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Thoughts from the Gunner's Guru -- September 2006
The Guru discusses the proliferation of the bench rest, pole arms, heavy rifles for buffalo, and firearm safety in combat.
By Col. (Ret.) Jeff Cooper
The proliferation of the bench rest has been a definite backward step in marksmanship. Properly used, the bench rest practically eliminates human error, and human error is the measure of marksmanship. The revered Townsend Whelen left us with the troublesome dictum that "only accurate rifles are interesting." This is simply not true, in my opinion. Most rifles are more accurate in the inherent sense than almost all shooters, and this gets us nowhere.
I was distressed by the idea as a youth, unaware that a rifle's worth must be evaluated by the purpose for which it is intended. A rifle that is particularly suited to stopping a charging elephant need not print minute-of-angle groups. Printing tiny groups is only critical if the printing of tiny groups is the object of the exercise, and this is usually not the case. In my opinion, the most important single desideratum in a rifle is "shootability"--a combination of at least half a dozen different characteristics. This is certainly not to say that intrinsic accuracy in a rifle is not important, but it is to say that small increments of accuracy are too often overemphasized.
Who is a good shot? Let us say a man who can do with his weapon what it was intended to do--always and every time--is a good shot. A man who spends much time in a target-rich environment with unvaried success may be called a good shot. This depends to a certain extent upon the nature of the challenge. If a shooter is never confronted with really hard problems, this standard may not apply.
But if a number of challenges were reasonably difficult, I suppose he may be considered to be "a good man with a gun." I know half a dozen or more field marksmen who are really good, and I have seen them prove their point. If a man pulled off something really difficult three or four times, I guess that will establish him, but he has to be able to bring this sort of thing off on demand. It is not something that he once did under observation.
When early man first affixed an axillary point to a shaft, he created the first pole arm. This weapon is called different things in different languages, but in English it is normally called a spear--or a pike if it is used on foot, a javelin if it is thrown or a lance if it is used on horseback. It has been with us through the ages. Hector and Achilles fought with spears outside the walls of Troy, but we do not have any description of what spears they used or how they used them. The Roman legions overran the world with the pilum, but we are not sure how they held it. The Swiss mercenaries of the enlightenment frustrated medieval cavalry with the pike, and we do have some idea of how it was used--as a horse stopper, if not in a man-against-man mode. Hermann Göring, who was Reich Jagermeister, was known to be the last German hunter to kill a wild boar on foot with the boar spear. According to illustrations, he used the cross piece and held the weapon knuckles up forward and knuckles down aft.
Coming down to us ceremonially, the British infantry senior NCOs used what was called a spontoon, which was a badge of office and used for dressing the lines, among other things. The Swiss guard at the Vatican today display the halberd, which is sort of a spontoon to which is affixed a cutting edge back of a point, though they do not cut anybody with it anymore, as far as I can tell. I have a small selection of pole arms on display, but I am past the point of using them for any serious purpose--I hope.
Is a heavy rifle really necessary for buffalo? While it is not absolutely necessary, I think it is desirable. We do, however, want to avoid the problem of the hunter who is scared of his gun--and there are those. By a heavy rifle, I mean .45 caliber and 500 grains or about .40 caliber and 400 grains. The latter is a borderline case--a light heavy. People do just fine, of course, if the shot is properly placed, but that is true of a light rifle nearly all the time. If you have access to a heavy rifle and you enjoy shooting it, it is certainly your first choice for buffalo.
If nothing else, we professors of the modern technique seem to have gotten across Rule 3. The photos we see back from the contact areas all seem to demonstrate the straight trigger finger outside the trigger guard prior to the moment of truth. This is a good thing, and if we are responsible for it, we will accept appropriate pats on the back.
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