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A turkey shoot is a term for an extremely one-sided battle or contest. [1]
The term likely originates from a method of hunting wild turkeys in which the hunter, coming upon a flock, intentionally scatters them. Once the flock is scattered, the hunter sets up and waits, as the scattered flock will return to that point individually, making them easy targets.[ citation needed ]
The term has several usages in the context of shooting.
A "turkey shoot" sometimes refers to a turkey hunt where wild turkeys are shot. [2]
It may also refer to a shooting contest in which frozen turkeys are awarded as prizes, sometimes more generically known as a "meat shoot." The shoot is most commonly held using shotguns aimed at paper targets about 25–35 yards away. The winner is chosen according to which target has a shot closest to its center crossmark. The random nature of the pattern of pellets that a shotgun shoots removes almost all skill from the contest and allows every shooter an equal chance. Turkey shoots are still popular in the rural United States today. [3] [4]
Original turkey shoots date back at least to the time of James Fenimore Cooper and were contests in which live turkeys were tied down in a pen and shot from 25–35 yards. [5] If a turkey was killed, the shooter received it as a prize.
Another contest provided a caged turkey with a protective wall. Above the cage was a slot in which the turkey could raise its head. Single-shot rifles were used, and if the shooter was skilled and fast enough, the turkey was shot in the head, rewarding it to the shooter as his prize. This contest was depicted in the 1941 Gary Cooper film Sergeant York. [6]
In military situations, a turkey shoot occurs when a one side outguns the other to the point of the battle being extremely lopsided, as in the following famous examples:
A shotgun is a long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge known as a shotshell, which discharges numerous small spherical projectiles called shot, or a single solid projectile called a slug. Shotguns are most commonly used as smoothbore firearms, meaning that their gun barrels have no rifling on the inner wall, but rifled barrels for shooting sabot slugs are also available.
A sniper is a military/paramilitary marksman who engages targets from positions of concealment or at distances exceeding the target's detection capabilities. Snipers generally have specialized training and are equipped with telescopic sights. Modern snipers use high-precision rifles and high-magnification optics. They often also serve as scouts/observers feeding tactical information back to their units or command headquarters.
Shooting sports is a group of competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms and bows/crossbows.
Fragging is the deliberate or attempted killing of a soldier, usually a superior, by a fellow soldier. U.S. military personnel coined the word during the Vietnam War, when such killings were most often committed or attempted with a fragmentation grenade, to make it appear that the killing was accidental or during combat with the enemy. The term fragging now encompasses any deliberate killing of military colleagues.
The T-72 is a family of Soviet main battle tanks that entered production in 1971. The T-72 was a development based on the T-64 using thought and design of the previous Object 167M. About 25,000 T-72 tanks have been built, and refurbishment has enabled many to remain in service for decades. It has been widely exported and has seen service in 40 countries and in numerous conflicts. The Russian T-90 introduced in 1992 and the Chinese Type 99 are further developments of the T-72. Production and development of various modernized T-72 models continues today.
In military terminology, friendly fire or fratricide is an attack by belligerent or neutral forces on friendly troops while attempting to attack enemy or hostile targets. Examples include misidentifying the target as hostile, cross-fire while engaging an enemy, long range ranging errors or inaccuracy. Accidental fire not intended to attack enemy or hostile targets, and deliberate firing on one's own troops for disciplinary reasons is not called friendly fire, and neither is unintentional harm to civilian or neutral targets, which is sometimes referred to as collateral damage. Training accidents and bloodless incidents also do not qualify as friendly fire in terms of casualty reporting.
Skeet shooting is a recreational and competitive activity whose participants use shotguns to attempt to break clay targets which two fixed stations mechanically fling into the air at high speed and at a variety of angles.
The Mossberg 500 (M500) is a series of pump-action shotguns manufactured by O.F. Mossberg & Sons. The 500 series comprises widely varying models of hammerless repeaters, all of which share the same basic receiver and action, but differ in bore size, barrel length, choke options, magazine capacity, stock and forearm materials. Model numbers included in the 500 series are the 500, 505, 510, 535, and 590. The Revelation 310 and the New Haven 600 were also variations of the 500 series produced by Mossberg under different names. By 2021, 11,000,000 M500s had been produced, making it the most-produced shotgun of all time.
A combat shotgun is a shotgun issued by militaries for warfare. The earliest shotguns specifically designed for combat were the trench guns or trench shotguns issued in World War I. While limited in range, the multiple projectiles typically used in a shotgun shell provide increased hit probability unmatched by other small arms.
No man's land is waste or unowned land or an uninhabited or desolate area that may be under dispute between parties who leave it unoccupied out of fear or uncertainty. The term was originally used to define a contested territory or a dumping ground for refuse between fiefdoms. It is commonly associated with World War I to describe the area of land between two enemy trench systems, not controlled by either side. The term is also used metaphorically, to refer to an ambiguous, anomalous, or indefinite area, regarding an application, situation, or jurisdiction. It has sometimes been used to name a specific place.
A shotgun cartridge, shotshell, or shell is a type of rimmed, cylindrical (straight-walled) ammunition used specifically in shotguns. It is typically loaded with numerous small, spherical sub-projectiles called shot. Shotguns typically use a smoothbore barrel with a tapered constriction at the muzzle to regulate the extent of scattering.
The Milperra Massacre, Milperra bikie shoot-out or Father's Day Massacre was a gunfight between rival motorcycle gang members on 2 September 1984, in Milperra, a south-western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales. The gunfight had its roots in the rivalry that developed after a group of Comancheros broke away and formed the first Bandidos Motorcycle Club chapter in Australia. Seven people were killed and twenty-eight injured and the event was a catalyst for significant changes to gun laws in New South Wales.
The Society of American Historians Prize for Historical Fiction, formerly known as the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, is a biennial award given for the best Historical American fiction by the Society of American Historians. It is awarded in the odd-numbered years.
A meat shoot is a type of target shooting event and fundraiser similar to block shoots, ham shoots, and turkey shoots. Participants aim at paper targets using shotguns to win cuts of meat as prizes.
Turkey hunting is a sport involving the pursuit of the elusive wild turkey. Long before the European settlers arrived in North America, the Native Americans took part in hunting wild turkeys.
Air-to-air combat is the engagement of combat aircraft in warfare in which primarily fixed-wing aircraft attempt to destroy enemy aircraft using guns, rockets and missiles. The Korean War saw the greatest amount of air-to-air combat since World War II. During the war the United States claimed to have shot down around 700 fighters. After the war the U.S. Air Force reviewed its figures in an investigation code-named Sabre Measure Charlie and downgraded the kill ratio of the North American F-86 Sabre against the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 by half from 14:1 to 7:1. One of the factors inflating US numbers was that most dogfights took place over enemy-controlled area. The only way to confirm kills was through gun camera photography. USAF pilots were credited with a kill if the gun camera showed their guns striking the enemy aircraft even if no one actually saw it go down. However, Soviet Air Force kill claims were also highly exaggerated, based upon inherent flaws in their film grading procedures. For instance, the S-13 gun camera was not aligned with either the gunsight or either cannons' ballistics. It ran only while the firing buttons were depressed. Film graders commonly included unit commanders and political commisars who would confirm a "kill"—sometimes even if one had not been claimed by a pilot—when the camera's crosshairs touched the target for two movie frames. During the first 16 months of combat Soviet V-VS units claimed 218 F-86s destroyed when only 36 had been lost. This results in a 600 per cent inflation rate in victory credits over actual Sabres destroyed. However, these figures are complicated by the fact that the Americans routinely attributed combat losses to landing accidents and other causes.
Reports regarding the longest recorded sniper kills that contain information regarding the shooting distance and the identity of the sniper have been presented to the general public since 1967. Snipers have had a substantial history following the development of long distance weaponry. As weapons, ammunition, and aids to determine ballistic solutions improved, so too did the distance from which a kill could be targeted. In mid-2017 it was reported that an unnamed Canadian special forces operator, based in Iraq, had set a new record of 3,540 m (3,871 yd), beating the record previously held by an Australian sniper at 2,815 m (3,079 yd). In November 2023, the record was once again broken by 58-year old sniper, Viacheslav Kovalskyi of the Security Service of Ukraine, who shot a Russian soldier from a distance of 3,800 m (4,156 yd) during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Drone warfare is a form of warfare using unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) or weaponized commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), or unmanned surface vehicles. The United States, United Kingdom, Israel, China, South Korea, Iran, Iraq, Italy, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Poland are known to have manufactured operational UCAVs as of 2019.