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Back in the 1970's, when I had a retail gun business, one of my customers repeatedly used our FFL to receive target pistols he had bought from advertisements in Shotgun News. One such pistol, and M1911 Colt arrived with the following inscription engraved on the slide: "So and so, National Pistol Champion, 19XX, 19XX and 19XX. Our customer was overjoyed to get it, but not too much later brought it back and listed it with us for sale on consignment. It had not performed up to his expectations.

A while later I was shooting in a smallbore match in Asheville, NC, and whom should I encounter but, so and so, the National Pistol Champion whose name had been engraved on the pistol. I asked him about it, and he laughed and told the following story.

After winning the National Championship, he decided that there should be some way of cashing in on his accomplishment. He headed to the nearest pawn shop and purchased three pistols, .22 rim fire, centerfire and .45 ACP, which were the three pistols then in use for a bullseye pistol match. He then cobbled together a pistol box and went to one of the local pistol matches.

Of course, he had no trouble winning the match, even with the handicap of off-the-rack pistols and of course, he was besieged with offers to buy "his" pistol set. He would sell the pistols for far more than he paid for them and then return home. Inevitably, he would shortly afterwards receive a visit from the purchaser, complaining that the pistols would not shoot, whereupon he would take them to his backyard range and proceeded to shoot the center out of a target with each pistol. The buyer departed sadder, but wiser.

Whenever he was in need of cash, he would repeat this procedure. He never had a pistol engraved as described, but was satisfied that one of his sadder customers had done so to make the pistol easier to sell.

What these buyers were doing amounted to trying to "buy a score", to gain some kind of advantage from superior equipment, which they thought must be the secret of "so and so's" success.

The thrust of this commercial is the same: buy the right optics, spotting scope, range finder, rifle scope, and the results are all but guaranteed. Technology replaces the long hard work of mastering a rifle and its characteristics. All of this presumes a scenario where the "hunter" has infinate time to go through all the mechanics of locating the distant animal, determining the range, allowing for drop (no allowance for other conditions, such as wind), and executing the shot.

There was no indication as to how the rangefinder and other equipment figured in the shot at the buffalo or the leopard, which were presumably close enough that no range finder was necessary.

This attitude of technology replacing skill seems to pervade the military these days. I am old enough to remember when it was otherwise, and still prefer the skills approach. I realise that I am in the minority.

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