Rifle-- Cold Bore, out of Practice

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

In the movie "To Kill a Mockingbird" the Atticus Finch character (played by Gregory Peck) is called upon to pick up a rifle and take down a rabid dog that is endangering the residential neighborhood.
His kids didn't know that he had ever fired a gun, or knew how to use one.
But apparently he was well-known to have been an expert with a rifle in his younger days, and it came back to him as a middle-aged man, and he made that killing shot.
Head shot on a wobbling, trotting dog from what looks to be about 50 yards, standing up, either unsupported or maybe leaning his hip against his parked car.
Using an old 1890's era mil-surp rifle, in the movie version it was .30-40 Krag.

THE QUESTION IS:

Can YOU pick up a gun that you're not intimately familiar with and make a first-shot hit, from a cold bore, no warm up, no practicing ahead of time?

I tried that today, and the answer was NO.

I used my AR-15 with its standard M16A2 sights on a fixed carry handle to engage a 12" round steel gong at 200 yards.
So, I only needed 6 MOA accuracy to make the hits.
On other range sessions in years past, this same gun with the same ammo hit the same target about 50% of the time, after a warm-up at 25 and 100 yards.

But today, starting right at 200 yards, it was miss, miss, miss..... I missed 15 shots and then gave up.
My friend, who is also and experienced shooter who owns 3 different AR pattern rifles, then missed 15 more times!

This is what happens when you only shoot a particular rifle once or twice a year, only using up one magazine per range session (doing most of that day's shooting with other guns, not that iron-sighted AR).

 

[BigMike]

If the sights are good, yes.

 

[JBWJr]

 

[Bennyboy]

It’s funny, I made almost the exact shot you’re describing with a 1903a3 in front of some friends and family awhile back. They thought I was Quigley after that.

I handed the rifle back but didn’t tell them it was dumb luck. 😅

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

The Charlie Kirk assassination brings this topic to mind : what kind of accuracy can you expect grabbing a gun you are only minimally familiar with, not having any practice or warm-up shots, and making one single [really important] shot from some distance? (In Charlie Kirk's murder it looks like about 130 -150 yards.)

The assassin of MLK, James Earl Ray, bought the Remington pump action hunting rifle just days before the assassination --and there's no evidence that he took it anywhere to test fire it himself. Rather, he asked the sporting goods store to sight it in for him, and they boresighted it in the store before he picked up the rifle.

But, that was not a very long distance shot
Like other famous sniper - assassins he had plenty of time to get in position and rest the rifle or his arms on a ledge, and judging from pictures of the crime scene I'm thinking that in the MLK case the distance was only about 100 yards

 

[BHPSteel]

There's a bit more to it than that. Inexperienced shooters tend to not have much practice at shooting downwards, and ignore the fact that a round will have a POI higher than their aim point for the same range on a flat shot. Admittedly it's only likely to be about an inch at most.

My expectation is that the shooter was going for center of mass, expecting (and finding) that his grandfather had the scope sighted in for some unknown range, but well enough to deal with windage.

All issues where we don't have any reliable information to help make a determination.

 

[atscott]

Unsupported 200 yards is vastly different than 50 yards unsupported.

I routinely check zero in my hunting rifles each year after several months of not shooting them (usually end of previous season) and can hit 100 yards with support easily. But I usually won't attempt a shot past 50-60 yards unsupported.

With support shooting 100 or 200 cold isn't that hard even with iron sights. I did this a year so ago with a buddies Colt SP1 that I had never shot before.

 

[Bypass]

In the movie "To Kill a Mockingbird" the Atticus Finch character (played by Gregory Peck) is called upon to pick up a rifle and take down a rabid dog that is endangering the residential neighborhood.
His kids didn't know that he had ever fired a gun, or knew how to use one.
But apparently he was well-known to have been an expert with a rifle in his younger days, and it came back to him as a middle-aged man, and he made that killing shot.
Head shot on a wobbling, trotting dog from what looks to be about 50 yards, standing up, either unsupported or maybe leaning his hip against his parked car.
Using an old 1890's era mil-surp rifle, in the movie version it was .30-40 Krag.

THE QUESTION IS:

Can YOU pick up a gun that you're not intimately familiar with and make a first-shot hit, from a cold bore, no warm up, no practicing ahead of time?

I tried that today, and the answer was NO.

I used my AR-15 with its standard M16A2 sights on a fixed carry handle to engage a 12" round steel gong at 200 yards.
So, I only needed 6 MOA accuracy to make the hits.
On other range sessions in years past, this same gun with the same ammo hit the same target about 50% of the time, after a warm-up at 25 and 100 yards.

But today, starting right at 200 yards, it was miss, miss, miss..... I missed 15 shots and then gave up.
My friend, who is also and experienced shooter who owns 3 different AR pattern rifles, then missed 15 more times!

This is what happens when you only shoot a particular rifle once or twice a year, only using up one magazine per range session (doing most of that day's shooting with other guns, not that iron-sighted AR).

Yes.

 

[coach482]

Yes