On the third day of the Adobe Walls seige, June 30, 1874 near Amarillo, buffalo hunter Billy Dixon was challenged to pick off one of a party of Cheyenne horsemen atop a butte east of the hunters sod fort. Dixon steadies his rifle across a bag of corn and squeezed off his Sharps Big .50 and shot the Cheyenne from his horse at seven-eighths of a mile! Billy modestly shrugged it off as a "scratch" shot, meaning it would be tough to do again.
By comparison: Ten years earlier while with Federal General Nathaniel Banks' Red River expedition; Captain John Metcalf made a similar shot, but not by Kentucky windage the way Dixon did. Metcalf who was a West Point graduate dedicated to long range sharpshooting, had been ordered to drop a Confederate general in camp, out of range, across a mile wide Louisiana valley. Metcalf had 24 hours to ready for the shot for which he had devoted his entire military study.
Metcalf had a 30 pound, muzzled loaded target rifle with a long 25 power telescope. A surveyors transit gave him the precise 5,467 foot range to the tentpole, before which the Confederate officer would stand at the next mornings Reveille. Metcalf took 50 men to build his firing bay on the crest of the highest Federal hill. Down went a firm, heavy planked floor. To it is bolted a firing table, and to that is fitted a scaled swivel for exact elevation and traverse. Metcalf spent the night with ballistics and trajectory tables. Now he has measured load in grains of black powder, his angles for range, wind and drift. When the rifle is aimed at the Confederate, the barrel of the target rifle angles sharply into the sky. It is locked there, no hairs breadth tremble to throw it yards wide of the target. The captain squeezes his shot. Slightly over four seconds later, the down arcing bullet drops the far away officer, wounded.
One of science and one of art.
From Off the Beaten Trail by Ed Syers.
By comparison: Ten years earlier while with Federal General Nathaniel Banks' Red River expedition; Captain John Metcalf made a similar shot, but not by Kentucky windage the way Dixon did. Metcalf who was a West Point graduate dedicated to long range sharpshooting, had been ordered to drop a Confederate general in camp, out of range, across a mile wide Louisiana valley. Metcalf had 24 hours to ready for the shot for which he had devoted his entire military study.
Metcalf had a 30 pound, muzzled loaded target rifle with a long 25 power telescope. A surveyors transit gave him the precise 5,467 foot range to the tentpole, before which the Confederate officer would stand at the next mornings Reveille. Metcalf took 50 men to build his firing bay on the crest of the highest Federal hill. Down went a firm, heavy planked floor. To it is bolted a firing table, and to that is fitted a scaled swivel for exact elevation and traverse. Metcalf spent the night with ballistics and trajectory tables. Now he has measured load in grains of black powder, his angles for range, wind and drift. When the rifle is aimed at the Confederate, the barrel of the target rifle angles sharply into the sky. It is locked there, no hairs breadth tremble to throw it yards wide of the target. The captain squeezes his shot. Slightly over four seconds later, the down arcing bullet drops the far away officer, wounded.
One of science and one of art.
From Off the Beaten Trail by Ed Syers.
No, I really doubt it.
). I don't think the telescope rifle saw any combat back then though. There were plenty of rifles equipped with telescopes, or in the venacular, telescope rifles, by the time of the Mother of American Family Feuds (1861-65). Go to Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Spotsylvania Court House, West Point, Southern Railroad & Civil War Museum in Kennesaw, Smithsonian American History Museum if you would like to see a period telescope rifle.