doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Does anyone REALLY believe the.............

Possible with some luck? Absolutely. Likely? Less so.

And as soon as I started reading I knew the Keith shots would be mentioned and the bashers would show up.

Very few people have had the chance to shoot anything beyond 300 yards. I miss the Arizona range facilities I had access to in the '80's. I used to regularly shoot at 600 yards at Ben Avery and on two occasions I was able to shoot from the 1000 yard line. If I can hit a target from that range AT ALL, I don't doubt that someone like Parsons might have done what is reported.

It's gotta be on the first shot, or bye-bye crow.
Paper targets stick around for the next shot.

As per your first statement, I would tend to agree. I think I'm a pretty good shot with a rifle and the last eye exam I had at age 50 showed I was still blessed with 20-16 vision right eye and 20-18 left eye. I still don't need glasses. As to your last statement, you show your ignorance, as nowhere in my post did I mention taking wild random long range shots at game. I suppose it is possible that I wounded some flies that were attracted to the pop cans I regularly hit at 300 yds. Sorry. I gave up hunting with scoped high power rifles around 1980 and switched to flintlock rifles. I wanted more of a challenge than lining up crosshairs and squeezing the trigger. I killed a lot of deer with the muzzleloader, one shot kills, all between 40 and 110 yards. I passed up a lot of shots because I wasn't sure I'd put the animals' lights out with one shot. Around 1990 I took a shot at a running doe with my flintlock at fairly close range. My hold seemed good and the gun fired instantly. I found no hair on the snow, nor any blood as I followed the tracks for about 100 yards. I couldn't believe I missed, but I gave up due to no blood trail. Five days later, as I walked in to the same spot, I found a dead doe perhaps fifty yards beyond where I gave up. Possums had been feeding on it, eating its' eyes and chewing at a bullet hole behind the left front leg, which was my aiming point. They also chewed into its' anus and startled me as they ran out of the body cavity. Now, I cannot be certain this was the same deer I shot at, but there was a lot of circumstantial evidence... There was an entry wound at the heart, but no exit, which is common with round balls. The doe was the same size and traveling in the same direction. Not many people hunted this area, and there were no human tracks in the vicinity in the old snow. I beat myself up a thousand times over the years and asked the Lord to forgive me for wasting one of His animals, even though I'm not sure it was me, who only needed to keep following up my shot for another fifty yards. Then I have a moron like you who obviously can't read, insulting me as being a slob hunter. In my next life, I hope to be perfect, like you.

Keith;
I really do believe Ithaca5E was not speaking of you, but the writer Elmer keith, as his 600 yd kill of a mule deer with a 4" S&W magnum had just been mentioned. My opinion is he probably has no basis for his statement concerning that Keith either other than his own personal opinion.

I believe it.

Ithaca5E, you must be a pretty accomplished shooter/hunter to be slagging off Elmer Keith ?! best, Mike Bailey

I have witnessed a 110 yard kill with a 22 Ruger singel six, a three point buck shot at night. I saw the same boy shoot a flying mallard at over 90 yards with an iron sighted Remington Pump 3006. I also killed a Canada Goose at 80 yards with a 4" Smith and Wesson Model 63 22 LR. If it can happen, it will happen but all of the three shots above were luck, not skill. I am sure the crow died a similar fate.

I was one of the lucky boys drawn from the crowd to throw objects for Herb at Pebble Lake trapgounds near Fergus Falls, MN. I'm guessing about 1948. Anyway, I had a hell of a throwing arm and he gave me an egg and I whipped it straight up as fast as I could and he missed it! He then made a remark that got the crowd laughing hard. We had one of his Indian chief heads drawn with a Model 63 hanging in our hardware store for many years.

Two shots that shook me up, wondering if I was dreaming, were 20 years ago on my property on the coast along 100-foot cliffs at the edge of the sea. Two crows jumped out of the cranberries into the wind about 50 yards away and I shot both with my scoped Remington Model 700 custom 25-06.

Awww, hell.

Keith.

First, the circumstances, eyewitnesses, and background of the 'infamous and unbelievable' shots of Keith ARE on record and in print. If someone has not read them, then that is their loss, but does not validate their own unsupported and unwitnessed judgment of the facts: AS WITNESSED and RECORDED.

Secondly, unless a person has spent considerable time with a pistol, sagebrush, and mountain sides, just constructively and carefully plinking a ton or so of lead away, I'm not sure on what grounds that soul can make any informed decision about long range pistol shooting.

Thirdly, Keith's own son has commented in print about his father's eyesight. The man was raised in wide open spaces, spent great amounts of time there, and was noted for his game-spotting ability by contemporary accounts: far beyond the ordinary folks perception. Yes, it's in print and verified by more than one source.

Fourth: how about ya read the man's autobiography, and check out exactly HOW MUCH shooting he did? I did a brick or two of .22's thru my Colt Match Woodsman about every weekend in my late teens. I could hit specific dirt clods and other far targets better than most of the local .22 rifle shots, and I'm a mere child compared to the distances shot and the guns which Keith used all his life.

He knew trajectory and wind and light and terrain and the capabilities of a weapon far better than just about anyone reading this. Disagree? Publish y'r own biography,with the number of witnessed shots that Keith has.

Whenever i read this topic and the windy, opinionated, inflated ego, jealous, little minded, disparaging and ignorant self-displays of Keith bashing that inexhaustibly accompany it, I am reminded of a friend's motto.

He manages the buildings of a large health complex, as big as some small towns, inhabited by a lot of high IQ's and higher egos.. He says, "People are stupid, and the more they think they know,the stupider they are."

As to Parson's feats? I grew up knowing the grandsons of an exhibition shooter for Winchester: one Mr Richards. His son was Win Richards, long time school superintendent of Phoenix, Ariz schools. The old boy's mementos and medals and tin Indian targets and memorabilia were all over the house and barns. I listened carefully to eyewitness accounts of his shooting. Those men could see a target like a super-star major league hitter can count the stitches on an incoming fast ball. No shixx, Shakespere.

When even ONE of the Keith/Parson type critics have the experience and practice and demonstrate in public and for the record, even a smattering of the recorded feats which were witnessed, then they might have a tiny shred of cred. Until then, the whole lot of you are just puffing smoke and blowing wind.

Hell, I can't even see fine-sight picture pistol sights anymore, but if you want to show up at one of the long range pistol seminars that Linebaugh puts on, or have a personal chat with John Taffin or Ross Seyfried or a few other pistol luminaries, I'd be more than pleased for you to pay my way to shoot with them and you, so's ya can try and demonstrate just how 'impossible' long range pistoling is: according to y'r mentally blighted and ignorantly crippled concepts of human possibility and ballistic fact.

Just a thot, ya know? God, this subject makes me laugh so hard, it's difficult to leave such a target rich environment. However, if anyone could have made that crow shot at that distance, I doubt you'd find anyone more capable or in better tune to do it than Mr Parsons. Trying judge a phenomenal man like that by our personal standards, no matter how much we value our experiences, is still comparing the Allegheny Mountains to Mt Everest.