Snow - The Ultimate Shooting Skills Manual: 212 Essential Range and Field Skills

Shooting is magic. Thumb an enchanted metal capsule in a special tube, close the action, aim downrange, and pull the trigger. The smoke and firecall it brimstone, if you willand loud boom promote this idea of sorcery, but surely the most compelling detail of all is the tiny hole in your distant target, exactly where you said it would be. Bewitching.

Shooting is fun. There are few things as satisfying as consistently busting clay targets with a shotgun or punching tight groups of bullet holes in a distant bullseye target. Its even more fun to shoot with a friend, challenging and encouraging each other with each volley, and surprising each other with your skills and the capabilities of your gear.

Shooting is sport. The top competitive shooters are world-class athletes, with the hand-eye coordination of fighter pilots and bodies that are honed for both endurance and strength. Top-flight Olympic trap shooters make breaking 100 straight targets look easy. Try it yourself, and youll be humbled by the levels of concentration and physical strength required.

Shooting is intricate. Even simple firearms are marvels of engineering, innovation, and evolution. In order to safely and consistently deliver a payload downrange, a gun must contain a violent detonation, channel the bullet or shotshell pellets to a precise aiming point, and then repeat the action, sometimes in very short order.

Shooting is complicated. Despite what you may hear on the news or read in a paper, shooters are overwhelmingly safe, responsible, and respectful, Still, guns are awesome machines, capable of intense destructionbut also immaculate protection. They should be used wisely, discretely, and with utmost restraint and respect.

All these perspectives are contained in this book, and there are no better guides to the world of shooting than its authors, John B. Snow and Chris Christian. A competitive shooter and instructor in shotgun and handgun skills, Chris is one of the most respected gun writers in the country, and he has written for most of the leading firearms publications. John is the Shooting Editor of Outdoor Life magazine, a job that requires him to be as conversant in the latest trends in high-performance shotguns as in concealable semiautomatic pistols and historic bolt-action riflesplus long-range precision rifles, MSRs (modern sporting rifles), and hunting firearms of every type.

Johns knowledge of guns is amplified and informed by his field skills. Hes a frequent competitor at 3-Gun and precision-shooting events, teaches at various firearms facilities, and is a sought-after advisor on gear from suppressors to precision optics to sporting-clays shotguns.

John is also a hunter. He knows firsthand how elk rifles should perform in subzero conditions, how waterfowl shotguns should swing in a duck blind, how the perfect hog gun should be configured, and how to score a double on crossing doves.

In short, John is a real-world expert, a shooter who has poured into this book his years of experience in the field, the gun range, and the laboratory. Read it and learn. But also enjoy, because the greatest gift of guns is an enduring sense of magic. And fun.

Andrew McKean

Editor-in-Chief

Outdoor Life magazine