I have a friend who is a cop on horseback. He said that it is not possible to train a horse not to be afraid of gunfire, so there’s no point in firing his gun from his horse.
If this is true, how does it reflect on all the old Westerns? I didn’t watch a lot of them, but I thought it was pretty standard that the cowboys would fire their guns while riding the horses.
>> He said that it is not possible to train a horse not to be afraid of gunfire, so there’s no point in firing his gun from his horse.
Absolute hogwash. Horses can be trained to do anything (well, except, maybe, sing country music). Horses have participated in countless battles throughout history. Your friend is ignorant or lying.
Yeah, horses can be trained to deal with this. There are many passages in Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe series of books that deal with this very issue. If you like historical fiction at all, I suggest you check them out sometime:
Agree, in todays “Cowboy Action Shooting” contests, several events are held where riders fire pistols at balloons while riding horses at full gallop.
Last I checked the horses didn’t seem to mind much.
Maybe he just means the horse might get used to it, but never “like” it… It is still a very loud sound that probably makes any animals and most humans jump.
There’s has actually been Air Force sponsored research on the effect of loud noises on horses. It take your average, garden variety horse between 15 and 30 exposures to an event before it is habituated to it and stops reacting to it. The interesting thing is that horses don’t generalize their experiences. So if a horse was used to being next to a person standing on the ground while shooting, it would be like a whole new thing for the horse when that person was sitting on its back and shooting. But 15 to 30 shots later the horse would be OK with that too.
I can’t be the only one wondering why the Air Force is so interested in horses, can I?
I have ridden horse and shot handguns, but not together, so my first thought was “How could they hit a target ?” Going to the site posted I found:
AHA!, this explains it. Short barrel + burning powder spewing out = shotgun-like effect at very short range.
Back to the OP:
I would think that the main reason (under real conditions) not to fire a gun from horseback would be that you couldn’t hit what you wanted to anyway. This would also be a great danger to anybody or anything you might hit by accident.
Yes, you can get horses used to anything. My dad has 3 horses that are no longer afraid of fireworks (he sets them off all around them and they don’t hardly blink). He even trained one to open a beer bottle and drink out of it. :smack:
Hogwash!! Pure hogwash!
I have trained all of my horses, and all of my dogs the same way, and none of them were ever gun shy. The trick is to slowly expose the horse to loud noises.
What I do, is to slowly ride to a gun range from a great distance. The horse(or dog) hears the gunfire getting louder and louder as we get closer and closer. We eventually end up right at the range, where the gunfire is the loudest. Do this several times, and then fire from atop the horse yourself after he is used to it. It doesnt take long to train a horse or a dog. Mine dont seem to mind gunfire at all, although I would think it would hurt their ears, they show no sign of it.
Part hogwash. A skilled shooter can fire accurately from a horse. My grandfather hunted with a rifle from a favorite horse of his. He later gave the horse to me who had actually become gun shy because hunters had shot at him.
Safety is the issue with mounted shooting. Action shooting is done under controlled conditions in a bay surrounded by high dirt berms on three sides and there are strict rules on which direction shooting is allowed. That’s not practical for mounted shooting and using blanks allows spectators to watch in a normal roping arena.
Was the horse moving or standing still? At what range with rifle? I would think even a slight quiver from a standing horse would throw your aim off.
I’m just curious because I’ve always heard shooting from horseback is usually inaccurate.
My horse used to be boarded right across the street from a firing range. She was nervous at first, but after being turned out in the pasture near the range daily for a few weeks, she totally ignored it. So did the rest of the horses at that barn.
Sorry I can’t give you specifics as he stopped before my time but he hunted deer with a Marlin lever action 30-30. Of course you can’t be as accurate as when standing on the ground or off a rest but accurate enough. It’s not easy but can be done with practice. Cavalry troopers were shooting p istols and rifles from horses since before the civil war.
PADEYE
IIRC troopers would dismount, if at all possible, to fire their guns. Those gun battles on running horses seen in movies were pure “hollywood”.
I think I’ll wander over to google and see what there is to see.
However, there is a Japanese martial art that involves shooting a bow & arrow from horseback. It’s called Bajutsu.
http://www.bajutsu.com/historique/equi-militaire_en.htm
Galloping full speed while shooting at targets is a training game called Yabusame in that discipline.
It is not easy to shoot a projectile accurately from a moving horse, but it is far from impossible.
Back again. This is embarassing. I should always check there before running on with what I think I know. This site shows there is a lot more shooting from horseback present day than I thought there was.
www.mountedpoliceworldwide.com/what.htm
It refers to classes on firearm desenitvation for horse and shooting from horseback. Ther was also a sight www.uscavary.org that has a part dicussing re-enactments of shooting from horseback on it. Had trouble gettin a link to that particular page to work though.
This is overlooking the most salient point wrt the OP. The horses in Hollywood movies are real horses, being ridden on by men with real guns (fake bullets don’t matter) shooting them off and making really loud noises.
It seems to me Jake4 has answered this pretty succinctly.
For whatever it’s worth, in his play Indians Arthur Kopit mentions that a famous native American chief (Sitting Bull, possibly?) had a horse he was given as a present which had been trained to do circus-type stunts. When he was shot to death, the trained horse took the gun shots for a cue and danced.
My dear wife told me about this discussion and as a re-enactor with the National Park service and after being in three Civil War movies (thats where the serious money is spent on training horses)I can without a doubt tell you that horses can and are trainable to be steady under heavy gunfire. Even cannonfire as long as they don’t feel the percussion too closely, such as a groundcharge too close to the artillery cassion.
I personally have nearly been run over by charging Union calvary at Perryville Kentucky as they cut across a cornfield we were hiding in. That my friend, is a spooky feeling, you can hear them coming upon you very fast but you can’t see them. Many of our unit when discovered were “killed” by the Union Calvary (as they were only 100 yards or so from the hill where the public could see what was occuring and made a fine show.) I saw numerous horses that reacted well under fire and I assure you when a 1400 pound animal is almost on top of you by suprise, you pay attention to how they react to any stressor.
As far as the idea that soldiers dismounted before firing, that was “mounted infantry” NOT Calvary. The regular infantry in the CW used a long rifle , generally about five foot long. The mounted infantry and artillerymen used two band carbines which were about four feet long. Mounted infantry did not have the shorter guns to make it easier to fire off horseback, shorter gun made them easier to carry on horseback. Calvary tried various weapons but until the Spenser or other repeating rifles came about they generally used pistols and sabres to make their point.
As far as the accuracy point goes, Calvary was an up close and personal service and would generally be between twenty five to seventy five feet before engaging the enemy. Especially early in the war before the multiple round pistols (such as the Lemat, Remington and Colt pistols) Calvarymen generally would have one or two single shot pistols and then would go to sabers. The accuracy of these guns were pretty bad but if by chance you hit the enemy, that might be one less slash you had to make close up. The multiple shot pistols mentioned above were all rifled and were reloadable but generally only between engagements not during. I have a 44 Remington and it is fairly accurate but very heavy. The added weight would certainly help steady it on horseback but when you finally engage the enemy (started around seventy five to a hundred feet) you were no longer at a full gallop unless all you had left was a sabre. Less bounce, closer range = dead calvarymen. It was a common occurance that even if a soldier was not hit by the bullet, a muzzle blast in close quarters could kill especially if placed near the head. I hope this information helps clarify that although it is not easy to do, SOME horses can be trained to perform very well under gunfire and even cannonfire. You really don’t want your battery horses getting spooked and running through the public with twenty or so blank cannon rounds full of explosives bouncing around in your gunnery chest. Park Service frowns on killing civilians, even in the line of duty. Probably not out of any real concern for their fellow man but because civilians pay admission fees.
Kaiser Willy