Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/159

 How to Shoot Birds on the Wing

You aim where the bird isn't, so that he and the bullet meet at the intended spot

By Edward C. Grossman

��THERE is one great rule in success- ful shotgun shooting — don't shoot at the bird; shoot where he's going to be. There are exceptions of course, but as a rule shooting directly at a flying object with the shotgun means a miss.

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���Don't shoot at the bird. Aim at the spot where he is going to be

Probably the most exasperating set of figures in the world, and the most useless in actual practice, are those which pertain to the time of flight of a charge of shot; the bird's speed and its exact distance from the gun. Mathematically simple is the problem of putting the center of a shot charge precisely over a bird flying at a given distance and at a given speed. It is simple enough to calculate the dis- tance a bird will fly in a given time and then to calculate the time the shot charge takes in getting to the bird, and so the distance the gun must be pointed ahead. The little joker lies in the fact that in real life at least two unknown quantities enter into the problem — first the distance to the bird, second the speed of the bird. So quickly does the whole thing happen that the shooter has no time to find out the distance to the quarry, while the speed of birds varies. So successful shooting becomes a matter of experience, governed by a sort of sixth sense which is eventually acquired by the veteran scatter-gunner.

��If the bird is a crossing bird and flying 40 miles an hour at a distance of 40 yd., then he's traveling in round numbers 60 ft. per second, and in a tenth of a second, 6 ft. A charge of shot of size used for upland birds, takes .14 sec. to travel 40 yd. In .14 sec. our bird travels 8.4 ft. There is also a slight de- lay after one's brain signals the finger to pull, which amounts to one .01 of a second and up, or say six inches more travel by the bird. So the hapless wight firing directly at his bird, misses him by nine feet, less a foot or two for the spread of the pellets which might have gotten the bird had the charge passed within a foot or two of being right.

So comes the necessity for either hold- ing ahead or swinging ahead of any bird going at an angle to the line of fire, and the necessity for throwing the gun muz- zle ahead of the bird regardless of its direction, distance or speed. The spread of the pellets — giving a killing circle 35 in. across at 40 yd. in the case of the full choke gun and more in guns not so

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�� ���Where to aim at a bird that has ap- proached and is passing the hvmter

much choked — takes care of some error in holding, else few of us would ever hit a bird; but the man who depends on the spread of his shot to connect is going to believe after a bit that his "pattern," the spread of the shot, isn't much wider

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