was high, and consequently the targets lookud much
darker than on the average range at this time in the
evening. Had I been firing on the 50-yard shooting point of
the same range, similar light conditions would have existed
for about an hour longer on the same evening. The
mosquitoes, however, were frightful. It was necessary to
get up and walk around five times during this 20-shot score
to get rid of them. The sixth shot was pulled out. The
other 19 will give an idea of The average accuracy
obtainable with telescopic sights from a good rifle and
good ammunition at this time in the evening. After the
thirteenth shot it was impossible to spot the bullet holes
with either the rifle scope or spotting scope, a fact that
may have helped considerably in keeping them well within
the 10-ring. These targets are no better and no worse than
what many other shooters have done and can do under similar
circumstances. They will be bettered occasionally, but,
they may help to illustrate the idea that American
small-bore shooters are overlooking a golden opportunity,
and that is to do more late evening shooting. After 4 p.m.
on the average day is when our Dewar matches ought to be
shot, and it is when most of us will do our best shooting
with either iron or scope sights. And as long as we work
eight to ten hours a day it will be when the most of us
wiil have the opportunity to do any kind of rifle shooting,
except at the National Matches.
There is
absolutely nothing at all, except the lack of initiative,
to keep us from having outdoor ranges illuminated for night
shooting. The scores which are made each year in the
Metropolitan Championship on the 100-yard indoor range in
Brooklyn could be duplicated and in some cases even
excecded, because the shooter would not be bothered by the
smoke and poor illumination on the target. It would surely
give an opportunity for small-bore shooting to a great many
people who do not have it now and who are not likely to get
it as long as the family likes to go out in the car on a
Saturday afternoon, and as long as the average male gets
hungry about 5:30 in the afternoon, especially after
shooting, instead of going out and beginning about that
time. The question of evening small-bore shooting is surely
one that needs discussion in this publication.
Scores and groups are often the most convincing argument to
the hard-shell small-bore shooter who is seldom convinced
by anything else. Evening shooting in the open has, as a
rule, but one discomfort, and that is mosquitoes at certain
periods. It is much cooler and more comfortable than
middle-of-the-day shooting in summer. The scores run higher
and, therefore, the interest should be sustained better. It
would be available to more people; and for the fellow who
hasn't tried it… it is worth trying.
Article submitted by Donald G. MacChesney
Vintage
Benchrest Historian