Back then we had a much higher percentage of rural people who grew up with guns and hunting.
“Father would do his hunting every day, and if he had any blacksmith work he had to catch up with he would do that of a night. He was a good shot. He loved shooting very much, and always won every match. His advice was always to be accurate in shooting. He would always advise me to take more time and study this more. I grew up with him, hunted with him and worked in the blacksmith shop with him.
I read about Frank and Jesse James. I thought if Frank and Jesse could be crack shots I could too. I used to gallop my horse around a tree with a revolver and muss up that tree right smart. And I got tolerably accurate, too.
March 1918-That first Army rifle they issued me was all full of grease. Of course I didn’t like that. The rifles we used in the mountains were always kept clean. They were muzzle-loading rifles, cap and ball.
They make their own guns there in the mountains.
They are the most accurate guns in the world, up to 100 or 150 yards.
I would rather have had a clean army rifle than a muzzle loader for what we were going to use them for, on account of the repeating shots, but they are not any more accurate than the muzzle-loading rifles.
The Greeks and Italians came out on the shooting range and the boys from the big cities. They hadn’t been used to handling guns.
And sometimes at 100 yards they would not only miss the targets, they would even miss the hills on which the targets were placed.
In our shooting matches at home we shot at a turkey’s head. We tied the turkey behind a log, and every time it bobbed up its head we let fly with those old muzzle loaders of ours. We paid ten cents a shot and if we hit the turkey’s head we got to keep the whole turkey. This way we learn to shoot from about sixty yards. Or we would tie the turkey out in the open at 150 yards, and if you hit it above the knee or below the gills you got it. I think we had just about the best shots that ever squinted down a barrel. Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett used to shoot at these matches long ago. And Andrew Jackson used to recruit his Tennessee sharpshooters from among our mountain shooters. We used to call our most famous matches “beeves.” We would make up a beef, that is, we would drive up a beef and then each pay, say a dollar until we had made up the value of the beast. The owner got this money. And we were each allowed so many shots. The best shot got the choice of the hind quarters, the second best the other hind quarter, the third the choice of the fore quarters, the fourth the other fore quarters, and the fifth the hide and tallow. Our matches were held in an opening in the forest, and the shooters would come in from all over the mountains, and there would be a great time. We would shoot at a mark crisscrossed on a tree. The distance was twenty-six yards off hand or forty yards prone with a rest. You had to hit that cross if you ever hoped to get all of that meat. Some of our mountaineers were such wonderful shots that they would win all five prizes and drive the beef home alive on the hoof. Shooting at squirrels is good, but busting a turkey at 150 yards—ho ho. So the army shooting was tolerably easy for me.”
http://acacia.pair.com/Acacia.Vignettes/The.Diary.of.Alvin.York.html
Guns, hunting, and throwing-based sports.