Question about Morgan's Shingle

[DixieTexian]

That is a good thought . In my work as a crane operator I was daily faced with calculating distance, in order to make safe picks. I began to rely on steping off distance and confirming ,at a much younger age , and found out that my normal pace was 2.5 feet and very reliable over level ground.
That surprised me because I and my friends grew up believing that an exzgerated pace was 3 feet . Possibly but not reliably so., at least not for me
I used 2,5 foot pace calculation for many years and confirmed by others quite often , with great accuracy and success, as time passed and I was not as able to visually estimate distances, not used for work, it became more important to step off the mark . This is of course not so usefull for hunting, as in work distance needs to be known beforehand and game is not usually cooperative.

Blitz

Your normal pace is a much more accurate method of measuring distance so long as you calibrate it. In school, we used to have to cruise timber, zig zagging through the woods with just a compass and pacing. After a while you get pretty good at it. However, if you try to make each step an even yard you will be off more often than not. I'd suspect that they were overestimating their ranges, but that doesn't mean they couldn't judge how much Kentucky windage was needed to make the shot. If you know how far off the ground your target is, that gives you a pretty decent reference for where to hold the sights, assuming you know your gun.

 

[Grenadier1758]

Friendship had a reentry match that shot steel "bear's" out to 200 yds. This was in the 70's but I don't recall the year. It was a timed match at banks of 5 targets starting at 50 yds. As I recall the bear was about the size of a man's upper body. I entered it once and recall hitting a bear or maybe two with my .54 flintlock rifle with fixed primitive sights. That was the only time I had shot the rifle at 200 yds. I used the technique SUN CITY describes. I did win a beautiful 20 ga barrel for second place. Hopefully some one else can recall more details about that match.

That's the NMLRA Silhouette Match. 4 of each, Crows at 50 yards, Groundhogs at 100 yards, Buffalos at 150 yards, Turkeys at 175 yards and Bears at 200 yards. It was easier to hit the bear targets than the turkey targets. I used the @Sun City method. The full front blade was in the rear notch. The top of the front blade was on the windward ear of the bear. I could hit a few. My last silhouette match, I shot at the bear, no fall, turned to load and when I turned back to the firing line, there was one less bear. Long time of flight I guess.

 

[Rifleman1776]

I've told this story before. When I had my gun shop in Indiana I taped various targets to the back of the door. Sometimes when customers started telling me "whopper" stories about their hunting experiences I would ask them to judge the range from where we were standing at the counter to the back of that door. The most common response was "50 yards". It was under 30 feet. Now, about those long range shots...................

 

[Tumbledown]

I've told this story before. When I had my gun shop in Indiana I taped various targets to the back of the door. Sometimes when customers started telling me "whopper" stories about their hunting experiences I would ask them to judge the range from where we were standing at the counter to the back of that door. The most common response was "50 yards". It was under 30 feet. Now, about those long range shots...................

You had people saying 50 yards when it was 30 feet? Ok, now THAT'S a story.

 

[tenngun]

Now this makes me wonder
It’s a good story for sure.
But
No matter how hot he was loaded it’s unlikely he was pushing more then 2200 fps at the muzzle
Then about 1100 at a hundred yards.
By three hundred yard he has dropped well below 400, probably closer to 300.
Many revolutionary rifles were close to the .54 mark, but one officer mentioned that out of hundreds he had seen he had not seen one over 7/16 bore. About .45
A horse is a lot of animal.
How quick would it drop dead from even a .54 at 400 fps?
Makes me wonder if it was unbelievably perfect miss, as no doubt one of the men was the target not the horse. And the ball just happened to hit heart/aorta area, or brain case spinal cord area
Or is they were closer

‘We shall have two or three of these gentleman’ awful nice respective language

You reckon the language might have been cleaned up a bit and the range expanded?

 

[Tumbledown]

You reckon the language might have been cleaned up a bit and the range expanded?

The language is perfectly typical of the era.

As for the distance, I doubted it, too, until I saw it had actually been paced off after the battle.