PART I. FIELD SHOOTING AND BASIC HUNTING

Chapter 3. Sight Picture Is Not Enough For Accurate Field Shooting

When a ground squirrel or woodchuck sits up to consider the advisability of modestly retiring to his burrow, out there at an actual 200 yards, and an experienced hunter takes the shot with a .220 Swift, .22/250, or some other excellent sniping caliber, he is seeing that target in reference to rifle performance and not in reference to actual 200 yards of range.

The fact of a 200 or 300 yard kill is always established after the shot, when the distance has been paced.

The basic factors of accurate field shooting are sight picture and trigger squeeze. But alone they are not enough. The reason many excellent target range shots are not top performers in the game covers has been pondered by both the practical game shot and the very much more accurate target shot. Each time such enquiry is started, the investigation is centered about sight picture, trigger squeeze, the intangibles of woodcraft, with the probing for answers always stopping short of the actual cause of the discrepancy between range and field shooting.

When a skilled field shot snaps his rifle to shoulder, his sights reaching for a running fox squirrel scurrying along a high limb toward the security of his den, the hunter checks his rifle in a certain unchanging manner, but there is no sight picture in reference to his quarry. A decision must be made as to aim­ing point, and that will change with the target, the range, the time of day, to name just a few factors affecting uniformity of sight picture.  There simply cannot be an unchanging target at an unchanging range in field shooting, with a rifleman getting the same sight picture each shot.

There is also a difference between the let-off of a good field shot and an equally good target shot. This difference becomes more pronounced as a hunter takes to the woods after squirrel, rabbit or other rifle targets, such as deer or elk. Open range woodchuck, sod poodles and crow shooting have much more in common with target positions, with the rifleman taking his shot from long range, using orthodox target stances for his shooting.

Afield shot is conscious of let-off. He wills the shot at the most opportune instant, unlike the range shot who is taught to put increasing pressure on his trigger, the rifle being fired without the rifleman being conscious of the exact instant it will fire. But even here the good field shot must have more than a precise let-off for top performance.

That other, and all important factor in accurate field shoot­ing is range picture. All skilled game shots, hunting anything from squirrel to moose, must have a range picture in reference to their rifle and target. This is the dividing line between good and mediocre field shooting.

Take a typical woodchuck shot. Perhaps the hunter cannot Indian up any closer than 200 yards, woodchucks being tra­ditionally canny and dubious of a rifleman's intentions. The shot must be taken from here, or he will pop down his hole without a chance for the hunter to close the range. Let's say the rifle being used is a 220 Winchester caliber, scoped with a nice 4X job.

Maybe, if this hunter is serious about developing small game skills which will pay off in the crimsoned autumn deer woods, he is using a big game scope—a flat topped post and cross hair, or maybe a Lee Dot reticle subtending two minutes of angle, more if the scope is of lesser power.

No one has measured those yards mind you. No one will measure them until after the shot. Sure he may get a fairly accurate measure of distance by using his post or dot to cover the target, and by knowing something about the amount it subtends at different ranges, as well as the average size of his target. But, in reality, a hit or miss depends on the range picture.

Two hundred yards in hunting territory is a very flexible unit of measurement. Sometimes, under certain field condi­tions, it will stretch to unbelievable lengths. At other times this same yardage is short, incredibly short. It depends on the roughness of the terrain, your position, the position of the target—a hundred little factors which make each yard appear to be something other than three feet in length.

A well lighted target seems closer. A woodchuck in direct sunlight standing upright will seemingly shorten the range by at least fifty yards when compared to the same distance but with the quarry lying down in front of his den, or during an overcast period. Uphill targets appear closer than those seen downhill. Ranges across broken hill country appear longer than they really are. Level ground will shorten them to all appearances. Shots across a green clover field seem much longer than those obtained at the same distance across this field after the clover is cut, the stubble brown and shortened. Greens and blues in a landscape are associated with distance haze, and always spell out ranges longer than is actually the case.

See how many factors are militating against a hunter taking that woodchuck at 200 yards unless he had a good range picture for the light and terrain under which he must make the shot?

A 200 Swift 48 grain bullet, sighted to hit point of aim at 200 yards, is above line of sight 1.4 inches at 100 yards, and is 5.2 inches low at 300 yards, enough, even with this fast stepping, flat shooting caliber for a clean miss, unless the range picture is right.

Unless a hunter knows how lighting and terrain affect his range, reducing his conjectures to a matter of yards merely broadens the possibilities of error. Experienced field shots see it only as range picture. Subconsciously he is classifying this shot against previous ones. He is rejecting obvious mis-classifi­cations. He is subconsciously remembering misses. It all adds up to a decision, not of so many precise yards, but of a com­parison with another kill which gave this same range picture in regards to lighting, terrain and target.

You hear much about great instinctive game shots, not only with rifles but with shotguns as well. These individuals are supposed to be endowed with some esoteric sixth sense which gives them a skill we lesser hunters cannot hope to achieve in a lifetime of field shooting.  But the only instinctive thing about their performance is their subconscious range pictures, derived from broad experience, which gives them hits under almost im­possible gunning conditions.

A teal flaring across a duck blind, with a full gale behind him will be taken by only a great duck shot, one who has a range picture of the requirements of timing and lead necessary to hit that rocketing wind-sizzling duck.

It is only later that this hunter, and our man of the upland pastures with his 220 Swift tucked under his arm, when they are expansively promoting the idea that their respective shots were very skilled, which they were, that the idea of actual yard­age creeps into the picture.

How does a hunter go about developing an instinctive sense for accurate range pictures in his field shooting? The small game field is the perfect laboratory, that and a specialized piece of equipment which will be considered after canvassing other factors of accurate field shooting.

But to get back to that woodchuck at a measured 200 yards-Suppose you detect him conning the sidehill from the security of his burrow, just his head and shoulders showing above the grass on a clouded day—a suggestion of thunder showers along the rim of the upland pasture hills. Specifically, you plan on blowing him up with a chest shot. But he is a much harder target to take, with all that non-vital area obscured by the tall sear grass, even though it is not your aiming point, regardless of the lighting. Why? Smallness and obscurity is subconsciously associated with distance. You must know these distracting factors for what they are to bring your range picture into focus, or you will subconsciously classify this as a much longer shot than it actually is. There will be an association with other and much longer shots.

If that woodchuck, after a careful culling of evidence, slips out into the short stubble, then again becomes suspicious and stands up for another conning of his immediate vicinity, and you can see him full length, you will revise that long range estimate. He no longer appears like that shot where you got a rock steady rest by placing your forearm on a granite boulder and took a woodchuck at what later proved to be 300 yards. That was the time you held the crosshairs about three inches above his head and got a hit in the chest area. Now, standing in the stubble, he appears like that shot you got across an upland pasture at an almost black chuck when it stood up at the mouth of its den, and you had a fair shot from a sitting position, resting your forearm across a stone wall.

One autumn, while hunting deer with Al Wyman, we eased along a ridge heavily forested with oak. Mast was thick on the ground, and several large bucks were fattening on the acorns. This particular day we managed to put the finger on a beautiful five pointer at about 80 yards. Al, kneeling to get a better view below the bough-line of intervening trees, could see his antlers and an ear, the head being turned sidewise as our buck listened to some other hunter down hill. I suppose the target offered was about four inches in diameter. But the lighting was poor, the range picture slightly different.

I waited tensely, my eyes on a small opening which I hoped our quarry would cross if Al missed.

"Iffen I could see his shoulder, I could break his neck, easily he whispered, "But I don't know, with just his head and horns showing."

After a moment which seemed like an hour, the buck took a cautious step forward, exposing his shoulder. Al's old .30/40 Krag slapped back against his shoulder, the echoes died away in the forest, but no deer crossed the small forest lane I watched.

We walked down through the thickets to our trophy. Al's bullet had clipped that buck behind the ear very neatly. There had been no hesitation in the shooting, no lack of confidence, once the game presented the proper range picture, or as Al put it later, when I questioned him, "When he looked normal to me."

Later, I was to remember that remark while hunting grey squirrel in the oak groves. And more and more, as I measured it by the yardstick of accurate field shooting, it made good common sense.

Those big greys were easily taken by head shots when they were sitting on a high oak limb. But let one begin to play it canny, watching me from his perch, with just his head showing, and the self same target was no longer an easy off-hand shot. A new element was projected into the setup. The range picture had changed to something unfamiliar, or at least not common to the type of shooting I normally did on squirrel.

The sight picture was still the same, for the aiming point in either case was the head. But until I had taken enough shots at squirrels just showing their heads to establish a normal, I wasn't as consistently accurate as when they exposed their entire body.

Just knowing that all these elements are projected into the setup will improve a hunter's field shooting.

When Art Richardson, my hunting friend, occasionally goes afield after jack rabbit or ground squirrel, leaving his .270 Winchester home, and taking his old .38/40 lever action, there is method in his madness. This rifle, with its rainbow trajectory curve makes him acutely conscious of all the elements of ac­curate field shooting. Distances are emphasized, not in yards, but in effective ranges.

Up to a certain point, trajectory cancels out range. A flat shooting varmint rifle such as the .270 using a 100 grain bullet, the .22/250 with a 48 grain, or the .220 Swift with the same weight bullet, can put afield shot on the right side of the ledger. But still, even with these fast stepping calibers, the skilled field shot either consciously or subconsciously has a range picture when he touches one off.

Recently I had the pleasure of field testing a rifleman gadget which will teach a hunter more about light effect on field ranges, rough terrain, color and such, than anything which I have examined. It is Bushnell's Range Finder, put out by Bushnell Optical Co., Pasadena, California. It is very accurate up to 600 yards, giving you precise range readings. Used to check the effect of lighting alone, it is worth its weight in gold for the hunter seriously using the small game and varmint fields as a laboratory in which to develop big game hunting tech­niques and skills.

There should be no slavish dependence on it before you have formed your own opinion of the range. Rather it should be used to check your own range pictures. Used in this man­ner, it certainly will save you a lot of weary pacing off of long shots, of trying to find out the reason for unaccountable misses when the sights were right, the let-off perfect, and no wind to harry your light, fast stepping bullet.

No question about range picture, once you have used a range finder to check a shot. Maybe it is paradoxical to say that by using a range finder to give you precise measurements in yards will train you to see your ranges, not as a measurement reduced to yards, but as range pictures giving you maxi­mum field shooting accuracy, but it is fact. Range pictures, to an experienced field shot are as precise and as attention get­ting as the crosshairs centered on a grey or fox squirrel or a woodchuck taking a sun bath in front of his den. They are basic factors of all accurate field shooting and have very, very little to do with estimates of range in actual yards.