The shooting world of the present time is obsessed with long distance shooting. Shots of 800 yards at deer and elk are now common with today’s rifles and scopes. I commend those who have the ability and equipment to accomplish such feats. Indeed there must continue to be comradery among shooters of all persuasions if we are to maintain the right to bear arms. So, more power to these who make those unforgettable shots.
Actually, however, Americans have always been intrigued with long shots. Frontiersmen of the 1770s bragged of making hundred yard shots at squirrels with their Kentucky rifles. They ALWAYS hit them in the head. In Zane Grey’s book, The Spirit of the Border, set during the American Revolution, one of his fictional characters admits with some degree of embarrassment that while he could consistently hit a squirrel at a hundred yards, he did not always hit it in the head. Understandably we sometimes wonder if many of those unforgettable shots of the past were made with wind power rather than gun powder.
The longest verifiable shot made by an American hunter apparently was made by a man named Billy Dixon. Unfortunately the unforgettable shot was not made at game. Rather it happened at the end of the three day long Second Battle of Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle in 1874. The Walls held by twenty eight men and one woman, were attached by a force of some 700 or more plains Indians. As people throughout history have done, the Native Americans were simply defending their land and their livelihood. On the third day of the attack, the Indians, no closer to victory than when the siege began, withdrew to a ridge approximately a mile from the Walls. Their leaders, including their great mix bloodied Comanche Chief, Quanah Parker, (for whom Quanah, Texas is named) were sitting their horses trying to decide what to do next when Billy Dixon borrowed a 50 caliber buffalo gun from another of the defenders.(Most of whom were buffalo hunters) He then shot one of the warriors from his horse. That the shot was made at a range of at least nine tenths of a mile has been verified beyond question by numerous studies of the incident. Billy, himself, however, admitted the shot was not aimed at any particular one of the Indians. Nevertheless, Dixon’s shot convinced Quanah Parker the white man’s medicine was more than the Indians could handle. So he soundly condemned the medicine man that encouraged the attack on the Walls, and the Native Americans then withdrew leaving the “town” unconquered. Thus Billy Dixon’s unforgettable shot won the battle. It was a shot heard across America if not around the world!
I can but wonder how much this incident influenced, if any, the currant obsession with long distance shooting. I often call to mind that scene in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, where Huck described to his friend Jim how Robin Hood, the legendary 13th century English archer, could hit a dime at a mile and a half with his yew bow, and would cry and curse if he hit the dime only on its edge. Obviously Huck exaggerated Robin Hood’s capability as an archer. Yet many shooters of the present era apparently dream of a RIFLE capable of hitting a dime at a mile and a half! I own a .416 Rigby which I have more as a conversation piece than as a practical hunting rifle, ashough on occasion I have hunted with it. Invariably, the first question I’m asked about the .416 is: “How far will it shoot?” People seem to lose interest in the rife very quickly when I tell them it was made for 20 yard shots at creatures that possess the ability to instantaneously bring about one’s demise. Admittedly few such animals roam the woods of Choctaw County Mississippi. The point, however, is that many people in the present time have little interest in a rifle that is not, at the very least, capable of duplicating the performance of Billy Dixon’s Sharps Fifty.
Therefore, who knows where this interest in long distance shooting will ultimately take us as technology continues to evolve? Perhaps in the 23rd century, (if there is a 23rd century) someone will produce the ultimate rifle, a gun that will enable a hunter to shoot from the vicinity of French Camp, Mississippi and take out a moose in Siberia. Ridiculous, right! Yet that which the human mind is capable of conceiving usually ends up being done. The really perplexing question here, therefore is, where do you buy your hunting license when shooting a rifle capable of making intercontinental shots? Do you get it in Moscow or in French Camp? We will leave that riddle to the shooter/hunters of the 23rd century. Be that as it may, most shooters of the present, understandably, want to make that one unforgettable shot.
With that I share the story of my own most unforgettable shot. It happened in the 20th century. The gun I carried that day was not a 30.06, a Sharps Fifty, a 105 howitzer, or a Blunderbuss. Rather it was a little utility gun, a Stevens 22/410 over and under. The unforgettable shot I made with it was not made at an elephant, a moose, a hippopotamus, a kangaroo, a white tailed deer, or a Hill Billy rabbit. It was made at a grey squirrel and like the frontiersmen of the 18th century I hit it in the head. I was standing on a bluff under a pig nut tree on the Mim Ridgeway place at a point overlooking McCurtins Creek Bottom when I spotted the squirrel. It was some distance away and without question out of range. The squirrel however, kept jumping from tree to tree as I watched. Finally I decided to shoot. The range was such as to make shooting the .410 barrel unthinkable. So I switched the selector to the .22 barrel, sighted carefully, and dropped the little animal……… at a range of ONE yard! Actually, I would like to have had the squirrel a couple of inches closer. That, dear friends, is the story of my most unforgettable shot! Oh, did I forget to say the squirrel was moving toward me from the time I saw it until the instant before I fired? I was only too happy to let him close the range. Happiness from my perspective is getting as close as possible to the game before I pull the trigger.
Editor’s note: Roy Hawkins is an avid outdoorsman and ia an author with his book on Amazon.
