Deep in the Appalachian woods on a small deer trail I was wandering, 22 in hand, I saw a pinecone that was about 15 yards away. I got into a stance, raised my rifle, aligned my sights on target, pressed my trigger, and was amazed. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had missed my target. But how? I could pull off a shot like that any other day. I had made shots like that plenty of times in the past. Why did I all of a sudden fall apart? Did my sights get knocked off? Did I use different ammo than the rifle was zeroed for? Or did I just need to accept the fact that sometimes, you just miss.
What is practical marksmanship? This is a great question. And if you ask 10 different people, you will probably get 11 different answers. For our purpose here, I look at “practical marksmanship” similar to the term acceptable accuracy. Everyone has their idea of what “acceptable” accuracy is. Acceptable accuracy is vastly different for the deer hunter than it is for the bench rest shooter. So how do we find what our acceptable level of accuracy is? Is there some magic formula? Maybe a set of numbers applicable to different situations? I will try my best to address this concern in this article. And if this ins’t enough for you, fret not, this will be a reoccurring topic with the project.
To answer this question, we must first decide what our task at hand is. For today, I am going to use the “woods walk” shooting exercise. For those unacquainted with this, allow me to explain. A woods walk shoot is where you have an area of woods, with multiple different targets of varying size and distance. This is the type of shooting that Garrett and I will be doing with our initial reloads. To teach Garrett to reload, I started with 30-30, 357 Magnum/38 Special, and 44 Magnum. And when we started I told him there was no point in loading all this ammunition if we don’t shoot it. Enter the woods walk. This is one of the most well-known types of shoots to many who grew up in the woods, learning to shoot. Oftentimes, a man would go into the woods, rifle in hand, and shoot at whatever was seen. This could be tree branches, pinecones, debris, old targets, old cars, or whatever else you find in the woods that you think may benefit from being shot. For us, we will be staging clay pigeons, pop cans, steel clangers, and whatever else we can think of. The typical distance in a woods walk is relatively short, with the sweeping majority of shots being less than 100 yards. This makes it a fantastic choice for those who elect to use 22s or even handguns. For us, we will use Marlin, Winchester, and Henry 30-30s, as well as Smith and Wesson 357/38s, and a Smith Model 29 in 44 Magnum.
Now that we know our task at hand, we can establish what our acceptable accuracy is. Our nominal target size is 4.3 inches, which is the size of a clay pigeon. And we know that most of our targets are going to be inside of 100 yards. So, for easy math, let’s say that we need a rifle that is capable of shooting 4 inches or less at 100 yards. To have a rifle that is capable of shooting 4 inch groups at 100 yards is nice, but it is completely irrelevant if the shooter can’t hit the broad side of a barn while standing in the middle of said barn. And now we arrive at the junction of accuracy and marksmanship. For a digestible definition, we will say that accuracy is whether or not our rifle or handgun is capable of hitting our target. And marksmanship is whether or not the shooter is capable of taking said rifle or handgun and hitting the target, taking into account both the shooter’s capability and the rifle’s own accuracy. While I am no mathematician, if it were to be written out as a formula, it would look something like (shooter’s capability)+(accuracy of the gun and ammo)= Hitting the target. Again math is not my strong suit, so please reserve judgments for the crude formula.
Most folk who are new to shooting are not just going to walk out, pick up a gun, and hit what they are shooting at. This all takes practice as we all know. As of the time of writing this, in the year 2025, those of us who have been shooting for several years know that practice has been difficult to accomplish with the state of ammo supply and a lack of reloading components. I will fully admit that during the past 5 years I had to cut my shooting volume way way down. This should be no shock to anyone, because I am sure that most of you have had to do the same. As I am sitting here typing this, I have a woods walk shoot coming up in two days, and I do not doubt that I will not be as accurate as I once may have been. I know on my recent trips to the range with some handguns my marksmanship has left some things to be desired. But at least in my area, components to reload and factory ammunition are starting to make a comeback. Are they as cheap as they once were? Absolutely not, but then again, is anything as cheap as it used to be? This is where we get into the biggest aspect of all of this, and that is practice. You can load the best ammo, have a $5,000 rifle, with the same amount wrapped up in glass on top of it, but if it is just a safe queen, you are no more effective than you would be with no rifle at all. Practice is paramount, and variety in that practice is just as necessary. Some days I do combat pistol drills, other days I do a woods walk, and other times I get to hit the clays course. The more variety you can fit into your shooting regimen, the better off you will be.