I am reading "Lone Survivor" which is a book about a Navy Seal.

In it he stated that he and his brother, as young boys used a Nylon 66 to hit moving beer cans at 150 yards. He did not say how they got them moving - swinging from a branch or tossed up by the other brother or ?

It struck me as pretty good shooting. I would be satisfied to hit a stationary one with my scoped Cooper from the bench let alone a moving can with open sights from a standing position.

Can anyone here do this?

Well, I have "moved" a beer an at 150 yards. But it wasn't moving until i hit it. And i can tell you that i didn't really think i would actually hit it when i shot at it. I can also tell you it took lots of lead flying down range to actually make that hit. And i cant do it repeatably. I'm just a country boy with no shooting instruction 'cept what my grampa showed me.

You guys know my story is a crock of BS. a guy would have to hold like about 5-6 beer cans over the can to get the elevation right, and you couldn't see the target can cause the end of the barrel would be in the way and covering target can. And the wind... would blow that .22 at 150 yards like my story blows. Just saying....
But i still might like to read the book.

I think it call depends on how the can was moving.

If it moved the same way all the time, possibly.

My uncle and his National Service guys used to shoot the string on a Swinging can with 303's
so with practice, anything is possible.

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betcha that bubba was royally pissed about shooting the beer in his hand

LMAO !! that was funny no matter who ya are!

The book is actually quite interesting especially the gun battle that the vastly outnumbered Seal Team carried out on a steep mountainside. The number of Taliban is still being disputed - varying from hundreds down to 30 or 40 against 4 Seals.

It also has a controversial segment wherein there was supposedly a vote take as to whether to execute three goat herders who could and evidently did later report them to the Taliban.

It is scheduled to start movie production this September.

The book was written by a professional writer not the last survivor. In that respect I still am not too sure about the claim of hitting moving beer cans at 150 yards but that really does not matter when compared to the battle except that if he exaggerated the moving beer cans would he exaggerate the number of Taliban?.

Ever once-in-a-while I will try knocking over bowling pins with a .22 LR at 200 yards. This is a stationary bowling pin, using a scoped rifle, and shooting from a bench. Once the holdover is known, and the wind drift is established, the percentage of hits is pretty good. Establishing the holdover and wind can take several shots, of course. Any change in the wind produces total misses, as does frequently the accuracy "cone of fire" with a .22 LR at this range.

If the target were the size of a beer can and were moving, the even with perfect aim the percentage of hits would be relatively low. Considering, as has been pointed out, that the proper aim with iron sights would be one that totally obscured the small target, then the credibility of any claim to any appreciable percentage of hits would be in the "fantasy" category.

Insofar as the alleged Taliban fight, I wouldn't doubt that four well-trained marksmen in a defensable position could very well defeat ten times their number of untrained men who were attempting an offense against that position. The long-held military rule of thumb is that it takes approximately three times the number of persons on offense as it does on defense, all being armed conventionally. No doubt the Seals weaponry was superior to that of their adversaries, somewhat skewing the traditional ratio.

Is the number of Taliban fighters incredulously exaggerated? I can only say that if I had been in the position of the Seals that 40 Taliban would have certainly seemed like 400 to me.

I have had 3 Nylon 66's- if they hit anything that small at 150 yds it didn't matter if it was moving--it was sheer accident anyway--They aren't exactly a target rifle.

Well, I've owned two Nylon 66's. Both were surprisingly accurate. The first was a Mohawk Brown that I sold to get $ for a M581 Remington. My latest is a mint Apache Black given to by my 92 yr old father. He shot it 10 times after he bought it in 1978. I've gotten .5 in groups at 50 yds on a good day with Rem ammo. You have to bag it under the barrel screw or it will spray shots.

If using iron sights, you would have to adjust the elevation to get the range and then lead the target. I'm sure a swinging beer can could be hit a few times out of several dozen shots on a calm day. I had 20:5 vision in my teens and could make some awesome shots. However, I don't think I could have regularly hit moving beer cans at that range.

quote:

Originally posted by Palmer:
I am reading "Lone Survivor" which is a book about a Navy Seal.

In it he stated that he and his brother, as young boys used a Nylon 66 to hit moving beer cans at 150 yards. He did not say how they got them moving - swinging from a branch or tossed up by the other brother or ?

It struck me as pretty good shooting. I would be satisfied to hit a stationary one with my scoped Cooper from the bench let alone a moving can with open sights from a standing position.

Can anyone here do this?

quote:

I've gotten .5 in groups at 50 yds on a good day with Rem ammo.

.22 Rimfire rifles are infamous for how they favor one brand/type of ammunition over another. However, the one brand of rimfire ammunition that has consistently done the poorest in the wide variety of .22's I've owned (both in terms of accuracy and function) has been Remington. For many years now I've avoided buying it. But as they say, "Your mileage may vary".

FWIW, we sometimes shoot, well shot actually, since my shooting partner is now off to school, beer bottles at 100 yards with scoped .22 from a standing position (offhand). It really is fairly easy to hit 2 or 3 out of 5, 4 is considerably tougher, and I don't recall ever hitting 5 in a row. Fun to try tho and then you get to produce more targets.

I didn't read the book, but I wonder if the "moving" beer cans are being plinked down a road or path, in which case you could hit in front of them and the ricochet would "move" the can again. Of course, memory can play tricks on a person. I am certain that the older I get, the better I was.

If they are swinging n a branch (as in attached to a piece of string), then all you need to do is wait for it to reach one end of the swing when it
is stationary.

Allen,

I shoot a 7" x 8" Alluminum gong at 200 yards with my scoped Kimber 22LR as I'm resting my larger rifles

As stated the hold over and wind are very large impactors on this litle guy at this yardage...it is fun to see the gong jump in the scope then hear the "ding"

Air time is also cool as the pop of the rifle and the jump of the gong are about a half second appart

This is my setup

My 10/22 requires 21 3/4 MOA from a 50 yard zero to 200 yards when I am playing the wind correctly I can do about 3" regularly.


.

I've built around 6-8 super accurate 10/22's with aftermarket parts galore and push 10,000 of rounds through each of them as did our 4 sons.

I have one 10/22, that with a bench rest and after having shot 5,000 rounds through it and without any wind, I think I could hit a STATIONARY can 5-6 times out of 10 rounds at 150 yards. If it was moving I would struggle and think that maybe 2 out of 25 would be more realistic.

That's with a quality 3x9 scope and a tricked out 10/22.

I shot the crap out of my buddies Nylon 66 Mohawk when we were kids and it wouldn't stay even close to my Winchester 72A with a 4x fixed Weaver. All day long I could out shoot him and back then I could really shoot and his gun wasn't even close to staying in the game. Looked really cool but felt cheap, ya know plastic instead of steel and wood.

I do remember one summer late afternoon and early evening when I was a kid hunting jackrabbits. I had permission to hunt a sheep ranch here in Idaho and went up to the "meadow" as it was called. I was hunting a hay field that was surrounded by tall sagebrush on three sides and there was a small creek in the middle of the hay field. I had 3 boxes of .22lr, remember when we used to buy a box of 50? Anyways by the end of the day I shot 43 jackrabbits with 150 rounds.