SNAP SHOOTING

When you have become fairly proficient at hitting moving objects, you will be able, with a little practice, to soon pick up the knack of snap shooting.

By snap shooting I do not mean the sort of competition where you are given three-seconds intervals. That is merely “fast deliberate aim,” in fact is as slow as allowable for practical shooting, slower is mere target shooting.

Snap shooting is when the pistol is fired the instant it is levelled without any dwelling on the aim.

Use a big target, at ten or twelve yards.

Keep your head up, eyes fixed on the target.

As you raise your pistol, begin squeezing and let the pistol off as it comes horizontal.

With practice you can put all your shots close together. It is the most mechanical of all pistol shooting.

You get to putting shot after shot in the same place like throwing marbles into a hat.

You can test how mechanical it becomes for yourself.After putting a dozen shots close together, try to put a dozen shots a foot higher on the target.

You will find yourself all at sea, and will have to begin aiming. Then you get so mechanical you will find it difficult to hit a foot lower, which you found so easy before.

Your arm has got so used to lifting to a certain position, your trigger finger to squeeze when the arm is raised to exactly the same position, that the whole thing becomes as mechanical and subconscious as swinging your arms and legs as you walk.

Your arms swing to exactly the same spot each time. Try to take longer or shorter steps, and to swing your arms further or less far, and you will see how mechanical your ordinary walk is.

If you want to win a prize for snap shooting, you can, by practising constantly under identical conditions of distance, shape, colour, height of target, and lighting, get so mechanical that it takes an effort not to hit the same spot continually.

For this reason, to learn snap shooting, not merely forming a habit, it is best to constantly vary the height of the target you shoot at, or try to hit various parts alternately.

Get someone (if you are shooting at a man target) to call out “head” at the first beat of the metronome (beating at 120 to the minute), and try to hit the head before the next beat of the metronome.

Then he will call “feet” and it is ten to one that you will swing too high; or if it was “feet” first you will not be able to get as high as the “head” next time.

You can put in your shots at great speed if it is always to the same spot, but if you have to vary and do not know where you are to hit, till you get the word to go, it is impossible to shoot quite so fast accurately.

For this reason it is well not to think one has mastered snap shooting when one has got into the knack of putting all one’s shots on the same spot.

Snap shooting and shooting at moving objects, are the two sorts of shooting of real use.

Shooting long shots (which I will treat of next) may be useful at times, but deliberate shooting at minute bull’s-eyes is only useful for winning prizes and getting a reputation for being a “Crack Revolver-Shot.”

My world’s record snap-shooting score was published in the newspapers with the words under it—“This is the highest at present, but it will, of course, soon be beaten.”

Naturally, it was not as pretty a group as the target published next to it, which had been shot with deliberate aim, but this latter score has been equalled dozens of times. While my rapid-fire score is unbeaten (Appendix 10 and 11). The value of a score can only be judged if the conditions it was shot under are known.

If you want to be thought a good shot by the public, leave rapid, snap, and moving object shooting alone, otherwise your best scores will look so bad beside those of the man who aims, lowers his pistol, aims again, wipes his hands, and after half an hour of these antics, scores a bull’s-eye.