I lived 8 years on the edge of a big beanfield. It was about 400 yards to the waterway and the other side rose gradually with terraces laid in, up the rise. They would scratch plow it late in the summer and if it had been dry, you could see puffs of dust from a handgun bullet way out there. The safest one to shoot at was what we estimated at 600 yards. It was later confirmed by the measuring tool on Google Earth, to be 570 yards give or take ten.
I grew up reading Keith and I owned a 4" Model 29, a 5 1/2" Ruger 45 Colt and an old AMU accurized Ithaca 1911, which had the bullseye sights replaced with essentially 'high hardball' sights, if anybody besides be can remember them. I reloaded for all of them so you can guess where this went. We (grown nephew and handgun nut) drove a couple of T posts on the '600 yard' terrace so we could drop a full size pallet over it. We stapled cardboard on the face of the pallet and set a white plastic 5 gallon bucket in front of it for an aiming point. We used Elmer's method of holding the front sight above the notch, carefully squared with it, then centering the bucket on top of the front sight.
The 29 was loaded with a locally cast 240 grain SWC and a max published charge of H110. Same for the Ruger; whatever max charge of it with a 325 grain LBT, The 1911 was stoked with a 230 cast RNL and top charge of Universal. Forgive me, but it's 27 years and I don't recall the charge weights. We shot sitting with our backs braced against a shed, both wrists rested over our knees,
We eventually walked them in and once there we tried, as nearly as possible, to duplicate that hold for subsequent shots. We got to where we could regularly hit the pallet, worry hell out of the bucket and occasionally hit it. Both the Model 29 and 45 Blackhawk required essentially all of the front sight held up. The 1911 required the top of the rear sight to be lined up with the front of the ejection port and the front sight squared up with that. This was closer to field artillery than it was to conventional handgun shooting. I don't think we discovered anything new but we had a hell of a good time not discovering it.
Last edited by SargeMO; 04/18/19.
