introduction and notes by John T. Amber
The story of an 1886 shoot between the last of the great muzzle-loading marksmen and the breech-loaking upstarts from Walnut Hill.
WE ARE particularly pleased to reprint this account of a great event in shooting history from the 1886 pages of Firest & Stream. It was the occasion, apparently, of the first shoulder-to-shoulder contest between the die-hard advocates of the muqqle-loading rest rifle and several noted marksmen using the newfangled breechloaders (these las had only been in use generally for some dozen years.)
Mr.Murray Leyde of Painesville, Ohio, an old friend, was kind enough to send me a photo copy of the old account. In it I learned exactly how string measurements were made in that period, clearly and withcut question—as you will learn in your reading of the report. It had been assumed that the technique was pretty much as the anonymous correspondent has it, but here is the exact methodology outlined. Briefly, each shot in the string was measured from the intersection of the diagonal lines to the bullet hole, then the 10 measurements were simply added together
It is difficult to compare these old string scores with today’s targets—most commonly measured from center to center of the bullet holes farethest apart—unless a reproduction to a know scale of the old target is available for measuring. In the present instance we have two of them to assess.
Fletcher’s first string measures 2 5/8" center to center, the string total 9 7/16 " as the table shows. Brown’s third string measures 3 9/16"—almost a full inch greater than Fletcher’s—but Brown’s string score on histen shots is 9 13/16", or only 3/8" worse. Fletcher’s group is quite obviously a better one than Brown’s, but simply reading the string measurements would not have revealed the graphic difference.
Another nice bit of source data given in this 1886 report is the quite exact load information put down for most of the contestants, to say nothing of the drawing that depicts, to scale, the variety of bullets used by 15 of the marksmen.
Further comments will appear in the text, set inside brackets.
