Running with Rhinos Stories from a

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This is a work of creative nonfiction. The events are portrayed to the
best of the author’s memory. While all the stories in this book are
true, some names and identifying details have been changed to
protect the privacy of the people involved.

Published by Greenleaf Book Group Press

Austin, Texas
www.gbgpress.com

Copyright ©2016 Edward M. Warner

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Distributed by Greenleaf Book Group

For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact
Greenleaf Book Group at PO Box 91869, Austin, TX 78709, 512.891.6100.

Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group

Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group
Cover image provided by Lowveld Rhino Trust

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

Print ISBN: 978-1-62634-227-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62634-228-6

Part of the Tree Neutral® program, which offsets the number of trees consumed in
the production and printing of this book by taking proactive steps, such as planting
trees in direct proportion to the number of trees used: www.treeneutral.com

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

15 16 17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition
Contents
 Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Into Africa

2 WWF and the Rhino Conservancy Project

3 Sand County Foundation

4 A Long Way from Anywhere

5 On the Road with Russell

6 The Gwayi

7 Gonarezhou National Park and the Southeast Lowveld

8 The Save Valley Conservancy

9 The 18-Karat Rolex

10 On the Road in Namibia

11 Back to Senuko Ranch

12 The Geriatric Fire Brigade

13 Mountain Biking in the Bush

14 Broken Down in Gonarezhou

15 How to Jet-Wash a Rhino

16 Hallucinating a Peace Parks Meeting

17 My Olympian Caretaker

18 To Hell with Oaths

19 Camping Out on Tasha’s Front Lawn

20 Running with Rhinos

21 Romeo Hotel

22 Whiskey Delta and Wild Dogs

23 Lions, Lions, Everywhere

24 The Definition of a Great Adventure

Epilogue

Author Q & A
 Acknowledgments

BEFORE YOU GET TO A single story, I must do what authors feel a

desperate need to do and readers find boring as heck: acknowledge
all those people without whom this book would never have been
written. It goes without saying the wonderful, sometimes ridiculous
characters you are about to meet made these stories possible.

I tip my hat to Raoul du Toit and Natasha Anderson, who run the
Conservancy Project for the International Rhino Foundation. It’s
difficult to find words to express my admiration for their dedication
to saving these magnificent animals. The black rhino cow and calf
that beautifully run across the cover were donated by the Lowveld
Rhino Trust, one of the funding agencies helping protect rhinos in
southeastern Zimbabwe.
I would never have found my way to conservation in Africa if it
weren’t for Karl Hess, Jr., founder of The Land Center and now
retired from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Brent Haglund,
president of the Sand County Foundation. I still work with Brent and
Mike Jones, my good friend and partner in Resilience Science
projects.
I’d also like to thank all those scientists from academia and the
nonprofit world who endlessly supplied me with professional reading
when in 2000 I decided to “switch” careers from geology to
community-based natural resource management (CBNRM)—and
working with private landowners on wildlife stewardship. Thanks to
you, the first three years of my new life were not wasted on fables,
falsehoods, and faith—instead, they fostered the best re-education I
could have received.
Thank you, Brandy Savarese, for editing the manuscript, and
thanks to the whole Greenleaf team. I expected editing to be like a
root canal, but in fact you made the process of editing and
publishing enjoyable.
To Jackie, my wife and life partner in adventures, thank you for
saying, “Go. Just go. Get outta here and go to Africa.” Without your
support I would have still gone to Africa but it was a lot more fun
going together.
The rhino cow and calf featured on the Table of Contents page is
from a sketch Jackie drew on the envelope of one of my birthday
cards. This book is dedicated to you, darlin’.
 Introduction

AS THE SUN SANK IN the west, the sky turned the color of faded
jeans. We had paused for lunch on the banks of Zimbabwe’s Chiredzi
River when the shortwave radio squawked to life. Up in the Husky, a
little two-seat, single-engine airplane, Raoul was receiving an update
on the location of the badly injured baby black rhino the scouts had
been looking for all afternoon. Members of our crew—they had been
napping under a tree—rushed to gather their gear and climb into
their respective helicopters, a Eurocopter owned by Paul Tudor Jones
and a Robinson 44 owned and flown by John McTaggart. Blake
(“Blake” was an owner of the now-defunct Chiredzi River
Conservancy. No one at Rhino Ops could remember his real name!)
fired up his Land Cruiser as the helicopter rotors whined into action,
and we all took off in a cloud of dust. Accompanying me in the
Cruiser’s open back were two game scouts, Blake’s ten-year-old son
Peter, and the developmentally disabled, thirteen-year-old daughter
of a visiting Canadian veterinarian. We hung on to the roll bar for
dear life.
Blake careened down a rough dirt track, then bounced through a
newly plowed maize field. I can remember thinking, Keep your jaw
shut or you’ll chip your teeth, and tossing away the fried chicken leg
that would have otherwise constituted the day’s lunch. At the end of
the field, we picked up a game trail leading into the woods. As we
headed down and around a blind turn, we were halted by a tree
almost certainly pushed down by an ill-mannered elephant. Without
wasting a second, the game scouts attacked the roadblock with their
razor-sharp, two-foot long, machete-like pangas.
Within two minutes and a spray of wood chips flying in all
directions, the track was cleared and we lurched onward into a sand
wash that nearly caused us to flip over. I had taken the moment we
started up to wipe my greasy and sweaty palms on my bush shorts,
already filthy with rhino blood and dust, but I managed to grab hold
of the roll bar again before I pitched head-over-cab into the creek
bed.
Ten minutes later we found ourselves up against an impenetrable
wall of acacia thorn bush. There was no way to get the Land Cruiser
any closer to the field site.
So we jumped out and ran—using the helicopter noise to vector
into the location of the injured baby rhino.

“Running with Rhinos” is not a euphemism—not when you’re the

ground support for World Wildlife Fund’s Rhino Conservancy Project,
specializing in the preservation of black rhinos.
There are two species of rhinoceroses in Africa. The white rhino,
or square-lipped rhino, is a social, grazing animal. There are
approximately twenty thousand, many on private game ranches in
the Republic of South Africa. The white rhino is the second largest
land mammal, with bulls reaching upward of 6,000 pounds. While
they are dangerous to approach, they are docile compared to their
cousins, the black rhinos.
The black rhino’s prehensile hooked lip enables it to eat leaves
and twigs of bushy plants, rather than graze. It prefers the semiarid
habitat of the thorn-bush Lowveld, the savanna land of forest,
grassland, and thorn-bush scrub. While it is smaller in stature than
the white rhino, weighing in at a mere 3,000 pounds, it is far more
dangerous. The black rhino is solitary unless with a calf. Fewer than
five thousand black rhinos remain in the wilds of sub-Saharan Africa,
with the largest populations in South Africa, Namibia, and
Zimbabwe. About five hundred, or more than 10 percent, live on
private lands in Zimbabwe.
So, another book about rhinos? Hasn’t enough been written by
professional wildlife biologists and amateur environmentalists?
Well, yes and yes. But they’re not stories written by a long-term,
non-professional volunteer—himself a scientist—who has worked for
more than a decade with the veterinarians and biologists who care
for rhinos in Africa. Few if any laymen like me have been invited to
do what amounts to some of the most dangerous volunteer
fieldwork around.

When I retired from oil and gas on December 28, 2000, I was the
father of coalbed methane ($200 billion of wealth creation by
industry) and the mother of the Jonah and Pinedale fields in western
Wyoming (about fifty trillion cubic feet of gas)—a place where
everyone in the business just knew there was no commercial gas.
My partners and I, making up the smallest companies in the
industry, had discovered about one-quarter of a trillion dollars of
natural gas, or 20 percent of US reserves.
I began my career nearly thirty years earlier as an oil and gas
exploration geologist for a major oil company. My first job after grad
school was in Denver, Colorado, but I was soon relocated to New
Orleans, Louisiana. That move gave me the first of what have
become “Ed’s Laws”: Never Live East of Aurora, Colorado, or, more
generally, don’t work where you don’t want to live!
So, I headed back to Colorado. The only job I could find was for
another of the “Seven Sisters,” the companies formed in the wake of
the antitrust breakup of Standard Oil of New Jersey. That I was a
square peg in a company of round holes wasn’t the worst of it. They
didn’t understand my sense of humor! Needless to say, I was a total
failure. When the division geologist indicated that I might start
looking for another job, I had the good sense to propose a little
research project for the company. I was already thinking outside the
proverbial box and wanted to investigate coalbed methane—that is,
producing natural gas out of coal seams. My report gave the
company a ten-year head start on what at the time seemed to be a
ridiculous idea, but was really the future of the industry—
unconventional gas reservoirs. When I left them two years later, they
threatened me with a lawsuit but settled for a “Confidentiality
Agreement.” They made a billion dollars off my idea and I went on
to build a career on my own terms, including the discovery of the
giant southwest Wyoming gas fields, Jonah and Pinedale.
In 1998, two years before my partners sold out to a major gas
company, I predicted the future. “Honey,” I said to my wife Jackie,
“our life is about to change. After six years of never knowing if this
Jonah Field thing would turn out okay, or if we were gonna go
broke, we’ve rounded the corner. Several things are about to
happen: we’re gonna be rich. My partners will sell out within a
couple of years—as soon as a company comes along and offers
them a billion dollars—and I’ll never have to work again.”
I let it sink in, and then I continued. “I thought I would be the
chief scientist on this project for the next thirty years. It’s not going
to happen that way. When they sell out to a big ol’ gas company,
that company is not gonna want a loose cannon like me publishing
all the secrets of this geology. I’m gonna be faced with either selling
out or riding a tidal wave controlled by ‘big oil.’ What am I gonna
do?”
Jackie, an artist, knew immediately what I should do: “You
should teach. You love to work with kids. You already volunteer at
the Natural History museum. Just do more. You love nature and
you’re a natural story teller. Follow your passion.”
I decided to do even more than that. I’d live the life, not just
preach or teach. During all those years managing the geology on
drilling rigs, I alleviated boredom by hiking around the countryside.
That’s right: if you had picked up my day pack when I was
supervising a drilling project you would have found a wildflower
book, a bird book and, I’m not making this up, a tree book. So, I
really like trees. What of it? I was an oilman environmentalist. A
what? Yep, an oilman environmentalist. Geologists, wherever they
take up employment, are environmentalists in their hearts. This may
come as a shock to you California Bambi Environmentalists. We are
not the enemy. Can you imagine a young person in love with nature
setting out on a career to destroy it? I don’t think so. I had a career
testing my scientific theories. Only the money came from private
investors, not the National Science Foundation.
In my spare time while working in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana,
and Utah, I’d stop at ranches and ask permission to explore their
property. In the seventies, instead of “Sure, just leave the gates like
you found them,” the first thing out of a rancher’s mouth was “You
don’t work for the gummint, do you?” I quickly realized I was
experiencing the unintended and negative consequences of the
Endangered Species Act.
“No, I work for myself. I’m an independent geologist.”
“Oh, okay. How ’bout you come by for coffee tomorrow. You can
tell us if we have any oil or gas potential on our spread.”
Coffee, by the way, is served at 5:30 a.m. in the summer
months. I made it as often as I could. I love ranchers. I love the
prairie. I realized that it was the ranchers living on some of the most
remote territory in the country, not some government bureaucracy in
Washington, DC, who were managing critical wildlife habitat. If I
were ever to change careers, part of that change would be in
support of private lands conservation. If I were to work on
environmental issues, it wouldn’t be from the tired old John Muir-
inspired paradigm that “humans are the enemy of wilderness.” That
had not been my personal experience at all. My good friend,
Colorado State University professor Dr. Rick Knight, expressed it
perfectly. He said, “The new environmentalism will work from the
‘Radical Center.’ We will work with private landowners. We will foster
public-private partnerships. We will promote Aldo Leopold’s ‘Land
Ethic,’ which sums up our philosophy: ‘When land does well for its
owner, and the owner does well by his land; when both end up
better by reason of their partnership, we have conservation. When
one or the other grows poorer, we do not.’” Rick is a Leopold scholar
and a wildlife biologist who understands that humans are part of the
conservation equation. Once in a while he lets me, an honorary
professor without the corresponding academic degrees, give a
lecture to his senior seminar.

In April 2000, Jan Prince and Dave Schumacher took me out to

dinner with Karl Hess, Jr. Karl, a wildlife biologist with a PhD from
Colorado State University, was interested in pursuing new projects
with private landowners in the United States and indigenous peoples
in Africa, specifically under the auspices of a nonprofit called The
Land Center (TLC). Cute, huh?
At the end of dinner Karl said to me, “I’m going to Harare,
Zimbabwe, next week to meet with World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Want to come along?”
How could I say no? At the junction of all of my paths was the
opportunity to follow my emerging philosophy of radical
conservationism in Africa. WWF’s Southern African Regional
Programme Office (SARPO) is a center for experimentation, working
with local communities and private landowners. Here was my chance
to export the lessons about land and wildlife management learned in
Africa back home to the United States.
The only thing I enjoy more than the adventure itself is telling
the stories. In Running with Rhinos: Stories from a Radical
Conservationist I’ll take you along as I cut my teeth as the ground
support for World Wildlife Fund’s Rhino Conservancy Project, or
Rhino Ops.
I give you these experiences as they happened to me. This work
is gritty. It is sweaty, sometimes scary, mostly exhilarating. It
happens to human beings (it also happens to the rhinos!) who are
 CHAPTER 3

Sand County Foundation

BACK IN THE STATES, I continued to work with Karl Hess, Jr., on

domestic projects for another couple of months. Unfortunately, the
stress of trying to create a nonprofit organization took a mighty toll
on him.
I had agreed to fund a GIS survey in Africa through The Land
Center. Tom Wolf, Karl’s sidekick, promised to wire my money
directly to the project. Instead, he paid himself his own back pay
and expenses. My relationship with Karl was a casualty of the
misdealings, but only temporarily. I never blamed Karl and I’m really
glad I didn’t. We’ve had a lasting friendship for more than thirteen
years, during which time we have worked together on some
revolutionary conservation initiatives. The other guy? Fugettaboutit!
Sometime in October 2000, I got a phone call from Brent
Haglund—president of the Sand County Foundation (SCF). The Sand
County Foundation, founded by Aldo Leopold’s godson, Reed
Coleman, is dedicated to promoting Leopold’s philosophy of the land.
Brent asked me whether I thought the projects developed by Karl
and TLC had merit. I responded that I thought they did, but the
Africa projects would have to be managed from Africa by a guy I had
in mind, Mike Jones. Unbeknownst to me, Brent and Mike had
known each other for years.
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 Proper Way to Wrap Papers for Mailing

The Clipped Corners Prevent the Adhesive from Coming in Contact with the
Paper inclosed

In using a homemade paper wrapper for mailing purposes cut a

triangular section from each end of it before applying the paste or
mucilage. This prevents the adhesive from oozing out at the edges
and sticking to the paper it incloses. This also permits the easy
withdrawal of the paper.
 Groove Cutter for Wood
Having occasion to cut some grooves in a board and not being
properly equipped for such work, I made the tool shown in the
sketch. Although rather crude in appearance it will do good work if
properly made. It consists of a handle, A, shaped to afford a
comfortable grip for the hand, and a cutter, B, made of a short piece
of hacksaw blade, clamped along the left side of the handle by the
strip C, which is held with screws. A pin, D, driven into the handle
and allowed to project about ¹⁄₁₆ in., prevents the blade from sliding
back under the clamp. For guiding the blade, the arrangement F is
employed. An extension, E, is nailed on the right side of the handle,
and holes made near each end for two screws having round heads,
such as may be obtained from discarded dry batteries. These screws
are for securing the sliding stop F, which is a flat piece of hardwood
with slots cut near the end for screws to pass through to provide for
adjustment.
 Two Slots are Made with the Cutter, and the Stock between Them Removed
with a Chisel

In use, the guide F is adjusted until it is the desired distance from

the cutter and then secured by the screws. The tool is handled like a
plane, care being taken not to bear down too hard, as the cutter may
bind and cause it to be pulled from the clamp. In cutting a groove,
two slots are cut and the stock between them removed with a chisel.
A One-Runner Sled
The Barrel Stave Has a Sufficient Curve to Make It Pass Smoothly over Hard
Snow
 Just an ordinary barrel stave, with a center post and a crossboard
for a seat, makes a good one-runner sled. Select a good, smooth
stave for the runner and securely fasten the upright, which is 1 ft.
long, to it in the center. The seat is made of a board, about 1¹⁄₂ ft.
long, nailed to the upper end of the upright.
 Substitute for a Gas-Stove Oven
Wishing to bake a nice loaf cake one afternoon for dinner, and
finding that the fire in my range had gone out, I remembered an oven
shown me at one time for use on a small gas plate, which consisted
of a cover, a bottom piece, and a support for the pan. The thought
came to me that with all my pots and pans I ought to be able to get
some results by the combination of two pie tins, a cake pan, and a
stew pan, and on trial it baked as fine a cake as anyone could wish.

A Combination of Pie Tins, Cake Pan, and Stew Pan to Make Temporary Gas-
Stove Oven
 A small pie tin was placed in a larger one, as shown; on this was
placed the cake pan filled with the cake batter, and over the whole
was placed the stew pan, which acted as a heat retainer or oven. A
good hot flame was used at first, and was then gradually turned
lower until the cake was finished.—Contributed by Mrs. Anna M. B.
Romig, Allentown, Pa.
 Box Cover without Hinges

Box Cover Using Pins Instead of Hinges to Keep It in Place

Two ordinary boxes may be fitted together as one without using

hinges, if nails or screws are inserted at points along the edges so
that they will slip into holes bored at corresponding points in the
edges of the other box. The nail heads or screw heads should be
filed off or cut off after being placed in position.
¶All metal patterns should be thoroughly cleaned with a stiff brush
having plenty of beeswax on it and dipped in powdered plumbago.
Brush the pattern well, and it will draw easily and make a smooth
casting.
 Sanitary Holder for Thread and Dental Floss
A simple and convenient method of protecting a spool of thread, or
dental floss, from collecting dirt and germs is shown in the
illustration. A small glass jar, with a metal screw top, is procured, of
such a size that it will easily accommodate the spool of thread
desired to protect, with at least ¹⁄₈ in. clearance all around the edge
of the spool. Procure a short piece of stiff wire, not more than ¹⁄₁₆ in.
in diameter, and make a frame similar in form to the one shown. The
center portion of this frame should be just a little longer than the
spool, so that a small wood key may be placed through the eye
formed in the wire and thus hold the spool firmly on the frame. The
outside portions of the frame should be such a distance apart that
they will rest against the sides of the jar and of such a length that
they will reach from the bottom to the top of the jar when the lid is
screwed down tightly. If these dimensions are observed, the spool
and frame will remain in a fixed position in the jar.
 A small opening, just a little larger than the thread, is made in the
center of the lid, through which the thread is to pass. The edges of
this opening are smoothed off so that they will not cut the thread
when it is being drawn out. A small cutter may be made by forming a
V-shaped opening in the lid, through which the thread is to pass. The
edges of the V-shaped piece are sharpened to serve as a cutting
edge. The end of the thread will be held under the V-shaped piece
after it is cut, thus preventing it from falling back into the jar.

¶The word “diameter” when applied to gears is always understood to

mean the pitch diameter.
 The Sporting Rifle
and How to Use It
by Stillman Taylor

Sportsmen are interested in rifles and rifle shooting largely from the
hunting standpoint, although target shooting is a favorite sport
with many of them. This discussion of the sporting rifle will be
concerned, therefore, principally with the hunting aspects, other
forms of shooting being considered as good methods of practice,
and the development of skill in the use of hunting weapons. The
novice, as well as the good shot, must have a suitable weapon, and
should have at least a general knowledge of the types of rifles
available, and their common uses. A number of representative types
of rifles are shown in Fig. 1, and the details of the breech
mechanisms and sights in Fig. 2. Targets and a homemade device
for backing them are shown in Fig. 3. The full-page illustration shows
several positions in the use of the rifle; a moving-target arrangement,
to be constructed by the ambitious shot; a diagram of the trajectory
of a rifle bullet, and several diagrams of the vital shots, in hunting
common big game.
The single-shot rifle, shown at A, Fig. 1, has been largely
supplanted by the repeater and the automatic, so far as hunting is
concerned. For use exclusively in indoor shooting, a heavy rifle of
the “Schuetzen” type is best suited. A high-grade ornamented rifle of
this type is shown in the headpiece of this article.
The most popular type of American rifle is the repeater of the
lever-action variety, shown at B. The lever action embodies many
good points: quickness of fire, ease of operation, freedom from
jamming at a critical moment, strength, and plenty of stopping power.
The mechanism of the lever-action repeating rifle is shown in detail
at J, Fig. 2, and that of the falling-breech-block type of single-shot
rifle, at K. Several other types of lever-action rifles are shown in Fig.
1.
Almost all lever-action repeaters are of the tubular-magazine type,
the magazine extending under the barrel, sometimes the full length
—full magazine; or halfway—half magazine. Rifles of these types are
shown at B and C, and a hammerless repeater at D.
The trombone, or pump-action, repeating rifle, shown at E, has a
mechanism similar to that used in the repeating shotgun, the sliding
forearm loading and ejecting the cartridge. The merit of the military
bolt-action rifle lies in its great strength and simplicity. A weapon of
this type was used by Roosevelt in Africa, and by other big-game
hunters. It is shown at F.
The chief advantages of the automatic rifle, shown at G, which is a
comparatively new weapon, are its speed in firing and its almost
noiseless action. This rifle has a recoil-operated action of the blow-
back type. That shown at H has a box magazine, and the automatic
action is based on the sliding of the barrel within a steel jacket. The
rifle shown at I may be used either as an automatic or as a pump-
action weapon.
The subject of stock and trigger adjustment is one to which every
experienced rifleman devotes considerable attention. The regular
stock rifle is built to standard dimensions, and often the stock is
found a trifle short. For the man of average reach, a 13³⁄₄-in. stock,
with a 1⁷⁄₈-in. drop at the comb, and about 3 in. drop at the heel, will
be found satisfactory.
 Fig. 1

Various Types of Rifles in Common Use: A, English Model, Single-Shot,

with Open Sights and Shotgun Butt; B, Lever-Action Repeater, Tubular
Half Magazine; C, Lever-Action Repeater, Box Magazine; D, Hammerless,
Lever-Action Repeater; E, Pump-Action, High-Power Repeater; F, Military
Bolt-Action, Sporting Model; G, Automatic, Blow-Back Action; H,
Automatic, Box Magazine; I, Automatic, Combination Pump-Action

Rifle sights are of several types, of which there are in turn many
variations. Only the essentials of the standard types will be
considered. The regulation open sights, with which most rifles are
fitted at the factory, are the buckhorn rear and the Rocky Mountain
front sight. For a hunting rifle the most satisfactory sights are a gold-
bead front sight of about ³⁄₃₂-in. diameter, as shown in Fig. 2 at L; a
folding-leaf rear sight, shown at O, P, and Q, and a combination rear
aperture sight, at M and N, mounted on the tang of the rifle. An arm
so sighted is useful for all kinds of shooting. The combination rear
sight is used in deliberate shots at a target or at game, and the
folding-leaf sight is better than the buckhorn for quick snap shooting.
The sportsman who wishes to master the use of a rifle must have
a knowledge of the trajectory of such weapons, and particularly of
the rifle he uses regularly. He must know, also, how to aline the
sights correctly to get satisfactory results. The trajectory is the path
which the rifle bullet takes in passing from the muzzle of the rifle to
its mark. The force of gravity acts upon the bullet in flight and the
result is that the trajectory is curved, as indicated in the diagram at
the bottom of the page illustration. A relatively low trajectory is, of
course, desirable in a hunting rifle. The black-powder, or slow-speed,
cartridge has a relatively high trajectory, while the high-power
smokeless cartridges have relatively low trajectories.
The adjustment of the sights of a rifle is also of much importance.
Every rifle is targeted at the factory, but this may be done by a fair
shot, using the following method: Arrange three boxes, so that the
rifle barrel may rest upon one, and the arms of the marksman upon
the other two. Place a bag of sand upon the box, so that the barrel
may rest upon it, about 6 in. from the muzzle. Put the target into
place, and adjust the sights for 100 yd. If the sights are properly lined
up, the shots should fall quite regularly within a 10-in. circle. With
peep, or other target, sights, much finer results will be obtained. In
moving the sights it must be remembered that to move the rear sight
to the right will bring the shot to the right, and vice versa, while if the
front sight is moved to the right, the arm will shoot to the left. In
making the test, first adjust the front sight so that it is in exact
alinement with the center of the barrel, and then all corrections may
be made by moving the rear sight.
The proper way to sight a rifle is to hold the front sight just clear of
the notch in the rear sight, with the front bead barely touching the
outer ring of the bull’s-eye, at the extreme bottom. This is shown at
R, Fig. 3. It is the rule of good rifle shot to “see daylight between the
sight and the bull’s-eye.” In any event, do not cover up the front sight
by drawing it down into the notch of the rear sight, so that only the
top of the bead is visible. Another frequent error is to hold the front
sight to cover the bull’s-eye.
 The Off-Hand, Knee-Support, and Prone Positions in Shooting should be
Mastered by the Sportsman. The Diagrams Represent Several Vital
Shots, the Moving Target, and the Trajectory of a Rifle Bullet

The sportsman who wishes to become a practical rifle shot should

learn how to handle the rifle in the several useful positions, so that
he may be able to sight accurately under different conditions.
Several of the most widely used positions are shown in the page
illustration. The off-hand position, with arm extended, is the most
commonly used and best position for the sportsman to practice, for
use in the woods. The off-hand, with body rest, or elbow resting on
the hip, is good for target shooting. The “Schuetzen” style of holding
the rifle, with palm rest, is used only in fine match shooting.
The knee-rest position is often useful for the sportsman in stalking
game, when it is desirable to expose oneself as little as possible. A
steadier aim may be secured, especially if a strong wind is blowing.
The prone position is much used by military riflemen, but they are
not permitted the muzzle rest, whereas the hunter often uses it. It is
easy to learn, and more accurate shooting may be done in this
position than in the off-hand or knee-rest positions.
For indoor practice at a target, the .22-caliber rifle is best. By fitting
up a suitable backstop, shooting may be done safely in the cellar or
attic. A satisfactory backstop may be made by fastening a plate of
iron into a packing box, 3 ft. square, as shown in Fig. 3. The plate
must be set at an angle so that the bullets will be deflected to the
bottom of the box.
In order that the rifleman may check up his work, it is desirable
that a standard target be used. The American standard target,
shown in Fig. 3, has been adopted by practically all rifle clubs, and,
as the majority of records are made upon it, the sportsman should
become familiar with it. The paper targets are inexpensive, and it is
easy to draw accurate homemade targets from the original. By the
use of disks of black and white paper—known as gummed target
pasters—one target may be used several times.
If convenient to do so, the novice should shoot a string of shots
every day, in the various positions. Do not try to hurry, but shoot
deliberately at first, aiming to secure a good average, rather than a
few bull’s-eye shots and many wild ones. With reasonable practice, it
is not difficult to score eight bull’s-eyes out of ten shots, when using
the prone position. Having attained this proficiency, the sportsman
may be regarded as a fair shot, and is ready to take up outdoor
target practice with the high-power rifle.