Rifleman1776 said:
many people today have never shot at 200 yards, let alone 400 yards.
Plus, I contend
most people today, or then, cannot judge 200 yards. I'm sure a lot of 75 or 100 yard shots get bragged about as 200 or 400 yards.
I’m sure you are correct about many, if not most people then (and especially now); but I believe Riflemen in the period would have at least known how far was too far to shoot and accurately hit something, as that would have been a survival skill. However, this brings up another important thing to consider and that is how would they have known when the shot was too far?
I think we need to begin by going back to what we can document about their shooting ability.
We know that they could have and most likely set their sights up so they could shoot between 25 and 150 yards so the rise or fall of the bullet did not go outside a deer’s vital area. That way they would not have to worry about figuring elevation before they shot, though they would have had to factor in cross winds. This is supported by documentation of them shooting at 150 yards to pick the most able men for the Rifle Companies and at the Dog and Pony Show exhibitions they put on during their travel up to Boston. Also, figuring in the common bullet drop between 150 and 200 yards, it would not have been difficult to aim at the top of the enemy soldiers’ hats and the ball would hit them in the torso. OK, so knowing this information, we know they would have had to have been pretty expert at telling when a deer was within 150 yards, so that begs the question on how did they know that?
We have already discussed the difficulty of estimating range by whatever length/distance they were familiar with on the ground between them and the deer, so was there another way and preferably a simple way? For some reason, I remembered a way we were taught to estimate the height of a tree when I had just became a Boy Scout in the early 60’s and it was VERY old when it was taught to me and probably someone who cut trees long ago came up with it. You have a person whose height is known stand in front of the tree. You extend your arm and put a thumb or forefinger in the air next to the person standing in front of the tree. You use a finger from your other hand to mark that person’s height on your thumb or finger. Then you use that and go up the tree and note how many times the person’s height goes up the tree. You can get a surprisingly accurate estimate of the height of the tree by multiplying the height of the person by the number of times his height goes up the tree. Now, that does not help for estimating distance, but it gave me a further idea.
A very simple way to know if a deer was within range would have been to have already noted how tall deer appeared at a known distance, say 150 yards. Then use something like one’s thumb or perhaps what the deer looked like at that range compared to the height of the front sight on the rifle when aiming. If the deer is taller than an already known prescribed height on the front sight or thumb, then the Riflemen knew he was in range. Now I realize this is purely speculation with no documentation to back it up, but it is simple and effective and something that period Riflemen could have done.
Going back to the Bullet Drop chart Spence so kindly provided, we can see that really
fine/exact range estimation was necessary due to bullet drop beyond 200 yards. Between 200 and 300 yards, the bullet drops another 6 feet from 200 yards. Though the bullet’s drop is probably not this uniform, that means it drops 1 ½ Feet per 25 yards and that was critical to being able to hit an enemy soldier’s torso. Between 300 and 400 yards, the bullet drops over 20 feet. Again a rough estimate would be it drops 5 feet for every 25 yards beyond 300 yards and that is almost the height of an enemy soldier every 25 yards. So knowing the estimated distance by 25 yards was very important between 200 and 300 yards and downright critical between 300 and 400 yards.
Was there a quick and simple method to estimate distance by every 25 yards beyond 200 and especially beyond 300 yards, since it was/is so important to actually hit an enemy soldier? I admit I don’t know.
While typing this out, something occurred to me from when I was on active duty about figuring range/distance estimation. Though no one ever taught me this, it came to me from watching shooters walk downrange during “change over,” when they went to the target area to pull targets after they shot and the Marines came out of the target area to the firing line to shoot. When the Marines walked past the yard lines, I took note of how tall they appeared and made notes on it for the different ranges. I don’t remember if I used a 6 inch Scale/Rule or something else held at arm’s length, but I used something. I wrote that information down for future use, but never wound up needing it, so I have forgotten what the measurements were now some 20 years later.
This is something they could also easily have done during the AWI or other periods, was note how tall the enemy looked at different ranges. Yet though it was useful for distances per 100 yards, it was not nearly good enough to estimate ranges by 25 yards beyond 200 yards.
Gus
