BarnBuster
Virtually Unknown Member
Master of the long range pistol shot... I was privileged to meet Mr. Keith and Bill Jordan in the early 70's. Jordan especially was a dead fucking shot with a revolver...and fast as hell on the draw.
Shooting handguns accurately at 100 to 500 yards was once thought to verge on the impossible. Elmer Keith tells the story of a day in the life of a prototype Model 29, with a 6.5” barrel. “One day Judge Don Martin and I were shooting the big gun over at the city dump.When we started back, I spotted a rock down the canyon below the dump at what looked like 500 yards from the road. The rock was about three feet long by about 18 inches high in the middle tapered a little bit at each end. Resting my arms out the car window, I tried it. The first shot was low. Holding up more front sight and perching the rock on top of it, I managed to put the next five on the rock. Don said, “Damn it, I seen it, but I still don’t believe it.”
A little later, Elmer took the first game ever shot with the new .44 Magnum. It was a goshawk perched in a tree at 100 yards. After that he was called upon to kill a rifle-wounded deer at 600 yards, which he did, and long-range handgun hunting was suddenly a reality. It has been said that Elmer Keith almost single-handedly pioneered modern sport handgunning. His influence on handgun design was substantial, his influence on handgun cartridge design truly revolutionary. One strong man supplied the guts and the vision, and the world followed, which is the way things usually work in real life.
(we need an ass hat smiley, :asshat: )
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