Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

176 CAMPING AND WOODCRAFTtain rifle shoots practically point-blank up to 300yards, ''trust him not; he's fooling thee." Theoreticallythere is no such thing as a point-blankrange. Practically, what we mean by it is the extremedistance to which a rifle may be sighted tostrike center without overshooting at any intermediatedistance the vitals of the animal to behunted.Why a bullet rises above the line of aim and staysabove it until it reaches a point for which the sightswere set, and then falls below it, if not stopped ; howmuch it does so, at various ranges and with varioustj^pes of ammunition; how to determine the bestpoint-blank for different kinds of hunting: these arematters that would require a good many pages toexplain. ( See the writer's Sporting Firearms, in theseries of ''Outing Handbooks").In the big-game fields of the East and South,which generally are thickly timbered or bushy cutover!ands, it is seldom that one gets a shot at over60 or 70 yards, unless he is in the mountains or onthe m.argin of a lake or river. Even an oldfashionedrifle, using ammunition of, say 1,300 feetmuzzle velocity per second, if sighted accurately for50 yards, will not drop its bullet more than twoinches at 75 yards, and at 25 yards you need onlydiaw a wee bit fine to cut off the head of a grouseor squirrel. Fifty yards, then, is a good elevationat which to set the rear sight of such a gun. A.30-30, or other rifle of the 2,000 feet M. V. class,shoots to this same "practical point-blank" up to 100yards when sighted for 75 yards.In other words, the hunter need make no allowancefor distance, in aiming, up to these respectiveranges, except when shooting at small game closeby. This is why so many old hunters east of theMississippi take little or no interest in guns morepowerful than the kinds here mentioned. Theydon't feel the need of anything better. If theyshould unexpectedly have to take a long shot, anddo it quickly, they simply draw a coarse bead, or