If you could go back and duel Wild Bill Hickock, are your handgun skills good enough that you would walk away alive?
Legend has it that Wild Bill Hickock was a “very good” pistol shot, but what does that mean, exactly? I don’t think we will ever know, but legend also tells us that during a gunfight with Davis Tutt in Springfield, Missouri, in 1865, Wild Bill shot Tutt through the heart at 75 yards with either a 0.36-caliber Navy Colt or a 0.44-caliber Colt’s Dragoon. The gun he used is not that important, but most anyone would agree hitting a target smaller than a soft ball at that distance with a cap and ball revolver would require some fine marksmanship. Of course, we have no idea what Wild Bill was aiming at (maybe he was aiming at Tutt’s head?).
We of course lack evidence—provenanced evidence—but we do have a story from the October 1937 issue of the American Mercury magazine. The following quote is from the article, “The Myth of the Two-Gun Man,” written by Charles B. Roth:
“The best Marksman of the Old West was a mild little soldier you have probably never met in your readings for the good reason he doesn’t appear there. He was too busy with his job to talk to newspaper correspondents. But the annals of Nebraska history write him large.
Major Frank North was his name, and he was commanding officer of the Pawnee Scouts, a body of Indian soldiers that served during the Indian campaigns. His brother, Luther North, was associated with him. Often I have queried Luther North about frontier marksmanship.”
“Did you ever see Wild Bill Hickock shoot?”
“Many times.”
“Was he pretty good?”
“Yes. But Frank [Frank North] was better. Even Bill said so.”
“Just how well could they shoot?”
“About as well as anyone, with the guns they had. They both could live up to the test of good marksmanship. Frank better than Bill. You put an envelope 10 paces away, and if you could keep all six shots in the envelope you were counted good. One of the shots had to be in the stamp, which was pasted on the back of the envelope in the center.”
“How big were the envelopes?”
“Five inches square. And the stamp an inch square.”
The article goes on to say that Luther never witnessed Frank fail to out-shoot Hickock, who always took the losses good-naturedly. But according to Luther, Wild Bill once said, “Frank, you can sure beat me when it comes to shootin’ at these little black dots, but I can beat you when it comes to hitting men.” The author goes on to theorize that it was nerve more than marksmanship that kept men like Hickock, Jesse James and Bat Masterson alive.
Measuring Handgun Marksmanship
The reason I share this article is that the practice of shooting a 5-inch square with a 1-inch hidden square on the middle of the backside of the target has evolved into what is known as the Old West’s Shootist’s Challenge. You place that target at 25 feet and shoot with your strong hand only with no time limit. The goal is to get all six shots inside the 5-inch square, and one must hit the 1-inch square—stamp—on the back side.
This is not a terribly difficult test, and it’s a drill I do on occasion to make me focus on accuracy more than speed. After all, you cannot miss fast enough to win a gunfight. I emailed the challenge to another Bill—Bill Wilson of Wilson Combat—and less than 30 minutes later he sent me back a photo of his target shot with one of his 4-inch 1911 compact pistols. All six shots were in the 5-inch square—envelope—and four hit the 1-inch square. Of course, Hickock never saw a Wilson Combat 1911, and Wilson is a fantastic pistol shot. A little humbled, I didn’t bother to send Wilson a photo of the target I shot with my Single Action Army revolver with all five shots in the square but only one in the stamp.
In another blast from the past, I have in my archives a photograph of a playing card shot in 1894 by William G. Baldwin, who was the founder of the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency. It shows 10 hits from 52 feet—17.3 yards—with a S&W revolver, and the note says, “When I was a shootist.”
Baldwin survived multiple gunfights during his career, put numerous bad guys in the ground, and died of old age in 1936. However, we have no way of knowing the conditions in which he fired those 10 shots. At that time, shooting with the strong hand only was common practice, but did Baldwin use one hand or two?
Either way, it was good shooting; try it.
We will never know the factual truth regarding the marksmanship abilities of those legendary gunfighters, but maybe the most poignant evidence of their skill is that they survived the gunfights they were in. Well, mostly. Wild Bill was playing poker in Deadwood on August 2, 1876, when Jack McCall shot him in the back of the head with a Colt Single Action Army chambered in .45 Long Colt. I suppose McCall lacked the courage, or, just as likely, he had enough sense not to face Wild Bill and try to kill him. Regardless, situational awareness might be as much if not more important than marksmanship skill. I imagine if we could dig him up from his South Dakota grave and ask him, Wild Bill would probably agree.
