Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Greatest Sniper of all - time

Right! There is no standard of measurement, but if field craft counts heavily in defining the greatest sniper, and it does for me, then Simo Hayho has to be the man. IMO Hathcock would be next, though there are some I don't know much about.

Simo killed over 500 Russians in 98 days, likely way over 500, in extremely difficult rural winter conditions, and he did it with iron sights. He chose iron sights over a scope, which was available, because the scope stuck up higher and might give away his position. He had a lot of targets and soon tied up thousands of Russians who were trying to get him, but that is incredible skill any way we look at it.

IMO Kyle is well down the list from greatest, though he had an engaging personality.

Think of how many stories of that sort that we will never hear about.

I haven't read Chris Kyle's book in a while, but I believe he wrote that in his opinion Carlos Hathcock was the best. I'm 99% sure he wrote or said it, but maybe not in his book.
It is impossible to name the best without criteria.
Most kills
Longest confirmed shot
Shot/hit ratio
Most significant kill (Had someone managed to snipe Adolf Hitler, you'd have to give him some serious credit of some sort.)
Best "sneak" (If you have ever read Hathcock's book, he did some amazingly arduous things, damn near suicidal, to get some of his shots.)

Were it possible, which it is not, I'd get all the snipers together then tell them to decide which of them was the greatest. Their collective decision would be hard to argue with.

Simo also did a lot of work with a submachine gun.

Hathcock was into results. There was an evil Viet Cong bitch they called the Apache. If I recall correctly, when he finally caught up with her, he didn't shoot her. He called in an artillery barrage. That works too.

This seems like the kind of discussion best held over a couple sticks of beef jerky while perusing samurai swords at the gun show.

Again he was in a target rich environment. Also much more open than the confines of Asian jungles. Hathcock had to hunt down his targets. They were not walking into him.

His CO called in artillery and Carlos killed her on the run.

Different aspect of the trade. IIRC Chris spent the majority of time on overwatch vs hunting specific targets.

Simo Häyhä might get the title if the number of corpses one stacked up is how we pick a "GOAT" sniper. He was one tough and deadly Finn lander who gave the invading Russians a reason to keep their head down.

right after she stopped to take a piss if i remember right.

Correct.

IIRC he crawled the front lines at night with a submachine gun, and a loader who followed him with extra mags and a bag of loose ammo to refill the mags. He said that Siberian troops were the hardest to kill as it took 6-9 hits with the 9mm to kill them.

Lon Horiuchi

Not if he saved the Union.

Wha?!

He is one of about 3 snipers the average jane or joe could name.

I wasn't referring to Chris.

Edit in my opinion Chris isn't on the board. Not to say he wasn't a great sniper.

James Earl Ray

Never got credit? I mean anyone that knows ANYTHING, likely the first name they learned or read was Carlos. Some posts are hard to believe.

Hathcock, Land, England and a few others whose names I don't remember are largely responsible for keeping US sniping alive after Vietnam. The US military had always let the capabilty erode if not completely disappear after the wars ended.