Common Sense and Safety

For the Beginner

The responsibility of your shot starts when you touch the trigger ’til the ball comes to rest.

You may be on a range in a match, plinkin’ in a woods or along some creek, but wherever you are that projectile is your responsibility from muzzle ’til its flight is over.

On a rifle range, a suitable back-stop is prepared for you. Your responsibility here, is: keeping the gun safe at all times during loading, keeping the muzzle either up or down-range, not capping or priming until you are at your firing position.

You have another important point to watch; make sure you fire on your own target. To crossfire will either cost you a point by some rulings, or the loss of 10 points if scored as a miss. It can also confuse the man next to you if he thinks he has fired five rounds, to include your hole in his target, when he has only fired four. If the balls are of different size, you put an added load on the scoring room. If you catch your mistake at the time of firing, notify the range officer immediately so he can mark the target. Apologize to the man whose target you fired on.

It will be to your advantage to know for sure what target frame is yours. Drop the muzzle of your rifle below the frame, check the number and come straight up on your target.

Should you be shooting in some small club, that perhaps does not have its frames numbered, count over from some prominent mark on the frames, weed on the ground or perhaps a different size bull to your right or left.

If you’re just foolin’ around in a woods or meadow practicing, keep your mind on where that ball is going to go if you miss your mark or if the mark will let the ball pass through it.

Just because it’s a round ball, sent on its way by low-pressure powder doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. A muzzle loading rifle is one hell of a lot stronger than people want to give it credit.

Hey, the muzzle loadin’ rifle took all game, large and small, on the continent before the cartridge was ever invented. One time I dropped a groundhog at 88 yards with a .375 ball, backed with 33 grains of 3-F. The ball entered at what would be our collarbone and came out above the tail bone. And that’s 22 inches of tough tissue. A groundhog is longer than a man is thick!

If you’re squirrel hunting in a man’s woods that has stock, (cattle, hogs, or horses) in it, don’t shoot on the ground. You take all your squirrels in the trees! A squirrel will not stop your ball. In 131 fox squirrels taken with a .32 caliber round ball, backed by 20 or 25 grains of 3-F, I’ve only recovered one ball which traveled the full length of the squirrel’s body.

In the shotgun events, though the pellets won’t travel as far as a round ball, they are more dangerous at close range. The same general rules of rifle safety apply here. Keep the muzzle up at all times or pointed down-range when at your firing station. And, again, cap or prime only at your firing point never at the loading benches!

In the shotgun events, the shooters are moving about more than on the offhand, bench, or pistol ranges. It is the duty of every shooter to help the range officer keep his line safe. It is impossible for the range officer to be looking ahead of him and behind him at the same time. The shooters are moving back and forth, around and about continuously on the Trap, Skeet, and Quail-Walk ranges.

By the end of the day, the boy setting birds on the Quail-Walk will be tired and may not be back to his “safe-position” as quickly as he was in the morning. That boy walks 10 miles a day, give him time to get out of your way before you cap or prime!

On the Skeet range, the officer is taking money for events, scoring, and pulling birds. “He’s busy!” — Help him keep his line safe!

Saying you are on station #1 at the skeet field and a man walks up to station #7, it is not a safe position for either of you to be in while the other fires. You would in no way, fire from any station on the circle, while a man is at station #8.

Now, the range officer will catch this fifty times a day, we can help him the one time he might miss, if he is busy with a shooter just coming to the line.

Again, help him! It is for the safety of all of us! —Vickery