Posted on 02/11/2008 6:30:41 AM PST by Vor Lady
I would doubt that is very likely, but you did say fiction. If you want some true sharpshooter tales, pick up Gysgt Carlos Hathcock’s book Marine Sniper. It’s a quick read of his biography and time in the Marine Corps as a sniper in Viet Nam.
Two stories there that may interest you. The first is about his longest shot which was from around 2300 yards. He had an M-2 with a mounted Unertl scope. It was a kid on a bicycle carrying AK’s on the back of his bike. He did not want to kill the kid just scare him away from the guns. He shot the tire out of the bike. The kid came up shooting at the origin of the shot with one of the AKs and Hathcock ended up dropping him.
The other story has to do with a time when he was out hunting one of the NVA’s best snipers who was knocking people off at their base. Hathcock was out for weeks tracking this guy. He saw a glint off in the distance, sighted in on the glint and fired. He tracked up to where he shot and found the sniper with a bullet through his eye. The guy was sighting in on Hathcock and before he could get a shot off, Hathcock shot him through his telescope into his eye. This was shamelessly taken to make the movie Sniper with Tom Berenger.
Those are two real life stories of sniper accuracy.
"One shot one kill."
Why would you wound someone you may have to deal with later?
Always kill your potential problems on the battlefield.
I once saw a 1,100 yard shot a at man in a light breeze. Hit him dead center of mass. The sniper was aiming for his head. The sniper was the best shot I have ever seen and I am not bad.
Your question is highly unlikely at any range over about 50 yards. Not to say it couldn't happen. There are cases in the old West where trained marksman shot 45-70 caliber weapons at well over 1,000 yards inflicting heavy causalities on the enemy. However, they were groups of men not a single person.
Sure. Write in a character from the future to show up with a computer-operated GPS-guided night scope and mount. Problem solved.
Of course, you’d also need satellites....
“In her story the campfire is small, there is no moon, the guy is in a box canyon, the bad guys (shooter) are watching from brush at the mouth of the canyon, there is cold wind and the shooter uses this shot (grazing a person’s head) as his prefered method for incapacitating victims”
Why not just sneak up on the guy (no moon and small campfire means it’s dark) and clock him with the butt of your pistol or long gun? Seems much more plausible. Although even though that happens a lot in movies, the fact of the matter is that if you crack someone on the temple real hard with the butt of a weapon there is a good chance that person could die. However, it’s much more believable than shooting to graze...
I have read tales of Gunny Hathcock. Very impressive!
I’m not writing this, another woman is. She supposedly got her info from a woman sniper for the Army.
I don’t think the woman writes sci-fi! But I can pass it on!
Thanks, I’ve only ever read Louis L’Amour detective stories, so I don’t know if they do this sort of stuff in westerns or not. It just didn’t sound at all plausible to me.
The whole scene she wrote was wonky. After they shoot the guy, they leave him to die, with his hat, his boots, his canteen, and his horse which they thoughtfully saddled, but that is a whole ‘nother critique!
Sure it can, I need a volunteer to stand in the wind as I prove it. Anyone???
:-)
But the night time shot you described on a moving target would be pushing the envelope to the limit even today for a well trained sniper with a modern scoped rifle. And the shooter would probably kill a hundred men and miss a thousand more before he got that one lucky hit. I think the shooter's main problem in the scenario you described would have been the lack of enough light for the shooter to see his target clearly even if his equipment was good enough for the job. The light from a campfire seems bright in the darkness of night, but it would have been another story when viewing a target illumined by a fire through open sights, or even through the relatively primitive scopes of that era. Furthermore, the shot would have been made much more difficult by the movement of the man's head which would move at least a tiny bit during the approximately 3/4 of a second to a full second it would have taken for the bullet of a black powder rifle of that era to travel the 400 yards from the rifle to his head at an average velocity of 1200 to 1400 feet per second.
Taken all together I think the obstacles would outweigh the possibilities by a large margin, and the shot would be extremely unlikely to succeed and just a matter of luck if it did. OTOH probably 99% of the readers wouldn't know that scenario is so highly improbable, so it may be OK for a fictional book.
IOW, regardless of skill, the weapons system is incapable of that shot.
You asked for two cent's worth, but here is my nickel's worth:
That kind of trick will push the writer's credibility way past the limits of most western fiction readers.
Personally, I don't appreciate being led down an unbelievable path in an attempt to make a story "gripping".
If your writer friend would heed some advice, I would advise (him or her) to attempt the work based on good writing alone, and leave the unbelievable stuff for the dime-novel writers.
“After they shoot the guy, they leave him to die, with his hat, his boots, his canteen, and his horse which they thoughtfully saddled, but that is a whole ‘nother critique!”
Yeah, that seems pretty weak. How is he supposed to die? From old age?
In the real west, they would have taken the horse and everything else he owned that was worth anything. If they didn’t want it, they could sell it later...
You mean that didn't happen every day or so in the Old West? Say it aint so Shane.
I hope you enjoyed ruining the memories of my childhood cowboys and Indians fantasy land.
No, as a matter of skill it is not possible.
The man would of been using black, iron sights, looking towards a fire at a moving skull, half of which would of been in light, the other half dark.
I don’t think it is a doable shot, in daylight at a still person. Further, we are talking about the the thickness of skin on a human skull, so say half inch, left or right, max.
One side you miss, the other you take the back of the man’s skull off.
In the dark? With iron sights? Worst lighting possible? Moving target?
Not happening. By the way L'Amour, although his books were fairly purple, he had one of, if not the largest collection of Western diaries, newspapers and original sources in private hands. He said the notion of the violent west was a myth.
I stand corrected.
so many informed people here that I realize I have embarrassed myself.
Entirely possible....... I know of a very lucky troop that took a glancing round to the forehead that hit at such an angle that the round entered the skin and traveled under the skin over the skull to give my troop a permanent part in his hair after the doc’s got done repairing his wound.
The old brown bess of that era or whitworth rifles used by “sharpshooters” would have / could have made such a shot on your subject in the story.
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