For this reason, to learn snap shooting, not merely forming a habit, it is best to constantly vary the height of the target you shoot at, or try to hit various parts alternately.
Get someone (if you are shooting at a man target) to call out “head” at the first beat of the metronome (beating at 120 to the minute), and try to hit the head before the next beat of the metronome.
Then he will call “feet” and it is ten to one that you will swing too high; or if it was “feet” first you will not be able to get as high as the “head” next time.
You can put in your shots at great speed if it is always to the same spot, but if you have to vary and do not know where you are to hit, till you get the word to go, it is impossible to shoot quite so fast accurately.
For this reason it is well not to think one has mastered snap shooting when one has got into the knack of putting all one’s shots on the same spot.
Snap shooting and shooting at moving objects, are the two sorts of shooting of real use.
Shooting long shots (which I will treat of next) may be useful at times, but deliberate shooting at minute bull’s-eyes is only useful for winning prizes and getting a reputation for being a “Crack Revolver-Shot.”
My world’s record snap-shooting score was published in the newspapers with the words under it—“This is the highest at present, but it will, of course, soon be beaten.”
Naturally, it was not as pretty a group as the target published next to it, which had been shot with deliberate aim, but this latter score has been equalled dozens of times. While my rapid-fire score is unbeaten (Appendix 10 and 11). The value of a score can only be judged if the conditions it was shot under are known.
If you want to be thought a good shot by the public, leave rapid, snap, and moving object shooting alone, otherwise your best scores will look so bad beside those of the man who aims, lowers his pistol, aims again, wipes his hands, and after half an hour of these antics, scores a bull’s-eye.