Part IV. SMALL GAME HUNTING WITH HANDGUNS

Chapter 11. Small Game Shooting with Handguns

East of my cabin the hills rise fold on fold, a mixed forest of firs, and hemlock, with hazel and huckle­berry on the open ridges. It is a boss setup for squirrel in autumn. Before you come to these ridges, however, you will cross my not too well cared for upland pastures, a patch work of grass and clover, thickets of berry vines. It all adds up to some very good small game hunting. I hunt squirrel in the woods with a model 39-A .22 lever action Marlin. At times I still-hunt rabbit through those overgrown pastures. But always, when the season shows I have harvested the surplus, I turn to handgun hunting through those briar grown pastures and along those high ridges.

Sure, I take less game hunting with a handgun. I also put in more time in careful stalking, re-emphasizing the importance of wood craft in all hunting. Later, when I prowl those same ridges with a big game rifle in my hands, I am actually aware of the important part handgun hunting plays in making me a more efficient big game shot and hunter.

In handgun shooting afield you have every rifle problem of steady holding, trigger squeeze, and trajectory doubly em­phasized. Once you become an accurate field shot with a hand­gun, rifle shooting will seem startlingly easy in comparison.

There are two approaches to handgun field shooting, just as there are two approaches to field shooting with a rifle. You can adapt target range techniques to field requirements with either. Or you can subordinate target shooting techniques to field re­quirements with greatly increased efficiency in your game shooting.

If there was ever a sport handicapped with a lot of useless trappings, it is that of handgun shooting. A stylized method of handling handguns, more in keeping with dueling, has been the bane of handguns for years. Maybe this is because it started out as a "gentleman's weapon" when it was considered smart for a couple of knot-heads to get up at dawn and take a few cracks at each other at thirty paces—off-hand, of course.

They missed each other more often than not, and a lot of sportsmen are still missing with handguns because they still use a dueling approach to the problem of shooting.

Consider a difficult shot with either a rifle or handgun. Suppose you have in mind a fox squirrel, tree top high, in an autumn touched walnut or oak. A rifleman will take every advantage afforded by any natural rest in his shooting. He will use a steady sitting position if possible, resting his hand against a tree—anything to squeeze an extra fraction of an inch accuracy from his shooting. But how about the average handgun shooter confronted with the same problem? More than likely he will up and blaze away at his target without any advantage of rest, dueling fashion, and with about the usual dueling results.

Honestly now, can you think of any reason why a hand-gunner shouldn't also take full advantage of a steady position for his shooting, just as a rifleman does? Only recently the army took a long searching look at its program of pistol training. It measured it against the demands of battle shooting. As a result, there has been a drastic revision of training positions, some­thing which should have happened several decades ago.

Today the army teaches soldiers to shoot with a handgun from the sitting, kneeling, and prone positions, in addition to the standing off-hand position. In this they are merely taking a leaf from the backwoods trapper and hunter, who have always used handguns for field shooting in this manner.

Accuracy is increased by at least seventy-five per cent, using practical rifle techniques, "woods holding" a handgun.

If you can keep your shots in a six-inch circle at twenty-five yards off-hand, and it is surprising how many outdoorsmen cannot, you will be able to keep them in two inches from the sitting position. If you can keep them in three inches off-hand, you will literally stack them one on top of the other, "woods holding" your handgun, taking every advantage of position the shot affords.

The most practical field position for handgun shooting, especially for open country where the target is either rabbit, ground squirrel or woodchuck, is the sitting position. You can hold handguns rock steady for those comparatively long range shots of fifty yards or so, driving a bullet with startling accuracy, when measured against the conventional off-hand revolver stance.

Once, hiking through the back country with Al Wyman, I watched him perform on a variety of small game with a .38 Special Smith and Wesson. During our four day hike he took three rabbits, a grey squirrel and a blue grouse to supplement our rather light grubstake.

The grouse I especially remember because it was such a beautiful shot, fully exemplifying the high accuracy potential of handgun shooting. We topped out on an open timbered ridge where the small fir stood as straight as Coldstream Guards. Scattered through the open glades, clumps of huckleberry bushes bowed under a heavy weight of rich black fruit. Raccoon had been feeding on them along with a few bear and occasional blue grouse.

The particular blue grouse I have in mind flew from a clump of huckleberry to perch well out on the bare lower limbs of a slender fir, a shot of about thirty-five yards. Al dropped into the sitting position, moved his feet slightly to get into a rock steady stance. At the sound of the shot the big blue grouse came tumbling from its perch to beat a tatoo on the forest floor with its wings. When I walked down to pick it up, I found its head neatly severed. A few hours later this grouse was simmering over our evening campfire.

What chance would a handgunner have, even the most expert, of taking that grouse using the stylized, dueling-target range off-hand shooting?

The sitting position is not greatly different with a handgun than the sitting position used in rifle shooting. Sit down, face your target, feet well apart, making a tripod support for your body. Grasp your handgun normally at the grip with your right hand, assuming you are a right handed shooter, then place your left hand over your right, your elbows resting over your knees. There must be no tension in your position. It should be relaxed.

A little practice in this position will immediately give you much better field accuracy with a handgun than most of the expert off-hand target shooting handgunners attain. It's a long shot from the western quick draw, beloved of story spinners, as well as dueling. Your hand will not be a blur of action as you snake your revolver from its holster, believe me. But there are other and more satisfying rewards. One of them is the aroma of small game stewing over your evening campfire when you are off on a hiking, exploring, or wilderness fishing trip.

Another very good field position is kneeling. This position is less steady than the sitting, just as it is in rifle shooting. But it is slightly faster. You can drop down on one knee as you bring your handgun from its holster for a quick shot, getting into action faster when a split second, wedded to accuracy, may mean the difference between a shot and no shot at all.

I recall one day's hunt with a handgun when ground squirrel was my quarry. I used the kneeling position time after time to snap shots at squirrels when they stood erect, momentarily, before popping down their holes. This final conning of their territory before diving to safety had a time element attached to it that made handgun shooting from a kneeling position fit it like a glove. I dropped into a kneeling position, resting my elbow on my right knee, got off my shot with dispatch, or found myself staring at a vacant mound of dirt in front of a ground squirrel's burrow.

Ranges that day were around fifty yards. I was using a .38 Special Smith and Wesson, 158 grain gas check bullet in front of 5.8 grains of Unique powder, for a velocity of about 1000 feet a second, a killing load.

Another position you will often see exemplified by back­woodsmen using a revolver is the standing, tree-rest position. This is a very practical, steady position, and is especially useful when you are shooting upward at an acute angle, when the sitting or kneeling position is scarcely feasible. Stand up to a small tree about six or eight inches in diameter, rest your gun arm along side it, your handgun well beyond the bole of the tree. Now reach around the tree from the other side with your free hand, grasp your gunhand at the wrist. Put a slight pressure on it. Notice how those sights steady down on your target?

When a big fox squirrel is at his antics in a beech tree, paus­ing occasionally to shuck out a tidbit, this is the position which will give you your best handgun accuracy for the shot.

These positions under discussion are the more important basic ones. They have infinite modification in field shooting with a handgun. There will be times when you Indian up on a ground squirrel or woodchuck, when a down tree, a rock or stone fence will give you an opportunity to rest your gunhand across it for a steady, accurate shot. There will be times, occasionally, when you will have an opportunity for a prone shot—all these in addition to the conventional off-hand position, making your handgun shooting much more accurate and versatile.

The standing, off-hand position has merit for field shooting, don't ever forget that. But like the off-hand position with a rifle, skill in using it comes only after you have acquired proficiency in the other positions. Most riflemen start by using the prone position—a very wise choice—if they eventually get around to more practical field shooting positions, such as the sitting and standing. It is seldom, however, that one become a crack shot by immediately concentrating on the standing position, the most unstable of the lot.

That is also true of handgun shooting. Starting with the more stable positions, such as sitting and kneeling, a handgunner develops a feel for his revolver or pistol. He develops confidence in it and his own ability to do accurate field shooting because he immediately gets better than fair results—something which is seldom possible when he starts directly in the off-hand shooting position.

The secret of accurate handgun shooting, as in rifles, is trigger control. It is especially important in handgun shooting because your firearm is much more unstable than a rifle. Once your ability to squeeze off a shot carefully, while keeping your sights aligned, becomes habit, all the rest of handgun shooting techniques are easily mastered. Preliminary practice of the trigger squeeze is best done from the more stable positions, for then the entire technique of shooting can be carefully broken down into its several component parts: steady holding, proper sight and range picture, and trigger squeeze.

Uniform pressure must be put on the trigger, increasing it until the handgun is fired. You must, at the same time, see your target right. You must keep those sights on during the entire process.

You will notice that your sights are never at rest, regardless of your shooting position. There is always some movement. The degree of this movement is conditioned by the position you use. In off-hand shooting you will find your sights describing a circle on your target. The size of this circle will depend on your ability to hold steadily, and it will become consistently smaller with practice. If your trigger squeeze is right, and you have no tendency to jerk, your shot will always hit within the circle on your target described by your sights.

This backwoods technique of using a handgun is a long way down the ridge from the romantic concept of handling revolvers, but it get results. There will be greater accuracy in field shooting with a handgun, and indirectly it will make you a better rifle shot.

A revolver or pistol emphasizes trajectories, the importance of steady holding, trigger control. After mastering practical handgun shooting on such game as squirrel, rabbit or wood-chuck, a rifle feels exceptionally stable in your hands. Its long sighting radius, its weight, its flat trajectory all make it seem a relatively simple matter. When that big whitetail buck comes crashing out of a laurel thicket in a shower of snow, you know him for the easy target he is: big, and comparatively easy to hit. You stand there complete master of the situation because you have hit smaller, more difficult targets with a handgun at those short woods ranges.