Long-range Handgun Shooting: Elmer Keith

Well lets see. A current day 38 special +P 158 grain bullet drops almost 15 inches at 100 yards. So you do the math and elevation trajectory. Just saying.

Speer Ammo - Ballistics Tables

I'm reading this and my minds eye is standing on the covered firing point of my Fish & Game club. our range is only 300 yrds, Damn thats a looooong way to loob a chunk of lead.

TheHobbyist said:

Please share your thoughts on the general topic. I just felt compelled to share my amazement.

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I never met Elmer Keith, so I never saw him shoot. I had two friends who did visit him in the '70s. He seemed to be very generous to shooters with his invitations to stop by.

Both of those friends told me that Elmer was a VERY fine shot, and coming from these gentlemen, it meant quite a lot to me since I knew they themselves both were very fine shots. Their story was that they thought him beyond their capabilities, and they were probably 20-years his junior. Both of these men were not the fan-boy types. I knew they both had been shooting hundreds if not thousands of rounds through their S&W magnum revolvers in a time when that level of shooting activity was uncommon. Neither would be the type to have said Elmer was a terrific shot unless they had seen that with their own eyes.

I was fortunate to correspond with Elmer a few times, both in writing and once, I was able to join a phone call placed by one of my friends. I never received anything but good information and encouragement from him. I always thought a great deal of him and kind of laughed to myself when people became critical without really knowing too much about him. I would not doubt the story one bit.

Texas Star said:

Elmer also shot several caribou with four-inch bbl. M-57's and they did not die easily or quickly. Unless one was desperate for meat and had no rifle at hand, that wouldn't be somethng that I'd risk.

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I had similar feelings about this. In later years, a friend who had lived both in the midwest and then spent most of his adult life in the west explained to me that westerners do take what might seem like a more cavalier approach to big-game animals than we are used to doing here in the midwest. He thought this type of thing was, in that era, more a matter of "a way of life" than it was a blatant disregard for or lack of respect for the animal, and that I was judging what I knew of the story from a vastly different - and maybe inappropriate - perspective. Probably true.

Though he lived through the middle part of the 20th century, I don't think most of those who knew Elmer really thought of him as a 20th-century man. Looking back on him, we need to keep that in mind.

How many here have met shooters that never want to shoot @ any range other than 7 yards because their groups open up? The longer that you shoot distances you can get better with trigger control and muzzle control. Reading the impact is a learned skill. Practice does not make one better, perfect practice and learning while doing so creates inprovement.

I seem to remember a story from somewhere that while in the process of trying to convince Remington and Smith and Wesson to produce the 44 "magnum", Keith demonstrated his suggested load by firing at a rock at a later measured 600 or so yards with reps fof both companies as witnesses. The rock split when hit and and the rest is history...

Keith, McGiven, Topperwein....ageless leaders in our disipline

I have no doubt that Elmer was a excellent shot with any and all handguns. Consistently hitting something at 400 yards with a 38 special seems to be more of a well practiced "trick" shot than anything else. I doubt he or anyone else could just pick up a gun and make such a shot in the first 6 shots.

If the trajectory is linear than one would need to aim at a angle 4 feet high

Kinda like the tangent sights on some Browning High Powers, A bit optimistic.

guy22 said:

400 yards with open sights with a .44mag Revolver? Hmmmmmw? Don't know. Would love to see some great shooter's try it. Might be a new TV show!!!
Gun22

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Any of you gys ever see Impossible Shots on the Outdoor Channel? Bob Munden does this kind of stuff all the time, in fact in one epsiode he's talking about Elmer, the legend of his long shots, and demonstrates at once that it can be done, using a 8-3/8" model 29.

Frank237 said:

Any idea what was the shape of his 400 yd target anyone??

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Years ago, Keith designed a paper target used to extract every possible bit of accuracy out of a handgun. It consisted of an inverted capital letter "U" on a white background. This allowed maximum accuracy in horizontal and vertical alignment with black sights against the white background. I haven't found a commercial source for those, but this is pretty close, and works well:

cowart said:

Years ago, Keith designed a paper target used to extract every possible bit of accuracy out of a handgun. It consisted of an inverted capital letter "U" on a white background. This allowed maximum accuracy in horizontal and vertical alignment with black sights against the white background. I haven't found a commercial source for those, but this is pretty close, and works well:

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I DO recall that from maybe "Sixguns". Thanks.

Thinking I may try some 168 gr Keith slugs in a .38 case at 950 fps.

I've got a 6" N frame for the revolver, assuming his .38/.44 was probably 6 or 6 1/2 inces??

I found a sheet of 20x22 inch sheet steel. I'll get it cut to 18" square, paint it white and see what I can do.

We shoot routinely at 100, 150 and 200 yds on steel plates here but due to the Mtn in my back yard the angles turn steep quickly past 250 yds. Need to run out to another property I have access to for this experiment. I can easily do 400 yds on the FLAT there.

FN in MT

Two men here seem unclear on the issue: Keith was not shooting modern Plus P .38 ammo!

That formally clocks at just 890 FPS from a four-inch vented pressure barrel. In some cases, it willl actually deliver that, from longer barrels. The RCMP used to have ammo loaded to maybe 950 FPS from the five-inch bbls. of their M-10's. That was loaded by CIL, before they went to US ammo, I think.

Elmer used his own handloads, with his Lyman 358156 bullet (lead) and a hefty charge of 2400 powder, which I won't cite, due to possible changes in burning rates over the years. Check your manuals. You're looking for a charge that will launch the bullet at some 1200 FPS!

His .44 Magnum load went out at about 1400 FPS! And did not give excessive pressures, he thought, because cases ejected normally, unlike with many lots of factory ammo.

His .38-44 load was intended ONLY for .38-44 S&W guns and for Colt SAA, New Service, and Shooting Master models. It was NOT for M&P's, Official Polices, etc.

He especially recommended it for the S&W Combat Magnum, too, which he callled " a very fine little combat gun" with that load. With .357 factory ammo of that day (1960 or so), he got sticky extraction with many lots of ammo.

But he also said that the M-19 had very little barrel left to bell or crack in the forcing cone, which is untrue. He may not have actually seen or shot that model much,and was going by photos and what others told hm, or what he knew of pressures for that load.

Skeeter Skelton did use it a lot in his M-19's, though, and confirmed what Keith said. This is not a misprint; I know that Skeeter also liked the five-inch barelled M-27 a lot. But he often carried an M-19, too, especially at work in his LE jobs. (He also favored a fancy Colt Govt. 45 auto.)

scooter123 said:

I'm inclined to agree. A 1 inch group at 25 yards is pretty much the limit of accuracy for a 38 caliber revolver that features a one piece cantelever mounted barrel. In addition it takes a good deal of experimentation and load devlopment to hit that mark.

With a 44 caliber revolver you are facing a reduction in barrel section relative to muzzle energy. Basically, the barrel will "whip" more than the smaller and less powerful 38 caliber and that whip will degrade accuracy. I suspect that a real world result of shooting at 400 yards would be at least one miss and most likely 2 misses out of 5 attempts. Add in the difficulty in play at trying to hit a target that you're probably aiming 4 or 5 feet above and the likelyhood for missing goes way up.

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Elmer Keith, practiced shots at long range, by shooting at rock boulders on hillsides, out in open country. His sight alignment...was to raise the front sight post in the rear leaf irons, till he started making hits. So far as I've read about Elmer Keith in shooting magazines --- no holdover was necessary in his long range pistol shooting.

Frank237 said:

I DO recall that from maybe "Sixguns". Thanks.

Thinking I may try some 168 gr Keith slugs in a .38 case at 950 fps.

I've got a 6" N frame for the revolver, assuming his .38/.44 was probably 6 or 6 1/2 inces??

I found a sheet of 20x22 inch sheet steel. I'll get it cut to 18" square, paint it white and see what I can do.

We shoot routinely at 100, 150 and 200 yds on steel plates here but due to the Mtn in my back yard the angles turn steep quickly past 250 yds. Need to run out to another property I have access to for this experiment. I can easily do 400 yds on the FLAT there.

FN in MT

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Frank-

Please keep us posted. But note that your load is WELL under the power level of what Keith shot! His handloads were low-end .357 power, which is why he insisted that they not be used in any but heavy-framed .38's "listed" for use with factory .38-44 ammo! That was shown as giving 1150 FPS, not the 890 FPS of modern Plus P 158 grain ammo! Keith's loads actually clocked about 1200 FPS!
Even the lighter 125 grain Plus P ammo usually shows at no better than about 950 FPS and does not hold velocity as well at longer ranges as will heavier bullets. Keith's cast bullets ran about 146 grains. But he did do some shooting with those 168 grainers that you mention.
Of course, he adjusted powder charges for the heavier bullet in such cases.

Elmer's Outdoorsman has a 6.5-inch bbl. I think he said so many times, and there is a photo of him with a brace of grouse and the gun in his other hand. It is def. a 6.5-inch model.

I think some men deny what is possible with a handgun because THEY can't shoot well. I am constantly baffled by people at the range who brag that they hit the kill zone on a target at a mere 15 yards! Good Lord, Applegate and Fairbairn taught hundreds of OSS agents and Commandos to do that with POINT shooting!

Why these men who presumably cannot drive a race car as well as the pros do don't doubt that exceptional men with remarkable reflexes and talent can drive as they do is beyond me. Maybe they see it enough on TV that they accept it. But there are videos of Jerry Michulek (sp?) and Bob Munden doing equally remarkable things on film, with guns. I met Munden a couple of times, and also never got any "BS quotient" from him. What he could do with his tuned Ruger SA's defied belief until seen. He was also an exceptional long range shot. I understand that he amazed many by showing what he could do with a .38 Chief's Special at 100 yards. With bigger guns, longer range was logically well within his capabilities.

Elmer Keith lived most of his life in a wilderness area where he could shoot daily, wih no one within many miles. He could/did develop skills that most cannot envision. Publishers like the late Bob Petersen did not admire him and get him to write for them without knowng what he could do.

Those of you who have original letters from Keith can imagine the efforts that it took to edit his "copy" to professional standards. Publishers wouldn't have bothered to hire him unless he had a following and they knew that he was telling the truth about his shooting.

Shooting in wide open country and walk em in, he shot and shot and shot at distance. He KNEW his Stuff!!!!! Practice loads and loads and maybe you could hit some long range.

Elmer was a FRONT-RUNNER, he didn't have computers and forums to BS on, he put lead in the air, tested HI-POWER LOADS, and he also BLEW UP his share of revolvers during his long learning and shooting career.

Hell, I don't know I wasn't there.

If using a EK super duty magic load, lets compare it to a 357 Mag in a 38 special The drop rate of a present day 357 Mag 158 gr is around 7.5 inches at 100 yards.

I think it's a good subject for those Myth Buster guys on TV unless Frank237 can duplicate it. We will await a range report!

I grew up reading Elmer in G&A and other mags. I too read with apprehension his long range exploits and naturally had to try them. I had lots of woods behind the folks house and we had a big revine/abandoned landfill. My former brother-in-law and I hung the top of a 55gal drum (painted bright orange) and from a guesstimated 350yds , we would shoot at it with his 8 3/8 S&W 629 and my 7 1/2bbl Ruger Redhawk. Well , we soon discovered it could be hit. Heard them too! Not too consistantly at first, but after I learned about holdover and windage and found my aiming point, I could get 2-3 hits from a cylinderful.

The desire to shoot long range sixgunning never left and I enjoyed several years of metallic silhouette shooting till most gunclubs that did it went away.

My eyes can't even see those 200yd rams anymore though.

Last fall I busted a 7 inch balloon at 200 yd.with my 17 on the first shot, 50 shots later I broke another

Once you figure out the holdover, You can hit some at long ranges.

The son of a friend of mine drew the outline of a deer on a large piece of cardboard so we could see where we hit. The target was placed 300 yds from where we had our table set up. I lined up the bottom of the front sight with the top of the rear sight. I aimed my .44mag 10.5" Super Blackhawk at the top of the deer's back and shot 6 shots from a rest. The 8" group hit about 6" below the deer which would have been 12-16" below point of aim. I aimed about a foot above the back and hit the deer target with 6 more shots.

I load 125gr .357 to what the manual says is 1300 fps. At the Sherriff's range here there is a 2 square foot steel plate at 225 yds. I lined up the bottom of the front sight on my 8 3/8" 27-2 with the top of the rear sight and could hit the plate every time by putting the top of the front sight on the plate.

I don't doubt Elmer's ability to make that shot.

I live and work in an area of NW New Mexico that is a lot of BLM land, and I enjoy the sport of long distance rock shooting as some of my fellow Westerners have mentioned above.

I'm no Elmer Keith, but even with my fixed sight P220 .45 I can bust rocks pretty far out there. The method, of course, is to hold up front sight, not hold over with a conventional sight picture. With my slow moving .45 ACPs I have to hold up all of the sight and a chunk of the slide sometimes, but once I find the spot I can lob them out there pretty well.

In the November, 1935 American Rifleman Elmer did a write up on the .357 Magnum. He killed 125 jack rabbits with twenty five of them from 100-180 yards. He used both factory loads and .38-44 handloads out to the 500 and 600 yards. One of the things Elmer wrote in the article was this:
"For the benefit of those who think a sixgun is only a short-range weapon and not capable of accuracy beyond 50 yards, let me say that all the above shooting with the Magnum .357 Smith & Wesson was done offhand with both hands, and all before witnesses, and I was accompanied at all times by one or more of the following men: Cale Dickey, J.G. Maelzer, Jess Taylor, and John Warnock."

Elmer knew that his work would be called BS so he was smart enough to do it in front of other people as much as possible.