I'm gonna float a WAG that the Texans (and rifle-armed Indians) were hitting on at least one in four shots in these Plains skirmishes related here. The difference here being skilled riflemen shooting familiar weapons and loads and calling their own shots ie. firing when THEY wanted to.
With rifles, IIRC one commonly dismounted to aim, a tactic much disparaged in popular history but which indisputably worked, or did for the Eastern tribes out on the Plains. The time required for that process being much overestimated. There are numerous accounts of mounted Plains Indians either hovering outside of rifle range in a sort of standoff, or of attempting to empty the rifles of the opposition by riding across their front.
I looked around youtube for a couple of good fictional examples. Did you ever see the tremendous "Ulzana's Raid" (1972) where Burt Lancaster as Chief of Scouts attacks two mounted Apaches? Or again in "Geronimo, an American Legend" (1993) where Robert Duvall as Al Sieber performs a very similar attack. In both these incidents repeating rifles (Winchesters) are used but apparently with muzzleloaders the dynamic was similar, the principle there being to reserve fire such that some rifles were loaded at all times.
As for closing with revolvers, RIP Ford, who would know, put the revolver and the bow inside of 50 yards as being approximately equal. We are all familiar today with how hard handguns can be to hit with under stress at any sort of range, Colts back then being deployed at practically powder-burn ranges.
In order for revolvers to be effective first you had to get within range, always a problem even with rifles if the Comanches weren't willing to accept anything approaching "fair" combat (in that respect, they were similar to the successful WWI and WWII fighter pilots).
Jack Hayes famously tangled with Yellow Wolf's Comanches twice, in 1841 and 1844, once with mostly single shot arms and once, famously, with revolvers. In both instances the superior numbers of Comanches present repeatedly engaged in close combat. The outcome in both fights was almost exactly similar; a lopsided toll in numbers much in favor of the Texans. Not much mentioned though is that in both fights the Texans themselves suffered about a 33% casualty rate in terms of dead and seriously wounded. Completely unsustainable if one expected these same guys to go out and do that with any regularity.
Anyhoo, on a different topic... Just this past weekend I found a 2008 book called "The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat" by Earl J. Hess. Ain't had time to read it yet but Hess claims that, based upon the ranges they were actually used, the impact of the rifle musket in that war over smoothbores has been way overblown. Contributing to this was the deeply curving trajectory of the minie ball at the velocities used and the almost complete lack of marksmanship training given to the rank and file, specifically towards the end of estimating range.
According to Hess, while there were a few skilled marksmen on either side who scored some impressive hits, most were using their Springfields and Enfields about like they would have used a musket.
Birdwatcher
