Shooting the Pedersoli Brown Bess

[Rifleman1776]

BTW, one thing to remember about period warfare with a Bess, is that there was no command for "Aim". Simply present and then fire

Amen. :surrender:

 

[trent/OH]

The thread seems to have wandered off your question about getting slapped around by your Bess. I'll offer a guess, that you may be dressed substantially differently now than you were before. If you were wearing a heavy coat before, and only a shirt now, that affects how you your musket fits your body. Even if you were wearing a round hat vs. a knit cap may affect how you hold your head on the stock.

 

[spudnut]

Well everyone above answered the question but I thought I'd throw in a little historical fact to back up what they're saying. Roughly 80% of shots fired by muskets at that time, missed their targets. This was due to a few things. One was fear, soldiers were not aiming. Another was due to the recoil of the gun, making it somewhat inaccurate just by nature. A third reason was the round bouncing around in the barrel due to it being a smooth-bore, not rifled.

I would guess a lot of flinch(the jerk behind the trigger LOL),eyes shut and basicly they were just pointing down range at a wall of people

 

[smoothbore69]

In the British manuals at the time of the AWI, there may have been no command to "aim" but, if you check von Steuben's Blue Book, you will find a command of "aim".

Chris Quattlebaum

 

[wahkahchimaol.com]

Trent nailed it. After some reflection I realized that I used a shooting jacket from modern rifle shooting before, but since we were shooting modern pistol last time, I wasn't wearing it! Thanks for the insight!