My Dad was an avid hunter, so as soon as we had the strength to hold long guns up, the only practice shooting we got was offhand. He said if you could shoot offhand well, then any other position would be easy. Once I was old enough to make a little money, I often bought .22 shorts to shoot in Dad's Win Model 74 that was only meant to shoot long rifles, but still functioned with shorts. Shorts only cost 43 cents per box of 50 when long rifles went for the princely sum of 67 cents. I had baskets on the side of my bicycle, so I would put the cased rifle in them, stop at the gas station to buy the shorts and ride to a dry dump, well outside town. There were always loads of soda pop bottles to shoot at and with a lot of practice, I got to the point at 32 paces (25 yards) I could shoot the top parts, then the middles then the bottoms of the bottles. I don't remember how I did that, though.
There was no medium or big game hunting in Iowa that we could afford, so I didn't fire a centerfire rifle until Marine Corps Boot Camp where I began a love affair with an M14. The week long "Snapping In" or dry firing training was excellent marksmanship instruction, though it seemed almost sadistic at the time. I never was so physically worn out and aching as when we returned to the barracks each night.
HOWEVER, I must admit I was daunted to learn we were expected to shoot offhand at 200 yards. I had never even shot at 100 yards with a big bore rifle, let alone 200 yards offhand. For my first annual qualification, I ran 6 straight bullseyes at 200 yards before I blew it and fired a perfect center shot on the target next to mine, so I got a Maggie's drawers MISS. That blew my mental program so bad, I just missed shooting at least 220 out of 250 for Expert.
Marines fire an annual rifle re-qualification every year until they are promoted to MSgt/1stSgt when the Corps no longer expects or even allows us to shoot rifle re-qualification. Normally and unless Marines had an MOS like MP's, we didn't qualify/re-qualify with the pistol until we were promoted to SSgt (E-6) and we requalify with the pistol through MSgt, or at least we used to do that. For a number of years, I shot Expert with both the rifle and pistol, though it was always LOW Expert or in the 220's with the rifle.
Finally I asked one of my best mentors in muzzleloading gunsmithing (CWO Frank Higginson) and who just happened to be the BEST Pistol Shot in the Corps for years (he won the Nationals and the Pan Am games a number of times, though he never won at the Olympics) whether he knew when the trigger was going to go off and shot then OR if the shot was always a surprise. It surprised me when he said his best shooting was always when the shot was a surprise. After he retired and when he was in his 60's, he began coaching the U.S. Muzzleloading Teams' Pistol Shooters, though he no longer competed. I heard the following from a number of shooters who were at one of those training sessions. They said they finally got him to shoot an original Remington .44 Army they were having trouble doing well with at 25 meters. He shot it offhand like they did and he scored a 92 out of 100 and said the pistol needed work. They thought he was joking, so one of the best shooters who had a Ransom Rest and knew how to use it, tested the Remington in that ultimate shooting rest machine. They tried it four times and the best score they got was an 89 out of 100. Frank had outshot the Ransom Rest, the first time he shot the pistol!!! For those who don't know about the Ransom Rest machine, that is so incredibly rare, it is almost never done by most of we mere mortals.
OK, so I used Frank's advice on my next year's Rifle and Pistol re-qualifications and upped my Rifle score to finally breaking into the low 230's that year and upped my pistol score about 11 points.
I got a chance to go through the NRA Law Enforcement Police Firearms Instructors Course in 1986. To graduate that course, you have to shoot at least 90 out of 100 with the shotgun and the pistol as well as score at least a 90 out of 100 on the written test. Fail any single one of those and you don't graduate. So to say it ain't easy, is a rather big understatement. There are always some folks who have had many years of shooting and instructing, but who don't graduate the first or even second time. It was a challenge to many of the shooters on THE Marine Corps Rifle and Pistol teams, though they all qualified the first time. I barely graduated as I only shot a 92 with the pistol, though I shot a 94 with a shotgun with no sights and aced the test. HOWEVER, and even after all the years of excellent marksmanship training in the Marine Corps and shooting Expert Rifle 11 times in a row and Pistol 8 or 9 times in a row at re-qualifications (I didn't shoot 4 years while I was on Independent Duty, because they wouldn't let us) AND being around some of the BEST shooters in the Corps for years, I had a personal epiphany on shooting where it seemed all the lights FINALLY went on.
Now I wish I could tell you it was some great secret or something I had never been taught, but it wasn't. That course didn't teach anything I had not been taught before. I joke the different way they taught things finally got through my thick skull. Grin.
So the next year at Rifle and Pistol re-qualification, I applied what finally got through my thick skull. Unfortunately, I had a problem with my rear sight not functioning correctly and yes, even as a NM Armorer I didn't realize until after I shot for record, but I still shot 242 out of 250. However the next year after that, I shot a 249 out of 250 and was the 8th Marine in history to tie that all time high score. No one has equaled or bettered that score at Quantico since then, either. The following year we had hugely varying wind conditions on the range in CA, but still managed to shoot a 244 and that turned out to be the last time I was allowed to requalify with the Rifle.
Sorry for taking so long to give the background, but I wanted to qualify what I hope may help others in their offhand shooting. Unfortunately, I will have to go on with this in my next post as I'm having some problem with arthritis in my fingers nowadays.
Gus
