The evening times. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1895-1902, 1900-10-30
MAKE GOOD PISTOL SHOTS.
Some Men Endowed With the Fac
uIty of Marks;nanshiD
(From the New Orleans Times Democrat-)

(From the New Orleans Times-D emocrat)
Yes. I've heard a good many stories
about hip shooting, said a veteran
hunter Of this city, but I never slw but
one man who professed to be able to do
the trick. He was a physician named
Webster. who came from somewhere
near Charleston, s. c. I hunted with him
twice at AsheviIle. and on each occasion
he gave some remarkable exhibitions of
his skill He used an old-fashioned Park
er breech-loader, 12-bore. and when he
shot from the hip he grasped the stock
just behind the hammer with his right
hand, and held the barrel firmly in mis-
left some eight or nine inches below the
muzzIe. The fat of the stock was pressed
against his right side at the top of the hip
bone. and little to the front, SO he did
not face the object he shot at. but had it
quartering on his left. I am sure about
these details, because l watched him par
ticularly.
The first thing I saw him knock over
was a rabbit, which was Looping across a
plowed field. He steadied the gun for an
instant, with gesture that remind nIs
somehow of a man holding a billiard cue
and then blazed away. The rabbit
dropped. Afterward l saw him shoot d
lark on the wing and two other birds
sitting. He afterward missed couple
vince me that there was no accident
about his first work. He didn't pretend
to shoot as well from the hip as from
the shoulder, and admitted frankly that
he couldn't bring down difficult game,
such, for instance, as snipe. I can al
about three out Of five, he said. when
l pick my own conditions and l baIievs
he could do even better
when 1 asked him how he did it he
laughed. There is no mystery abCus
hip shooting he said, and it is a great
mistake to suppose it necessary to look
over the sights in order to hit things
How does an archer shoot down flying
birds? He doesn't look along the arrow,
he shoots by sense Of direction, and do
the same thing with a gun. It isn't
everybody who possesses this sense of
direction, he added, but those who
have it-perhaps one out CT three-can
learn hip shooting without difficulty
Il believe there is a good deal in the
sense -of-direction' theory" said another
sportsman in the group. I lived in the
West five or six years and l know for
certainty that nearly all the best off-hand
pistol shots among the cowboys fired
without aiming-I mean without sighting
in the usual manner along the barrel.
They would look at the target instead of
the weapon. and would generally give
their pistols a slight forward thrust be-
fore pulling the trigger. 1t was done on
the instant, and those who were clever
at it could be fairly confident of hitting
a mark the size of a mans hat at, say,
fifty PAGES. None of them claimed to he
able TO shoot as accurately that way as
he could by sighting. but it was a pretty
trick, all the same, and very valuable
in a sudden melee
Zone of the best offhand shots I ever
knew was a cow puncher named Bill Rain
ey. He attributed his skill to the habf.
of laying his index finger along the bar
re of his sixshooter. I don't pint the