Louis Awerbuck had an interesting "final exam" for his firearms classes, a time pressure enhanced shooting drill on a target he called his "South African Computer" (Louis was a vocally proud Luddite).
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| Louis dispensing wisdom, this time on mechanical offset. |
Said target consisted of a clothed torso mannequin target, surrounded by several other clothed torso mannequin targets, all of which were on hinged, pivoting arms so that Louis could control their bobbing gyrations by tugging on lines. Students went through this in pairs and, at the "go" signal, there was a very limited amount of time for one student to step off at an angle and the other to stay on the start line, and one or the other to neutralize the moving "Bad Guy" in the middle of the bobbing, weaving crowd of "No Shoot" targets with a single shot.
During that first handgun class back in 2009, one of the students took their shot, the baseball cap on the "Bad Guy" went flying, and the range was called cold. On going downrange, the head of the "Bad Guy" target was unmarred, although when the baseball cap was picked up off the berm, there was a distinct divot in the bill of the cap from the student's .45ACP pistol bullet.
"Heeer's a cloo for you," said Louis in his broad accent, and proceeded to relate the tale of the same sort of incident...in a shotgun class...with a 12ga slug.
Yes, the brim of a ball cap can divert a 12ga slug or a .45ACP pistol bullet enough to turn a hit into a miss.
A twig...or a furring strip...can do the same with a rifle bullet.
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