title="[Pg 29]"/> a hard-thrown ball, letting arm, hand, and wrist fly up together.

The pistol barrel, hand, and arm should all be nearly in one line, the thumb along the left side, so as to prevent jerking to the left in pressing the trigger (in the same way as the left arm is fully extended in shooting with the shotgun), and not crooked, as all beginners insist on holding it.

You must be constantly on the watch that you do not crook your thumb, until the extended position becomes second nature to you. Some makes of pistols, however, have the extractor lever in a position which renders this grip with extended thumb impossible.

For the benefit of beginners who are not target rifle-shots, the following explanation may be necessary: The target, for the convenience of locating shot-holes, is supposed to represent the face of a clock. The top of the bull’s-eye (which we term “bull” for brevity) is called XII o’clock, as that is, of course, where the numeral XII appears on a clock face, and so on for all the other numerals: half-past four, for instance, is half-way between where the numerals IV and V appear on a clock. I was once shooting in the presence of a foreign naval officer, and when I made a “half-past five” “bull” shot he said, “South-east,” his professional instinct making him liken the target to the face of a compass.

First take a deep breath, and fill your lungs. Now slowly bring your right arm to the horizontal, keeping your eyes fixed on the bottom edge—at “six o’clock”—of the “bull”; whilst you are doing this, put your forefinger inside the trigger-guard, and gradually begin to feel the trigger and steadily increase the pressure on it straight back, not sideways. Whilst you are doing all this, also gradually stiffen all your muscles so that you are braced up, especially about the right shoulder, as though you were walking along the pavement and saw a man coming towards you whom you meant to shoulder out of your path.

You may breathe naturally until the pistol is levelled, then hold your breath; if you cannot get your aim satisfactorily before you feel you want to take a fresh breath, lower the pistol, take a deep breath, and try again. If you have followed these directions carefully, you will find, when the hind sight comes to the level of your eyes (closing your left eye or not, as you find best, without any lowering of the head), the front sight will be seen through the middle of the “U” pointed at the bottom of the bull’s-eye, the top of the front sight just touching it at “six o’clock.” If everything has been done perfectly, at the moment this occurs the pressure on the trigger will have been increased sufficiently to cause the hammer to fall, and, after it has fallen, you will see the top of the front sight still just touching the bull’s-eye at its bottom edge.

If the pistol had been loaded (assuming, of course, that it was an accurate shooting one and properly sighted), you would have had a central bull’s-eye for your shot. Most likely, however, you will find that the pistol came up all of a tremble, and that, as the hammer fell, the front sight was jerked very wide of the “bull” and perhaps even hidden by the hind sight.

Do not be discouraged, but cock and try again. By the way, it is best to use a “dummy” cartridge or an exploded one whilst doing this “snapping” practice, as otherwise the jar may do damage to the plunger and perhaps break the mainspring. There are dummy cartridges, made with a rubber “buffer,” for this practice.

If you still find your hand shaky (and it is not naturally so), it most probably arises from your gripping too hard.

The action of “letting off” should be like squeezing an orange—a squeeze of the whole hand. Start with a light grip when your hand is down, and gradually squeeze as you come up, the trigger-finger squeezing back; and the hammer will fall without the least tremor or without the sights moving off the point they covered during the fall of the hammer. The main thing of all in pistol shooting is to squeeze straight back. Whenever you find yourself shooting badly see if you are not “pulling off to one side”; and in nine cases out of ten you will discover that this was the cause of your bad shooting.

Some men can never squeeze the trigger straight back, and have to allow for this by getting the hind sight “set over” to one side to correct it; but this is a slovenly way of shooting, and, as the pull to one side may vary according to the “jumpiness” of the shooter, it prevents his being a really first-class shot.

Keep the hind sight perfectly horizontal; beginners are prone to cant it on one side, which puts the bullet to the side towards which you cant.

After a little practice, you will be able to “call” your shots, that is to say, you will be able, the moment the cartridge explodes, to say where the shot has struck the target, as you know where the sights were pointed at the “squeeze-off.”

After six shots, make a pencil-cross over each bullet-hole, so as to know where your former shots hit. After twelve hits it is best to take a fresh target. At the end of the day’s shooting, you can cover the holes by pasting black patches on the bull’s-eye holes and white on the rest, and use the target again.

I will now say why I insist upon the importance of a table being before the shooter. The usual procedure for a beginner with the pistol is this: He cocks the pistol with both hands, pointing it at the spectators on his left whilst doing so; he then holds it with his right arm close to his side, pointing it to the ground at his right foot. He then brings it up with a flourish, high above his head, and lowers it to the target, jerks the trigger, and “looses off.” Of course he does not hit the target, but makes a very wild shot. After a few more shots on this principle, getting more and more wild, and making bigger flourishes with his pistol, he finally lets it off by accident whilst his arm is hanging by his side; and he is lucky if he does not make a hole in his right foot.

I remember once a man telling me (he professed to be an expert with the revolver) that I was wrong in keeping my revolver pointed in front of me towards the target when preparing to shoot. “You ought to hold it like this,” he said, letting his right arm hang close to his side and keeping the revolver pointing downwards; “then it is quite safe.” At that moment it went off and blew a big hole in the ground within an inch of his foot!

By my system of having a table in front of the shooter, close to which he stands, and from which he lifts the pistol, he cannot shoot down into his feet. But he must never turn round or leave the table without first unloading the pistol and placing it on the table; nor, on any account, must he let any one go up to the target or be in front or even get level with him whilst the pistol is in his hand.

Now, as to the trick of lifting the pistol above one’s head before firing: I cannot understand why people want to do this. It only frightens spectators; besides, the shooter is running the risk of shooting himself through the head; and in competitions or in self-defence time is too valuable to waste in such antics.

When you are pretty confident that you can keep your sights properly aligned at the bottom edge of the “bull” while the hammer is falling, you can try a few shots with a loaded pistol. It is best to load only some of the chambers, if using a revolver, irregularly spin the cylinder round, after the revolver is closed and at half-cock, so as not to know which chambers are loaded, and every time you find you jerk off