The following quote was pulled from another thred currently running on this forum. It begs a very good question: Was Roosevelt really a good shot?

The poster's claims are to the contrary.


QUOTE: "Ted Roosevelt used modern firearms and still managed to create a long list of wounded and suffering African animals due to his buffon shooting style....yet some have considered him a legendary great white hunter...." :END QUOTE

I always thought of TR's hunting to be of the highest order and assumed his shooting was on par with his legendary reputation as a hunter-conservationist.

Anybody know???

If you read the book about Teddy and his African Safari "African Game Trails" there are lots of bits where he missed and wounded. His son Kirmit seemed to be a better shot and even dispatched several of Teddy's animals after they were wounded. Kirmit was known to run the animals down on foot before dispatching.

My impression matches Pegleg based on what I have read in African Game Trails.

If you read some more about TR you find that he had extremely bad eyesight. Even with glasses if really affected his shooting. In his book on ranching out west he discusses it.

SSR

Roosevelt was a great man and did more for wildlife that any other president I can think of. Maybe even more than all other presidents combined.

Having said that he wasn't the best shot by any stretch of the imagination. He was blind or nearly so in one eye from boxing, and that coupled with iron sights had to have a negative effect on his shooting. Lack of depth perception and no optics. Everything I've read, including his own writings, mentions poor shooting as well as good shooting.

Still let's put it in the context of the times. For example, when we now read about the shooting that Sir Wm. Cornwallis Harris or Sir Samuel Baker did we cannot rightly impose today's standards. Good lord they shot elephants multiple times with their muzzleloaders. F.C. Selous wounded animals with his muzzleloaders too. Same goes in more modern times to a lesser extent with hunters like Taylor, the hunters (poachers) in the Lado Enclave who included some of the great big game hunters.

I'm just saying that times change, attitudes change, ethics change, equipment changes. The past can't always be viewed with today's standards.

Crap! Mr. Smith said what I was typing the below and posted his before mine! But us great minds think alike.

I think lots of late 19th and early 20th century hunters, using iron sights, shot at distances that I would not attempt, particularly using cartridges that had rainbow trajectories.

And yes, Roosevelt was not a good shot. He often so admitted the same, but you must remember that he was very, very nearsighted, almost blind in one eye and was using sights that required focusing on the rear, the front and the animal. Such is pretty tough for one with good eyesight.

With a hundred years passed, looking back, one can pick apart his hunting ethics and "sportsmanship" if they wish, but using 1906 thoughts, he was a sterling conservationist and one to then be admired as a hunter and explorer.

Judge, if only I could write like you...

Remember he was shooting at game at some pretty long ranges using bolt action, lever action and double rifles, all with open, iron sights.

And he had iffy vision.

I found a good passage from AGT online, in which TR describes his shooting in what seems to me a forthright way. He was not inclined to sugarcoat things, and I believe that we can assume he was an honest man - or at least as honest as the average hunter!

Note that this is early in the book, after he had hunted for a considerable period of time on and in the neighborhood of an Englishman's large East African ranch.

I rarely had to take the trouble to stalk anything; the shooting was necessarily at rather long range, but by manoeuvring a little, and never walking straight toward a beast, I was usually able to get whatever the naturalists wished. Sometimes I shot fairly well, and sometimes badly. On one day, for instance, the entry in my diary ran: "Missed steinbuck, pig, impalla and Grant; awful." On another day it ran in part as follows: "Out with Heller. Hartebeest, 250 yards, facing me; shot through face, broke neck. Zebra, very large, quartering, 160 yards, between neck and shoulder. Buck Grant, 220 yards, walking, behind shoulder. Steinbuck, 180 yards, standing, behind shoulder."

Generally each head of game bagged cost me a goodly number of bullets; but only twice did I wound animals which I failed to get; in the other cases the extra cartridges represented either misses at animals which got clean away untouched, or else a running fusillade at wounded animals which I eventually got. I am a very strong believer in making sure, and, therefore, in shooting at a wounded animal as long as there is the least chance of its getting off. The expenditure of a few cartridges is of no consequence whatever compared to the escape of a single head of game which should have been bagged. Shooting at long range necessitates much running. Some of my successful shots at Grant's gazelle and kongoni were made at 300, 350, and 400 yards; but at such distances my proportion of misses was very large indeed, and there were altogether too many even at shorter ranges.

The so-called grass antelopes, the steinbuck and duiker, were the ones at which I shot worst; they were quite plentiful, and they got up close, seeking to escape observation by hiding until the last moment; but they were small, and when they did go they rushed half hidden through the grass and in and out among the bushes at such a speed, and with such jumps and twists and turns, that I found it well-nigh impossible to hit them with the rifle. The few I got were generally shot when they happened to stand still.

On the steep, rocky, bush-clad hills there were little klipspringers and the mountain reedbuck or Chanler's reedbuck, a very pretty little creature. Usually we found the reedbuck does and their fawns in small parties, and the bucks by themselves; but we saw too few to enable us to tell whether this represented their normal habits. They fed on the grass, the hill plants, and the tips of certain of the shrubs, and were true mountaineers in their love of the rocks and rough ground, to which they fled in frantic haste when alarmed. They were shy and elusive little things, but not wary in the sense that some of the larger antelopes are wary. I shot two does with three bullets, all of which hit. Then I tried hard for a buck; at last, late one evening, I got up to one feeding on a steep hillside, and actually took ten shots to kill him, hitting him no less than seven times.

I've read most of his North American hunting books and Game Trails as well. We was most definitely a mediocre shot. No doubt by the time his safari came around his eyes weren't helping anything. Shot choice probably didn't help any either. Shooting at animals from 300-400-500 yards with open sights and failing eye sight probably isn't a good combo. I was actually kind of shocked by some of the shots he was taking. Same thing with Fred Bear though. He sure as hell had no qualms about flinging an arrow at most any range. If you don't believe me just read his own writings......

Brett

Hell, I'd trade spots.

My oh my how times have changed. We all now consider anything inside 200 yards as a chip shot with highpowered rifles and highpowered optics.
Telescopic sights were delicate and unreliable and used infrequently when hunting if at all back then.
My grandfather, slightly younger than TR, would not use a scope and when his vision began to fade in his seventys he quit hunting.
I'm sure some who post here have done a safari with open sights but probably not many.

Reading between the lines my impression was that TR wasn't the finest shot to ever carry a rifle. I also don't guess that he was shy when it came to slinging bullets after the festivities had begun.

Just think though, an all expense paid, year long safari as a VIP, with basically no bag limit, and a huge entourage of porters, cooks, etc. i want one!

TR all so suffered from blurred vison in one eye,it was due to a head shot he took during a boxing match a few months before the trip

In response to the below quote, I had the joy of doing a safari with two double rifles. Both were Cogswell & Harrison medium grade? guns, one in .375 Express 2 1/2" (like a .38/55) and the other in .475 N.E. 3 1/4" (basically a .450 Nitro necked up to .483).

Both had express sights and were kind of like a big sister and her little sibling.

On that trip, I first hunted PG in RSA on a 20k hectare ranch (using the baby girl) then buffalo in Zimbabwe with her "thumper" older family member.

I learned a bunch of stuff using the rifles. Among that.... First, it is harder to kill stuff if you "have to" get within 70 yards or so to be able to make clean kills.... but it's fun! Nothing is a gimmie.

Secondly, hunting a mature bull buff among lots of others in a herd, and/or in thick stuff early in the season, at least for my tired eyes, is almost impossible with iron sights. But... and this is a happy "but"... dagga boys simplify the matrix. You don't have to pick them out of a bunch of fifty black shapes and at 70 yards on in, you can put a bullet in the chest just fine... even with express sights.

Another safari, being a Teddy fan, I took a model 1995 Winchester in .405 and a .470 N.E. to Tanzania, neither having a scope. I guess I could have killed bigger animals with scoped guns, but I still took 4 of the five PG animals available on license with the .405 and also one buffalo. I killed second buff with the .470 double.

As I said, I probably would have killed bigger animals with a scoped rifle, but I had lots of reasons to howl at the moon, tip a Scotch or three in camp and now can look at some animals on the wall here that I feel I earned.

My conclusion after reading most of Roosevelt's hunting publications and after limiting myself to weapons like his... Roosevelt shot too often and too far away, but that was the norm then. If he'd had a 100 yard max (which was pretty unthinkable according to custom), even with his bad eyes, he'd probably done better than me. Heck... I can't hit the earth at 200 yards with iron sights.

Roosevelt told it all and was painfully honest about his shortcomings, while I, too, am honest and never miss, so I don't have to lie.

quote:

Originally posted by Blacktailer:
My oh my how times have changed. We all now consider anything inside 200 yards as a chip shot with highpowered rifles and highpowered optics.
Telescopic sights were delicate and unreliable and used infrequently when hunting if at all back then.
My grandfather, slightly younger than TR, would not use a scope and when his vision began to fade in his seventys he quit hunting.
I'm sure some who post here have done a safari with open sights but probably not many.

His book, "African Game Trails" is available on Google Books for download. Also you folks can find some wonderful "old" Africa stuff on Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

These are free and legal downloads, as far as I know.

Regards

Esskay

Saeed Ansari

Saeed_Ansari(on Skype)

I will put it this way.

With all due modesty, I consider myself a fair to good shot.

But I doubt that I would have shot as well as TR did, with the same rifles he used and under the same circumstances.

We are pretty well-spoiled nowadays.

quote:

Originally posted by Dave James:
TR all so suffered from blurred vison in one eye,it was due to a head shot he took during a boxing match a few months before the trip

I believe it was a detached retina, which of course they had no way to repair in those days.