PART I. FIELD SHOOTING AND BASIC HUNTING

Chapter 4. Small Game Field Shooting Positions

The trail lead through a frost-touched multicolored forest, the oak and maple trees a riot of crimsons, deep reds and browns. A golden autumn haze filled the val­leys, and if you listened you could hear quail calling lonesome-ly for the lost summer. Grant Hartwell and I were walking this ridge trail, as men should be doing each autumn, our minds on deer, light overnight packs on our backs, wholly content with the world.

While deer was the prime objective, a couple of grey squirrels for a stew wouldn't be amiss, nor for that matter a blue grouse.

Swinging around a bend we flushed a big old buster of a blue grouse. It angled up through the trees with a frantic beat­ing of wings and perched on an oak limb about thirty yards away, neck outstretched, its nervousness reflected in its constant stepping about as it watched our every move. We remained perfectly quiet for a space of a few moments, knowing that the least untoward movement would touch off our hair triggered game at once. When it quieted down a bit, Grant eased over a few steps toward the huge mossy bole of an oak, rested his forearm against it for the shot.

I waited intently, my pulse surging just as strongly as if he had a big buck under his sights. The silence was shattered by the roar of his .30/30 Model 99 Savage. The grouse tumbled from its lofty perch into the deep mast under the trees, drum­med frantically for a moment then lay still. I walked over and picked up our quarry. Its head had been neatly severed by that 170 grain slug, an excellent bit of small game field shooting.

Small game field shooting has problems of positions which merit a lot of study and practice by hunters. Fortunately there is no essential difference between small and large game shoot­ing, and what is learned in the small game fields is directly applicable to big game coverts. Each places emphasis on the time element, practical accuracy and range picture.

Quite often the decision as to shooting position is made by the game itself. A squirrel alerted by your careful stalking, wait­ing for a tip-off from you before taking to the security of its den tree, has so compressed the time element you have in which to get off the shot, you must take it from the position in which you find yourself more often than not a snapshot off-hand.

When Art Richardson and I were hunting ground squirrel that early June morning, taking them "field run" each shot was governed by the game itself, to a great extent. Squirrels scurrying toward the protection of their burrows had snap­shooting written all over them. Those which stood up momen­tarily to inspect their surroundings had the same urgency in their attitude.

Essentially, there are three basic field shooting positions which are practical, and used for more than ninety-eight per cent of all field shooting. These three positions are: standing, sitting and kneeling. The prone position can sometimes also be used in long range woodchuck sniping and in mountain hunting. But a too slavish use of the prone position tends to a deliberateness wholly at odds with field accuracy because of the time element usually interjected by the game itself.

Modifications of the three prime field shooting positions: sitting, standing and kneeling, are almost infinite in number.

Game, large or small, are either in motion or have the threat of movement. The times you will find game at rest, with no threat of explosive action are comparatively rare. Usually it is movement which first attracts a hunter, and that not only conditions field shooting positions but also the shot itself.

Offhand shooting requires the most skill, and is the most used in field shooting, and at the same time it is one in which most hunters are least competent. There is an obvious modifi­cation of range technique in offhand field shooting. An off­hand field shot is precise and clear cut in action—no hesitation—when the sights are on, the shot is made immediately. Trig­ger squeeze and sight alignment complement each other, each an integral part of practical field accuracy.

Offhand snapshooting stance is more readily learned from shooting than from the rifle range.

Next a careful synchronizing of trigger squeeze and sight alignment, balance is important in offhand field shooting. Misses in this type field shooting can very often be traced to an off balanced position. When any game flushes wildly, squirrel, deer, elk or rabbit, and the gunner is caught off-balance, his ability to get on the target, to lead his quarry when necessary, is so greatly complicated that a vital hit is almost an impossibility.

Balance stripped of its esoteric nonsense, means simply that you are on your two good feet, ready to step forward or back to give you the most stable position for your shot. And that simmers down to bringing your feet close enough together so you can swivel from the hips to follow your game without the compelling necessity of shuffling around, once your rifle is at your shoulder.

On running shots a hunter is swinging with his game as his rifle comes up. The instance the butt of his rifle touches his shoulders, his sights are on. For he has done the basic sighting as his rifle is mounted. It comes up aligned for a snapshot.

Al Wyman, easing along a hardwood ridge, his rifle at the carry, can explode into action with a smoothness and deadly precision which is the hallmark of all great field shots. Deer, elk, grey squirrel, rabbit, no matter the game, there is no hesitation, no groping for the best position from which to take the shot. "Iffen I get my feet 'pinted' right, the rest is easy," he once told me. Getting one's feet pointed right for an off­hand snapshot is not as far fetched as it seems, either. If you are a right handed rifleman, and go into action with your left foot pointed directly at the position where your game is flush­ing, initial alignment has been accomplished. Not only that, but you are now in a position to keep your target under your sights through a 180 degree circle without moving your feet, swiveling from the hips to follow your game. In order to do this, your feet cannot be more than fourteen inches apart, or you will find your position becoming more cramped on the fol­low through.

In assuming the offhand field shooting position, your weight is on the balls of your feet. Your body leans slightly forward, arm extended well out on the forearm of your rifle, relaxed and free swinging. Maybe you will actually follow your target with your rifle; more often you will swing ahead to a small opening, intercepting your game at a point which affords the only clear shooting.

It takes practice to develop form, but form underlies all field shooting skills. Small game hunting is an ideal place in which to iron out inaccuracies, not only because the same type shots are called for here as you will later use in big game hunt­ing, but also because you have a much more extended season, so many more chances to improve your skill.

Snapshooting is one phase of offhand shooting. There are other phases of almost equal importance, especially squirrel hunting with a rifle. Quite often it is possible to get additional steadiness for a precise shot by resting an arm against the side of a tree, log, or rock ledge—easing off the shot from a standing position with the steadiness of a kneeling or sitting stance.

Any rifle, however, more powerful than a .22 rim fire will tend to "shoot away" from a rest. Where the rifle itself is held directly against the side of a tree, and the shot taken at 100 yards or so, this tendency can make a mighty contribution to­ward a miss, especially if the target is fairly small. Some rifles will move their point of impact as much as four or five inches to one side when thus held. The same condition exists, when a rifle is placed across a rock or log for the shot, except now it will shoot high. All rifles should be cushioned with a hand between it and any steadying rest, regardless of the position used.

Sitting position is best for those intermediate shots at small game such as woodchuck, ground squirrel, coyote or other pred­ator far enough away that careful stalking hasn't alarmed it. In a sitting position, the body acts as a tripod support for your rifle, giving a very steady stance from which to make a precision shot. Properly positioned, you are turned well away from your intended target, feet well apart, elbows resting on, or slightly over, the knees. However, some very good field shots cross their feet, and one excellent game shot never rests his trigger arm on his knee at all, maintaining that a follow up shot is much faster with his lever action when he doesn't have to disturb his shoot­ing stance by going out of position, as it were, to reload.

While sitting is an excellent small game shooting position, it, like the offhand position, has the added virtue of being fre­quently used in big game hunting. Any skill developed in small game and pest shooting using this position, is directly aimed at improving your big game shooting accuracy. My field notes in­dicate that while hunting mule deer in the comparatively open ranges of the west I have used the sitting position for at least half of the shots obtained, and for all shots except those taken in the jackpine thickets and other heavily forested areas. In these, of course, it was a case of snapshooting.

The sitting position is an easy one in which to drop for a shot calling for additional steadiness. But it does require practice to develop the necessary skill to make it effective afield. That means practice out in the small game field, where the ground is uneven, and the game places a premium on time. It is well to try a few "dry runs" in this position when you are afield, even before trying for a small game or pest shot. It is an excellent way of ironing out rough spots in one's technique.

Kneeling has many more field shooting virtues than one would at once suppose. It is not as steady as the sitting position, but is much faster. Its chief virtue is that it gives you a com­paratively unobstructed view for a shot in a forest by placing you below the bough line of the trees.

Once while hunting snowshoe rabbit in jackpine thickets, I obtained four shots at these oversized bunnies, and in each in­stance I had to take them from the kneeling position to get below the snow laden limbs of the trees. In this same section, only a few days later, I managed to finagle a big buck by the kneeling position.

There are probably more excellent prone rifle shots than riflemen with any great degree of competence in any of the other positions. By the same token, the prone position has fewer hunting virtues than any other field position. But if its negative qualities stopped here, it wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately, however, prone shooting robs riflemen of confidence in the more practical offhand, sitting and kneeling positions.

When the target is a fox squirrel in the top of a butternut or a grey squirrel playing it canny in an oak with a breeze ruffling the leaves and the target unsteady, then the shot must be taken from a standing position, and prone rifle practice can contribute nothing to the skill required for a killing shot.

There is, however, one virtue retrievable from prone rifle shooting. Quite often a hunter has a chance to lie across a rock, stump or other object for a shot. While technically I suppose this could scarcely be called prone rifle shooting, it does give rock steadiness for a shot, and in addition it gives a fair view above fern, grass and other low growing stuff which would prevent a hunter from taking the shot lying directly on the ground.

Each field shooting position has a different yardstick of accuracy by which to measure its effectiveness. Each position is a compromise.

In offhand snapshooting a hunter trades accuracy for time. Offhand targets, such as a squirrel scurrying for its den tree or a woodchuck streaking through the clover stubble, has a time element built into the shot which cancels out the more accurate shooting positions, such as sitting or kneeling. But if the range is short, a hunter can swap the additional accuracy of a sitting position for the extra split seconds of a snapshot. If he does score a miss with his first shot, he is still in position for another following shot.

When ranges are extended and the game is unalarmed, the reverse is true. A hunter can trade time for additional accuracy.

Once, while coming out of the wilderness section of the Pistol River section of southwestern Oregon, after a small game hunt­ing-fishing expedition, I waited while Hartwell made a very careful stalk of a grey squirrel. This was the last day of our trip, and camp grub consisted of about a cup of flour, some salt and pepper, a smear of lard—enough to cook a squirrel.

I could see a trade coming up as Grant eased toward a large oak. When he came along side of this tree, he waited for the squirrel to sit up with an acorn, affording a nice target. Grant, apparently, was going to trade the fast shooting qualities of an offhand effort for a more accurate shot from a rest. I watched him place his gun arm along side the lichen covered bole of the oak for his shot, pause, then fire.

At the shot our quarry came tumbling down, to lie in the mast, a nice plump grey for our midday meal.

The shot was made with a handgun, a subject covered in a separate chapter, but the episode thoroughly exemplifies the compromise inherent in all field shooting positions. Each shot, even at the expense of reiteration, is a definite compromise between ultimate speed and ultimate accuracy. Split second decisions are built into each shooting opportunity afield. How well you weigh speed of the different field positions against their accuracy, in a large measure, determines their effectiveness.