Impossible Pistol Shot

[Many Klatch]

I saw a friend shoot an original short barreled rifled .60 caliber pistol with 15 grains of powder and primitive sights at the large gong on top of the hill at Friendship. The gong is a 100 pound propane tank and it is about 120 yards up a 45 degree hill. He was just fooling and unloading it before we went to camp. He aimed fired and 5 seconds later we heard the ding as the ball hit the gong.

Now the shooter is a dead shot with anything that throws a projectile. I probably couldn't shoot my own foot with that gun. But if that had been an English soldier sitting still on a horse he could have hit him sure. If the soldier was galloping; well then luck was with the shooter and not running well for the rider.

A .60 caliber lead ball will hurt even if just dropped on a bare toe from waist high.

Many Klatch

 

[crockett]

I'm just finishing up Francis Parkman's Oregon Trail. He routinely used pistols to kill buffalo while on horseback. Near the end of the book he is at 75 yards and figured he was in pistol range.
Now...according to all the ballistics, the loss of velocity of round balls, etc, etc, etc. all this is supposed to be impossible. and yet, there are historical accounts that seem to indicate differently, why I don't know, but such seems to be the case. Maybe the pure lead does more damage even if the velocity is low?

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

A pure lead ball is much better ballistically speaking than it seems like it ought to be. Another thing to remember with these stories is that "poetic license" often was taken, especially when speaking about ranges. Many of these oldtimers talk about making shots with pistols at ranges that a musket would have difficulty with. And they aren't talking about the odd scratch shot, they claim these shots were the norm. 75 yards from a galloping horse at a galloping bison is considered a normal pistol shot? Right. Was this Parkman's old Dragoon pistol?

 

[crockett]

It was a flintlock. His rifle was a percussion. Parkman was lying down and a Buffalo Bull appeared at about 100 yards. He waited for it to turn sideways to get in a shot behind the shoulder but it charged him for about 25 yards and stopped. He then writes that at that distance he could have shot it with his pistol. In any event the bull turns and he shoots it with the rifle. When Parkman was running buffalo ( on horseback) he shot them on several occasions at point blank range with a pistol. In another passage in the book Parkman borrows a friend's fusil and shoots a buffalo but then has to reload, he mentions the pistol bullets are smaller than the rifle bullets which I found odd as I thought really large bore pistols were often carried- I think Stewart had a Manton 69 caliber or something like that.
In any event my point is that the folks at the time didn't seem to think a pistol was inadequate in hunting large animals- today we wouldn't think of using such a weapon.

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

Parkman wasn't the most experienced plainsman of his time. He may well have punched up bits of his story to help sell the book. "Mis-recalling on purpose" often happened (still does). His fusil would be a smoothbore and could have used smaller balls than his pistol. I think most folks in those days would have considered hunting bison with a pistol quite unusual--experienced people anyway. Parkman's audience was comprised of easterners and Europeans who had never seen the plains or a bison and probably would have believed him if he said he killed them with a slingshot. I have a long barreled flintlock pistol in .62 caliber. I can stoke it up to at least the level of anything Parkman might have carried and it is utter nonsense to even think of shooting an animal of that size at 75 feet, never mind 75 yards. Unless I could stick the muzzle in the poor beast's ear, I would not consider it a responsible shot or a likely one. But if I wanted to sell a book or impress the folks back home, I might recall many a fine pistol shot at astonishing ranges and after a while, I might begin to believe it myself! :v

 

[mykeal]

Our standards are quite different today. We don't often hunt for sustenance today, and are (quite rightly) taught to seek humane results (quick, one shot kills) when hunting. We would thus eschew a pistol on a large animal, while the native American hunting for food 200 years ago would use a spear or an arrow and track the animal for several hours until it bled to death or fell from exhaustion.

I agree that Parkman quite probably used some 'poetic license' in describing his experiences, but I also think the contemporary view of hunting bison in his day did not include today's one shot humane kill standard.

 

I agree that Parkman quite probably used some 'poetic license' in describing his experiences, but I also think the contemporary view of hunting bison in his day did not include today's one shot humane kill standard.

Agreed. And prior to Parkman's day, they drove a small herd off a cliff, took only what they could carry, leaving the rest to rot. We've come a long way, baby. :grin:

 

[Dphar]

I think we are missing something here in talking of running buffalo. They did not care if the buffalo ran 3/4 mile after it was shot. What someone would do today is not relevant to the 1840s.
Fredrick Selous (1870s Africa) relates several times wounding Eland and other animals and then driving the animal toward camp sometimes several miles before killing it at a point that was more convenient.
While we are once again at the mercy of the writer Parkman relates that Henry C. his guide killed 2 buffalo at 175 yards with 2 shots using his and Parkman's rifle. The animals ran off and Parkman had thought he missed until they rode on a ways and found the dead animals.

Considering that buffalo that have been hunted often don't let people get very close to them the yardage sounds real enough to me. 175 yards is not far where I live. Buffalo have a large kill zone 3 times what the rifle will likely shoot at 175. I say doable.

Lots of people killed buff with pistols when running them. Colt Dragoons were used for this as I recall. If you had a pistol and it did not kill the buff you put in more powder.
75 yards? This is not as outrageous as some might think. But not knowing the pistol used or how it was loaded we are in the dark to some extent. A fairly long barrel 8-9" and a heavy charge can make pretty good MV. Easily equal to a rifle at 100 yards, about 1000 fps. So now we take the rifle killing at 175 and take the MV of the pistol and then move out 75 yards. We have the same power at the target. So its doable velocity wise. Shooting from a running horse at 75 things get sticky?
I will have to read it again its been years since I read it last.

My question is why would he bother to lie?
He was there, we were not. If the shot is patently impossible then we can doubt. But if its doable then we must accept it as stated.

Its like the story Elmer Keith told of killing a Mule Deer at 400+ yards with his 44 mag. People scoffed. In testing 15 or so years ago I proved that it was perfectly doable with a friends 5" 44 mag.
Elmer finally wrote a book called "Hell I was There" because he was and the people who could not do what he could were not. Lots of people do things routinely that others think are impossible. About 30 years ago dad killed 2 Bull elk about 30 miles south of here a year or so apart. The close one was 400 yards (an intentional head shot at that, first and second shot missed the brain first just under eyes, the second out a little further out and the third broke the neck behind the ear and the elk was MOVING) and the other was 500 plus one shot kill bullet penetrated the heart. Iron sighted 742 Remington in 30-06. Could anyone reading this make these shots? He never doubted he could he just did it.
But at 82 his vision is still better than 20-20.

Dan

 

[crockett]

Well you are right about that. William Hamilton wrote my 60 years on the plains and he killed buffalo with pistols while on horse back and so did William Drummond Stewart so it was done and those were only the ones that wrote about it, there were of course lots of individuals there that never wrote anything.
BUT.....
I was really not advocating shooting a buffalo with a pistol- just saying it was done in regard to the original question about what were the capabilities of the pistol. A pistol isn't a rifle TRUE but it is amazing what it has done under some circumstances. In other words a long range kill may be a freak event but doable.

Hope Crossfire is still with us on this talk? In any event a 100 yard kill- what do you think Crossfire? As I said the ball had to go somewhere and although unusual a kill is doable if the ball hits the target just right.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

A pistol can kill a horse, Custer proved it by shooting his horse in the head while running buffalo. :rotf: :rotf:

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

And later, at the Little Big Horn, he shot himself in the foot--in a big way! :rotf:

 

[musketman]

A pistol can kill a horse, Custer proved it by shooting his horse in the head while running buffalo. :rotf: :rotf:

Whoa horsey, whoa, ah come on whoa. When I say whoa, I mean whoa! :rotf:

 

[Zonie]

Ah, Yosemite Sam! Gotta love it. :rotf:

 

[Tinker2]

Some of us, when we shoot our smooth bore flintlock pistols with no sights, are just plain lucky.

The lucky part is not that I hit what I was shooting at, but I had bystanders see me do it and they don’t remember the times I missed.




Tinker2

 

[Whitewater]

Dan,

In the US we regularly shoot muzzleloading rifle matches to 1000 yards. In the UK the long range muzzle loading rifle matches go out to 1200 yards. The Wyoming mile shoot is out to 1760 yards.

Billy Dixons 1500+ yard shot doesn't seem that improbable.

Regards,