Chapter III: Snap Shooting--Deliberate Swing--Rapid Swing

AN ANALYSIS AND A COMPARISON

Almost every writer on the topic of field shooting will at some time mention making a snap shot at a bird, or perhaps covering another and then swinging ahead before firing. The reader can readily gather from these essays that snapping is a very prompt way of delivering a shot, while the swing is both more deliberate and more accurate. It is not likely, however, that, taught by books solely, the student will ever be able to fix in his own mind exactly what a snap shot is nor what constitutes a swinging shot further than that one is discharged in much the shorter time. Still less will he have grounds for deciding which particular style of shooting he ought himself to adopt.

The object of this chapter is to analyze these systems of aiming, making as plain as possible what constitutes a snap shot, what a deliberate swing, and the difference in principle between a deliberate and a rapid swing. Simple diagrams and drawings are used to illustrate with the hope of making the subject plainer to the beginner.

The term “line of swing” will be used frequently in this chapter so it is well to give an early explanation of its meaning. The accompanying diagram shows the line of swing. It is the line covered by the moving gunsights from the time the piece strikes the shoulder or the sights are caught to where they are pointed when the gun is fired. The character of this gun movement or sight movement constitutes the difference in the three styles of gun aiming that we are discussing.

Technically, snap shooting has no line of swing, the aim being taken before the gun is brought up, the sights are thrown directly to the desired point and the arm is discharged the instant the butt hits the shoulder. While this is snap shooting proper, it is a very ineffective manner of firing even at an object at rest, for the reason that when the butt jams into the shoulder muscles the latter give and then rebound, causing the gun muzzle to vibrate to such an extent as to insure a miss except with a very wide spread of pattern. Selecting a point of aim before the gun is thrown to the shoulder is making a pretty fine calculation too, it must be admitted; the bird might spring to the north of you, and without a moment’s hesitation you would have to know the precise spot to the northwest where the shot charge would meet it.

Such absolute judgment of speed and angle of flight is next to impossible, and the experienced gunner never attempts snap shooting in this fashion except when he perceives that the opportunity to shoot at all will be so fleeting that it is either a rough snap shot or none. Impressed with the belief that wing-shooting is merely jerking up the gun and lamming away, the novice is liable to practice just this sort of snapping with the result that when he does hit he cannot tell why, nor give a reason for his misses. The expert who can handle his gun like a part of himself cannot shoot successfully in this manner, much less a tyro who is none too sure of the easy shots.

There is another style of snap shooting, however, that is widely practiced by nearly all clever upland shots. It consists of throwing the gun close to the game with the motion of bringing it to the shoulder, but always sufficiently under it. From this point beneath the target the line of swing travels in a direct course with great quickness to the place where the gun is discharged, following the line C-E, shown in the diagram on page 221.

Suppose a grouse has sprung from the brush and is circling to the left and rising. It has been estimated that a grouse or a quail will be ten feet into the air before a man’s mind can give his nerves and muscles any instruction whatever. Then if a rough snap shot were to be made the gun would be at once flung ahead of the bird and there fired. The difficulty of making such a shot is obvious. In the first place the motion of raising a gun to the shoulder is complicated compared with moving to a given spot after it is up and steady. Moreover in a rough snap there is never any change of aim from the place the mind estimates as right. The gun is simply thrown to that place and fired.

Orders have been given which the mind cannot alter if it would, and even should the bird be killed meantime by another gunner the snapped piece would be discharged precisely as though the bird were still flying. Thus we see that the problems confronting the rough snap shot are: a mechanical inability to jam a gun to the shoulder and shoot to a given spot, and the extraordinary judgment required to foretell where the bird will be when the arm is ready to fire.

We have all heard of some snap shots that were as quick as lightning, and of course if this were literally so the shot could be sent to the first possible place, but it should be remembered that the man is probably walking with his gun down, and during the short space of say half a second he must get his feet into position, make his estimates, and bring up his gun--meantime the bird will be doing something you may be sure, covering not less than twenty-five feet. Nevertheless it is not to be doubted that the quicker the shooter, the lighter his gun, and the more open his pattern the simpler his problem becomes.

At best, however, shooting in this fashion, an expert could not expect to connect with more than one bird in three. Knowing this the skilled wing-shot would never attempt the rough snap except that suppose at the natural place of aim there was a tree with brush beyond; reaching this tree the grouse would have been safe so nothing remained but to chance the lightning snap at the point marked. It follows that the novice should never deliver a rough snap unless any other kind of an aim is impossible either because the bird will be out of sight or possibly out of range. In either of which events it is to be preferred to not shooting at all.

The second or practical style of snap shooting is much more reliable. With this method the gun is thrown up below the target; first, that the view of the game may not be obscured in the least; second, that time may be given to the gun muzzle to cease its vibrations ere it covers the point of aim; third, that while the line of swing is moving steadily yet rapidly to the point where the charge is to go the trigger finger can be given due warning to pull; fourth, the estimates for lead and speed of flight are greatly simplified because only taken from the time the gun is up and not from the rising of the bird. The problem here is to make the line of aim cross the line of flight of the bird, and this is comparatively easy.

In its principle rough snap shooting throws the gun to the point of aim without a line of swing. That of semi-snap shooting is to _intersect_ the line of flight with the line of swing in the shortest and most direct way. For instance, with some angles of flight the gun might be thrown too far ahead and then the “line of aim” would be carried back toward the flying target. Naturally this happens seldom unless the bird changes his course, the skilled shot endeavoring to throw up his weapon in such a position that it will only be necessary to lift it straight to the spot where it will be fired.

The more accurate the judgment of the sportsman as to the bird’s speed of flight the nearer he will come to throwing his piece to the proper place with a consequent shorter line of swing and a quicker shot. But in doing this it should not be forgotten that the line of swing must always be of sufficient length to steady the gun before it covers the mark, and to fairly warn the pulling finger. Otherwise you are on the bird, as they say, “before you know it,” and the result is an almost inevitable miss. This not infrequently happens with straightaway birds, where in the nature of things the swing is short, and it is a most productive and irritating source of misses. Indeed it is an axiom with veteran field shots that the driving bird requires the steadiest of all holding.

Successful snap shooting necessitates a very quick and sensitive trigger. Bear in mind that the line of aim merely intercepts the line of flight and can only do so at one point, at one instant; any dwelling upon the trigger, a pressure that comes the smallest fraction of a second too soon or too late, leads to certain missing. The bird may be traveling fifty feet a second, the line of swing a hundred feet a second or more; should the trigger yield the one-hundredth of a second fast or slow the game will be missed a foot. Any irregularity of trigger pulling is fatal, and a man who needs a greater time than a fiftieth of a second to release his trigger had better adopt some other style of aiming.

Snap shooting or semi-snap shooting is an effective style of aiming only upon birds that are not changing their angle with regard to the gun too rapidly--that is upon straightaway or quartering birds. Should the quarry rise and swing about the gun would inevitably have to follow it if the piece came up promptly, or a swift-flying fowl might come in from the right and pass to the left before it could be covered, with the result that the gun would have to move after and overtake it before being discharged. This would lead to the third mode of aiming, technically known as a rapid swing.

In this style the line of aim travels along the line of flight or preferably takes a parallel course just beneath it for the sake of an unobstructed view. The working principle of the rapid swing is that the gun is invariably aligned behind the bird and the “line of aim” is then swung after it much faster than the bird is traveling, until it overtakes and passes the moving mark to the point where the charge is sent.

The strength of this system of gun aiming lies in this: The gun moving in the path of flight of the game takes the elevation automatically. In illustration of this, should the bird be rising the line of aim rises also and will continue to do so after passing the bird, necessarily striking its mark unless the course of the target alters radically. Of course an identical rule would apply were the bird descending, climbing, or taking any other angle of elevation so long as the line of swing followed the line of flight and passed it the proper distance.

Rapid swing simplifies lead also, for should the line of aim be traveling three times as fast as the bird flies an estimated lead of one foot would place the charge three feet ahead of the bird, the gain being made during the interim of pressing the trigger and the passage of the shot up the barrel. Moreover it must be borne in mind that now the line of aim is not intersecting that of flight but traveling with it, which permits considerable latitude in trigger pulling. Should the gunner be a trifle quick or slow the charge still being in line will probably catch the mark with some portion of the pattern.

Almost every skillful wildfowl gunner uses the rapid swing, and many do so in the uplands as well. Birds with a speed of from sixty to one hundred miles an hour are entirely too fast to be snapped with any certainty.

The diagram indicates the difference in lead between a swinging shot and a snap shot. The bird is supposed to be distant from the gun one hundred feet, and is traveling at the rate of one hundred feet a second. The normal velocity of a shot charge over a one hundred foot course is eight hundred feet a second, and at this velocity it would require one-eighth of a second for the pellets to reach the mark. In one-eighth of a second the fowl would fly twelve and one-half feet which is the theoretical lead necessary for shot and target to connect. If the line of aim intersects the line of flight at right angles--as in snap shooting--the full theoretical lead must be taken, and if there is any dwelling upon the trigger a further allowance must be given.

But with a swinging shot in which the line of aim travels three times as fast as the bird, this sighting line will move six feet in the fiftieth of a second required for a quick man to pull the trigger and for the passage of the shot up the barrel. Hence we have lead for a snap shot twelve and one-half feet, lead for a swinging shot six and one-half feet. In case of the man who requires the maximum length of time to pull, or six-one-hundredths of a second, a further lead of six feet would have to be given with a snap shot or a total of eighteen and one-half feet. No man could make such an estimate.

By consulting experienced wing-shots it will be learned that hardly any two of them will make the same estimate for the lead necessary to kill at a given distance; neither theoretically nor practically are they holding at the same place. In fact with the rapid swing every man is a law unto himself, the distance he holds ahead being governed by the rapidity of his swing, his time in trigger pulling, and his habit of maintaining a uniform gun movement after pressing the trigger. One shooter might swing rapidly but would check his piece at the moment of firing and so lose all the advantage of swinging: another would accelerate the motion of his muzzle at the instant of firing and so gain more than six feet. The same thing could be done by the individual of slow trigger, who if he pulled in six-one-hundredths of a second could actually gain eighteen feet and would not need to make any lead at all--neither would he hit anything, for it might well be stated now that a pull of as slow as six-one-hundredths of a second is quite too slow for wing-shooting.

Nevertheless some of the best duck shots that I have ever known stated positively that they made no allowance whatever for speed of flight or distance of the mark further than to merely hold in front and swing. Watching them at work I arrived at the conclusion that they made the necessary gain entirely by the rapidity with which they swung--for all of them moved their pieces very swiftly--and not by any hesitation on the trigger.

Doubtless the acme of wing-shooting is to be able to swing with such rapidity and uniformity as to obviate the necessity for any lead, but it will not do for the novice to attempt to graduate his first year in school. Indeed the average sportsman never learns to shoot in this way, neither should he endeavor to do so unless so situated that he can fire shot after shot days, weeks, and months in succession.

Indeed the swifter the swing the graver the problem of so governing it that the shot can be placed with sufficient precision to strike the mark. The neophyte can readily learn this for himself by attempting to shoot at a stationary mark while swinging the gunsights past it. Experience soon teaches the gunner about how fast he can swing successfully, and his endeavor henceforth should be to make this movement as mechanically uniform as possible, studying carefully the results which he secures from it.

A semi-snap shot and a rapid swing may readily merge into one another. The gunner may throw up his weapon with a view to making a snap shot, but finding the bird has passed his gun he must needs swing after it. In the same way when intending to place his piece upon the line of the bird’s flight he might fall below it, being then obliged both to swing with the bird and to raise his gun to intersect its flight.

The two styles of aiming are readily used in conjunction, also, as in live pigeon shooting where the shooter ordinarily makes a practical snap with the first barrel and a rapid swing with the second. A like system is preferred by the crack field shot who snaps with his first barrel before the game is at top speed, and then swings on with the second should he miss. One thing must forever be borne in mind by the swinging shot and that is never to check the gun when pulling the trigger.

In upland shooting upon such game as quail, snipe, chickens, partridge, and woodcock, birds that rise near the gun, nearly every shot can be taken without any allowance for lead or elevation, it being merely necessary to swing upon the line of flight past the game and fire with the result of killing nine birds out of ten which is a pretty good percentage in any event. The truth is that in such work, especially in the brush, there is no time to think of allowance for lead, but this can always be secured automatically by swinging, and therein is the advantage over any description of snap shot.

There remains to be described the deliberate swing. It fits in with the old one eye manner of aiming and is becoming antiquated along with it. With the deliberate swing the game is first covered usually by throwing the line of sight in front of it, and then moving with the target, at the proper distance in advance until the trigger is pulled. The principle involved is to maintain the requisite lead while the trigger is being pressed, continuing the swing at the same rate until the charge is out of the gun. In theory this system of aiming is the most accurate of all, because whether the trigger is pressed instantly or dwelt upon the pattern will with like certainty reach the desired lead. For instance if the line of aim is traveling three feet in advance of the line of flight, which distance is maintained until the shot are on the way, it cannot matter whether the trigger is pressed in one-hundredth of a second or six-hundredths.

Obviously with this system of aiming no gain is made by the swing and the same allowance for speed and distance is required as though the target was snapped.

The trouble with this mode of aiming is that it develops a very slow, poky, pottering style. There being no precise moment when the trigger _must_ be pulled, the gunner almost invariably acquires the ill habit of dwelling upon the trigger. For this reason the deliberate swing cannot be used upon any game that is quick in its movements, that swerves and dodges like a snipe or a quail. Hence such a slow system of aiming is not adapted to anything except waterfowl or such birds as are seen approaching and remain within gunshot some time.

I have seen most excellent work upon wildfowl by those who swung deliberately in front of the target and am ready to believe that the style can be made very effective upon such birds. In duck shooting where the birds are passing and have acquired maximum speed it certainly has the advantage of any sort of snap work.

Nevertheless my advice to the beginner would be to acquire the rapid swing. It accomplishes everything that can be done with the deliberate and does it quicker and better, with a minimum of nerve expenditure. It requires double the expenditure of nerve force to shoot deliberately as to pull quickly, and no man should endeavor to develop the slow style unless nature has made him steady and phlegmatic.