Spence10 said:
About 3 years ago there was a long thread about shooting at 400 yards, and some members reported their results at trying it... Herb, Many Klatch, Lazarus, Deadeye and maybe others.
Hanger and Tarleton were lucky.
http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/281125/fromsearch/1/tp/1/
Spence
Everyone has a right to their opinion and I do want to mention again I highly respect yours. Yet, I have to politely disagree with your opinion in the text from your previous post, that I highlighted and emboldened above.
I have a lot of respect for Herb and some of the others who shot at those distances and showed what was possible at those ranges with good equipment. This from using Modern Spotter Scopes, ballistic calculators, Google Earth, Pre Measured Long Range Distances, Later Period Sights that were better for long range shooting than found on most 18th century Rifles, etc., etc. and the Bench Rest set up shown in the linked post below ”“ he did some truly good shooting. (I use a very similar set up, since I retired, to test the accuracy of modern NM Rifles I have built.)
http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showpost.php?post/1308081/
However, Herb and the others also correctly mentioned that such good shooting was also done when there was virtually no wind to blow the bullets off course. That was/is
EXTREMELY important to long range shooting with a PRB in the calibers normally used by Riflemen in the AWI or today. Cross winds highly affect PRB’s at 100 yards, let alone 400 yards.
What is
almost unbelievable for period documentation is we don’t have to speculate at all on the wind conditions the day Tarleton and Hanger were shot at, because Hanger wrote
“not a breath of wind was stirring.” So crosswinds had nothing to do with the fact
the Rifleman MISSED the shot on either Officer.
This, plus the fact that all the other shooting conditions were virtually perfect that day (quite like shooting in the best conditions on a target range) and the Rifleman was not disturbed in any way whatsoever from making a good shot.
The Rifleman still MISSED the shot on either Officer.
I reference back to my earlier post on the almost perfect environmental and shooting conditions Hanger wrote about on that day, in the earlier post linked here:
http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showpost.php?post/1570389/
I am not sure if I mentioned something before, but if I did, I did not go into detail on it and that is the something that is very common and most of us realize from shooting ML or Modern Rifles. No rifle will shoot “dead center” side to side on the target at different ranges, when using the same point of aim and without being able to adjust the sights. With modern adjustable sights, we can correct for this by turning so many “clicks” or small movements of the rear sight for each distance. Normally the further distance one shoots, the more clicks that have to be put on the rear sight to center the strike of the Balls/Bullets on the target at each range.
We often (if not usually) have to tap rear and/or front sights either right or left on our ML rifles to get the group centered up on target from side to side. This because when the sights are centered on the barrel side to side, they often are usually not aligned to the bore and how the PRB’s hit the target. The side to side variance of the strike of the bullet may also be caused by the shooter and how he/she aligns the sights during aiming. For a real world example most people will hopefully be able to follow my poor description: Let’s say one sights in at 25 yards and say the group strikes a little to the left. If one did not change the position of at least one sight and remained aiming at the same point on the target; then the groups will be further left at 50 yards, further still at 75 yards and further still as the range increases. This is absolutely common on any rifle whether ML or modern.
Most original 18th century or HC/PC Iron Sights don’t have adjustment for “side to side” placement of hits on the target for windage. So one has to adjust the sights for side to side placement of the shots where they would be “sort of in the middle” throughout the distance the rifle is usually fired and from the evidence that seems to have been from 25 to 150 yards. As the distance increased beyond 150 yards, the normal variation of the gun to shoot left or right would have increased as well. Note: I am not even counting in the effects of cross winds, just the normal side to side variation of where the barrel sends the PRB in flight.
With Modern Adjustable sights, we are taught to write down the normal sight settings for windage and elevation for each yard line and that may change slightly at each yard line when a different shooting position is used. So before shooting at each range, we check the data book to see what the sight setting should be and put that on the rifle for each range. THEN we have to add more adjustment for whatever kind of cross wind there is when we shoot. With most 18th century period sights and so a Rifleman would not miss the 8 to 10 inch vital spots of a deer, he would have to keep such information in his head for further distances and add in the effects of cross winds, which we know affect a PRB more so than a modern bullet. So that required a period Rifleman to practice enough at long range just so he would know and remember where the rifle sent the bullet even before adding in adjustment for cross winds. If he never shot at 400 yards or rarely shot at 400 yards, a period Rifleman would not know how far left or right the PRB would have landed at that range even when there was no cross wind.
On the day Tarleton and Hanger were fired upon by the Rifleman at 400 yards, there “was not a breath of wind,” so the Rifleman did not have to worry about correcting for cross winds, but still had to correct for how far left or right the barrel normally threw the PRB at that distance. So how did he do?
I could not find the average width of a human torso on line, but I did find the width of man sized silhouette targets the military uses. The Torso is given as 20 inches wide and when you add in the arms, that makes it a width of 26 inches. So this is larger than the vital area of a deer which is 8 to 10 inches. Hanger tells us he and Tarleton’s horses were something like 2 feet apart, which would have placed their torso’s a little further apart than that. The Rifleman’s Round Ball went between the two horses of Tarleton and Hanger, though it does not say how close the ball was to either person. Now IF the Rifleman was used to shooting at 400 yards and knew where his rifle shot at that distance with no cross wind blowing, he should not have missed that much side to side, because he should have known how to put the PRB into the vitals of a deer at that range. The PRB was well outside the vital area of a deer where it went between Tarleton and Hanger in virtually PERFECT shooting conditions.
Now we can’t take too much from this only one shot, even though there were almost perfect shooting conditions that day, to make a comment on ALL Riflemen in the period. However, we can most certainly say that 400 yards was beyond the range of that Rifleman when “there was not a breath of wind.”
Actually the Rifleman was the lucky one to have come so close to hitting either Tarleton or Hanger when it seems obvious 400 yards was further than he knew how to hit the vital area of a deer.
Gus
