Category: Fieldcraft
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.
You don’t rise to the occasion behind the wheel. You default to your last level of training. Most drivers don’t have one. They have habits, what they saw in a reel, or the assumption nothing bad will happen between ignition and destination. That assumption is where things start to unravel.
A vehicle is not a bunker. Steel and glass give you the illusion of safety right up until they don’t. A vehicle gives you movement. Movement is leverage. Distance buys time. Time preserves options. Lose either one and the whole equation folds like a lawn chair.
Missed Warnings
Most people who get swallowed up by a hostile crowd didn’t get ambushed by surprise. They got there one ignored threat indicator at a time. Something felt a little off, an intersection that didn’t look right, a cluster of people where there shouldn’t be any, other vehicles positioned just a little too conveniently to block movement. But instead of taking active measures, they drove straight into it. Commitment before clarity. That’s how you end up behind the power curve, reacting instead of acting.
Avoidance isn’t passive. It’s the highest form of control available. No skill set, no reaction time, no last-ditch decision-making. If you don’t show up for an ambush, you can’t get ambushed! It’s recognizing that mobility only works if you protect it early, before the scenario tightens, before all the exits close, before the crowd decides you’re the target.
The early indicators are always there. Unofficial roadblocks. People drifting into traffic lanes instead of sidewalks. Vehicles angled wrong, like they’re waiting for something. Individuals directing movement who have no authority to do it. It’s not one thing. It’s a pattern. The environment telling you it’s starting to degrade. Act early. You won’t need force. Hesitation is what escalates the problem; decisiveness solves it.
Path To Survival
Route discipline is where the battle is won or lost, long before you ever touch the gas pedal. If you’re dependent on a single path, you’re already vulnerable. If you don’t know alternate routes, if you haven’t mentally rehearsed what a reroute looks like without relying on a screen to tell you what to do, then you’re increasing your risk profile.
Once you’re moving, your job is simple, but not easy: stay externally focused. Not on your phone, not buried in a conversation or whatever’s coming through the speakers. Mirrors, side windows, peripheral movement, that’s where the information lives. That’s where the early decision advantage comes from. Initiative belongs to the attentive.
And when things start to tighten, the instinct most people have is wrong. They want speed. They want to punch through, outrun, overpower. But speed without control is just chaos with momentum. Modern vehicles complicate this even more. Driver-assistance systems, built to prevent accidents, can fight you under stress. Sudden inputs, panic braking, erratic steering and the car may not do what you expect it to do. Controlled and deliberate is what keeps the vehicle functional and keeps you alive.
Crowd dynamics don’t jump straight to violence. They deteriorate in stages. First comes contact, hands on the vehicle, shouting, impact against the exterior. Then comes breach, breaking glass, objects coming in, the barricade between you and them starting to fail. And then, if it keeps going, it becomes personal, doors opening, hands reaching in, attempts to pull occupants out. That’s where it turns from property damage into a direct threat to life.
Mobile defense is about interrupting that progression early, when you still have space and time, when you still have options. Because once you’re deep into it, everything gets harder, faster, and less forgiving.
The Repercussions
There’s another layer to this that people ignore until it’s too late, the legal reality. You’re not protecting your vehicle. You’re protecting life. And the moment you use that vehicle in a way that can harm someone, you’ve stepped into the territory of potential use of deadly force.
Necessary. Reasonable. Appropriate.
That’s the standard. Everything gets judged against it. Courtroom. Investigation. Public eye. Emotional decisions made in seconds can follow you for the rest of your life. Which is why the real survival tools here aren’t reactive, but proactive measures.
Awareness. Baseline recognition. The ability to see what’s normal so you can instantly spot what isn’t. The discipline to act early instead of freezing or rationalizing. The ability to stay functional when your body starts dumping adrenaline and your perception narrows down to a tunnel.
Tunnel vision. Auditory exclusion. Time distortion. Your body will turn on you if you let it. If you haven’t prepared for that, you’re going to get pulled along for the ride. Deliberate scanning, relevant incoming information is what triggers rehearsed decisions and is what keeps your brain online when everything else is trying to shut it down.
If avoidance fails and you find yourself inside the problem, then movement becomes mitigation. Just getting out. Maintain space wherever you can. Avoid getting boxed in. Keep the vehicle moving if movement is possible. A moving target, controlled and deliberate, is harder to overwhelm than a stationary one surrounded on all sides.
Direction matters more than speed. Escape beats confrontation every time.
Even the small things matter. Backing up. Following distance that gives you room to maneuver, not just stop. Slowing early instead of charging into uncertainty. Choosing wider streets over narrow ones when things feel off. These are the decisions that stack in your favor before anything gets ugly.
Conclusions
The difficult pill to swallow for most drivers is that by the time fists are hitting your hood, you’re already late. That moment isn’t the beginning of the problem. It’s the result of a series of missed opportunities to avoid it.
Mobile defense isn’t about driving through crowds. It’s about not being there when they form. Your advantage isn’t force. It’s position. It’s the ability to choose where you are and, more importantly, where you’re not.
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Cyber Security for Seniors
