Fair enoughOriginally Posted by TiroFijo
Fair enough
Yes
IME groups open up quite a lot, as stated in my posts above
1. For that matter eye witness accounts from today can be pretty sketchy sometimes....as one of my coworkers says..."humans are notoriously unreliable witnesses...."
2. And Billy Dixon could probably never replicate the 1538 yard shot he made at Adobe Walls in June of 1874 either ....
Someone mentioned round balls effecting accuracy potential, while true that is not all they had back then. They actually used conical bullets with paper cartridges in pistols too. Those pointy bullets would make it a bit more accurate ....but still a 75 yard upper torso shot and a repeatable 75 yard upper torso shot on demand are 2 different things....just like a sub 6 second , zero down, El Prez and a sub 6 second zero down El Prez ON DEMAND are two completely different things.
OK quickly here.....
As I tell anyone that will listen (ask Hearne) the best shooters that have ever lived are living today. I'm talking about pure technical shooters. The most average of average C level USPSA shooter that shoots his monthly matches regularly and practices twice a month honestly shoots more live ammo than MOST of our western heroes did in their entire lifetime. The short version of this is that ammo (even powder and ball) was far more expensive in the past than now. Look back at those stacks of old gun magazines from the 1980s. What were ammo prices like in 1985? About what they are now.....adjusted for inflation ammo has been far more expensive historically than it has in the last 30 years.
Three things came about at the end of the 1970s that conspired to make us all better shooters. One was the progressive reloading press. Yes I know they have had reloading presses since metallic cartridges became a thing but they didn't have progressive presses and there just was not much of a wide spread "reloading industry" until the late 1970s. Now you could load A LOT of ammo in a short amount of time and could do it more affordably than buying it retail. A working class guy in 1880 (or 1930) Oklahoma simply was not going to have the financial ability to shoot nearly as much as the average guy now does if one was spending significantly more to buy it at the general store and one is loading by hand in large quantities.
The second was the advent of IPSC and "action shooting games" where you might fire as many rounds in one single field course stage at an IPSC (USPSA) match as you might shoot in half a bullseye match. If you want to get better you have to practice and that requires ammo. Because of this instead of spending a whole day at the range shooting 100 slow fire rounds practicing on their bullseye target they were shooting 100 rounds (or more) in 20 minutes in their bay practicing transitions and draw to first shot drills.
The third thing is the electronic timer. Yes I know Ed McGivern had an electric timer....but not one that fit in his range bag. By actually being able to easily measure how fast (or slow?) you were actually shooting you could better gauge progress while you were burning through your 500 rounds a day practicing for your upcoming matches...that you shoot every other weekend...every month...
So now with your timer to self measure progress and your cheap (historically speaking) ammo and the different kind of game you were practicing for you simply were putting more (and better quality) time into your competitive pistol practice.
Yes, "on the frontier you had to be a good shot".....but how many rounds did you ACTUALLY fire in practice with your pistol? IF you even owned a pistol? Not everyone walked the streets with their guns on like on TV westerns. In fact by 1878 it was illegal to openly carry guns in towns in Texas. Rifles and shotguns were far more prevalent when either hunting or fending off vermin (2 and 4 legged). But the overwhelming majority of people were just like people are now with regards to practice. A little practice or familiarization and then a few rounds a year hunting and maybe a few rounds on 4th of July to celebrate was what most people shot.
Look at the guns they had available. And the ammo . It does not take that many rounds of black powder to foul up a cap and ball revolver (or even a metallic cartridge gun) to the point that it has to be cleaned for the cylinder to keep turning..... especially the break top Smith and Wesson guns like the American, the Russians, Schofield and even the 1880 double actions. If you can't shoot more than 50 rounds without cleaning it because it is binding up that puts a serious crimp in your ability to practice. You will shoot more .22 LR through your MP22 or your 10/22 in an afternoon than most people ever shot with their 1860 Army or 1851 Navy....in a lifetime. Plus the guns just were not as robust. Your Glock will go 200,000 rounds ....nothing made in the 19th century is going to stand up to that kind of use. I lost count of the Colt 1877 "Lightnings" with broken internal parts I have seen.....
And then there is the fact that people don't really change all that much in 150 years. You had a tiny sliver of steely eyed gunfighters, you had some stone cold killers who happened to use a gun and then you had what would be considered "competent gunmen" ....and then you had the other 97% of people that owned guns....much like today. But the "competent gunmen" back then probably had a substantial mindset advantage over the majority of the modern "competent gunmen" simply due to having been a lot closer to violence on a regular basis and most likely having participated in it sometime between 1861 and 1865 or during the Indian wars. Seeing corpses that have been scalped and mutilated has a way of steeling your resolve...
As to the mention earlier about the legalities of today vs then.... a perfect example of that is the Dallas Stoudenmire " Four Dead in Five Seconds " fight in El Paso in April of 1881. The uninvolved Mexican bystander who Stoudenmire accidentally killed first was just out of luck and there was no legal ramifications to that. Imagine that happening today...... It was a different legal world back then.
Now...think of EVERY big name gunfighter from the 1930s and before that you have heard of and name them.....what do you have? 20 maybe if you are REALLY into this stuff? There are probably about 10 that the "average shooter" might have heard of. That is a TINY percentage of people from back then. We can argue that the different legal and social climate we have now that does not "reward" that type behavior any more and frankly looks at even lawful moral violence as "dirty" which is why people can't name as many "modern gunfighters". It is not that there are not people doing that kind of work it is that it does not get the same type publicity it used to....
Gotta run I'll check back in later.
In short, the demand isn't there for it. Very few people are shooting black powder rifles at very long distances anymore. IIRC, the Whitworth rifles were optimal with a certain type of black powder for which the charcoal was made from a specific species of tree in a specified forest.
If we have to march off into the next world, let us walk there on the bodies of our enemies.
Looking at the older black powder loading manuals shows some noticeably differences in velocities and pressure between the powders available at the time, (1970s). Studying and talking with black powder cartridge shooters, swiss powder generally runs higher velocity than most other makes, less fouling and not as dry and hard of fouling, less accuracy degradation over a number of shots.
John Kort did some experimenting with early black powder cartridges of various calibers. He would pull them down, replace the primers, freshen up the bullet lube, most was dried out badly, and reload the same powder and bullets. He also did some loading of black powder 22 LR shells. The only modern powder that gave as much velocity as the old powder in identical loads was swiss. It also didnt experience degraded accuracy as he expected after about a box (50 rds) had been fired in the 22 Marlin rifle. I dont recall how many rds he shot at a time to check fouling issues, or if he went any more than about 50 rds at a time.
There was numerous makes and types of black powder in the days it was used. It is a case of an art being lost for some time, with most common powders available today not performing as well as the older ones, with apparently the only real exception of Swiss. Many arent willing to pay for it, The result is many people make statements about "black powder this" or "black powder that..." without acknowledging theres different makes and qualities of powder, or that most powder made today is any different than in the past.
When the US Army was testing the Colt Navy pistol of 1851 they shot hundreds of rounds through it without cleaning and without issue, other than the rifling wasnt visible from leading. I dont have my books at hand to give specifics of the time and place and a google search hasnt been fruitful. This is one example of different powder characteristics from the past to today. Keep in mind also that the cap jams that seem to be accepted today as "normal" for the percussion guns, wasnt normal. Caps were made for specific guns and models. In a letter from an Army officer to his superiors (can get references later) he commented that the guns and caps given to the Union spies need to be standardized, because when the caps meant for Colts pistols were used in the Starrs revolvers, they didnt fire reliably, and when caps suitable for Starrs were used in Colts, the caps burst apart in pieces and jammed the guns (sound familiar?). I believe he mentioned Elys caps in particular in regards to the Colts caps/ The Ely caps made specifically for Colts, by implication, didnt normally break apart. Today we are saddled with a "one size is good enough for all" mentality (and I dont mean "size" specifically), and most people havent questioned it, just accept it and assume its always been that way. It hasnt. Many fixes have come along attempting to fix the issue, but the simplest would be if a cap maker made caps of suitable heavy cup that didnt break up when fired in Colts pistols.
I dont know the performance differences between round balls used in pistols and rifles, but round balls can shoot some very good groups at 100 yards and beyond in rifles. They were shot in informal competition all over the frontiers out to 300+ yards. The American riflemen in the revolution were considered very dangerous to 300 yards.
If I can get out, lll shoot some at further distances with percussion pistols.
Last edited by Malamute; 06-19-2019 at 08:31 PM.
This meshes neatly with the post above about there being no real shooting schools until Jeff Cooper. I'm self-taught as well and I can vouch that where there's a will, there's a way. You figure out what you need to do to not miss like that. Then you apply these adjustments until you need to make a change again. Some of my techniques are atrocious, Since we're on the revolver board, my greatest epiphany came from watching Jerry Miculek shoot DA revolver. I immediately realized that I needed to "choke up" on the grip to get the control I needed for DA work. Magic, sheer magic!
Yeah, but what does this Miculec character know, I hear he uses grooved triggers for crying out loud.
Last edited by Malamute; 06-19-2019 at 09:50 PM.
My 1860 is without a doubt my most accurate handgun. But I haven't shot past 50 yards
May I ask: are you loading round balls or conical? Conicals are much more accurate past 25 yds.
But from all I've read round balls were by far the prevalent loads of the era, and that's what I was referring to. It is easier and faster to load lead balls in a cylinder vs a conical bullet, they were more common, readily available and well established, and the vast majority of shots were taken at relatively short distances.
Last edited by TiroFijo; 06-20-2019 at 07:33 AM.
From what I understand (and I'm clearly not the final word on anything) the caps are also apparently "hotter" now than they were back then and that is probably a contributing factor as to why they "detonate" and break apart as opposed to the old ones not breaking. There is also no real "milspec" for percussion caps (or cap nipples on the pistols ) so you get "close enough" between the various makers instead of "exactly right".
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