Well, in Montana it was somewhat "encouraged" when I started out shooting/hunting--though the most common "pattern board" was an empty 12-ounce can on top of a wooden fence-post at an undetermined range. If the can fell off the fencepost (and had more than one hole) then the gun was good to go!
Might also mention again (since it's a story I've told more than once before in print) that my paternal grandmother was a hard-core meat hunter, and otherwise tough woman who homesteaded by herself in central Montana right after WWI. She apparently NEVER owned a shotgun, instead wingshooting birds with her Winchester pump .22. But in that country, back then, they were mostly sage grouse, which are pretty big--and not generally taken at acute angles.
But apparently she eventually did become acquainted with famous handgun shooter Ed McGivern, who was also from Lewistown. Aside from homesteading, she also taught country school after she married the Norwegian homesteader on the adjoining claim. After he died in the middle of the Depression, she eventually worked her way up to superintendent of schools for Fergus County--and during that period Ed McGivern gave shooting demonstrations for the school. My father remembered attending them regularly. Imagine that today!
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
