Historical Shooting with the P-53 Enfield Rifle

I have just released a new book entitled Historical Shooting with the P-53 Enfield Rifle.  This book is intended as a complete guide to shooting Pattern 1853 rifles in a manner as close as possible to the way they were used in period.  Historical shooting focuses exclusively on a single aspect of living history—the use of arms—and is less concerned with a broad portrayal of life in the period than it is with the functional use of those weapons. Likewise, while a historical shooter should seek to shoot accurately, he is primarily focused upon using historically correct weapons, ammunition, equipment, and shooting techniques, and should not allow modern elements of the sport to influence his practice any more than necessary.

This book is the result of my efforts to apply this approach to shooting the British Pattern-53 Enfield rifle. My intention is to show a modern shooter who owns one of these weapons how I replicate authentic ammunition, operate and maintain it, and shoot it as well as possible using the shooting techniques and practices of the era with period-correct equipment. We begin with a brief history of the rifle itself and its ammunition and a discussion of the equipment appropriate for shooting it. Then we look at how to manufacture and package ammunition correctly; how to clean and maintain the rifle; how to load and perform the shooting portion of the manual of arms; how marksmanship was taught and practiced; how to work up a load for best target results; and how to conduct target practice with it. The primary source for all this information will be the Regulations for Conducting the Musketry Instruction of the Army from 1859, supplemented from other shooting manuals of the period, both civilian and military, in order to give a broader understanding of the art than a new recruit might have needed.  See the table of contents below.

This book is not intended as a history of Empire militaries, firearms, ammunition, or equipment—there are excellent sources available which cover all of those subjects in superb detail. Rather, this book is about shooting as it was done then, although I touch on some of the history for context.  I want potential readers to understand this, however, as I do not discuss all the various versions and variations of the rifle--this book is about shooting.

The perfect-bound, softcover book is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of photographs, illustrations, and diagrams, many in color.  It is approximately 175 pages in length in an 8.5x11 format.

As this book is intended for a narrow, extremely limited customer niche, I have not attempted to publish through an established publisher, preferring to self publish through Lulu.com.  The book is available for sale there now, but it will eventually be available through quite a few mainstream outlets such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.  Regardless, this is a print-on-demand product, so it will always take time for it to be delivered, even when published through someone offering overnight delivery.  As of right now, the link to purchase this book can be found HERE.

Here is the Table of Contents and some sample pages to give potential readers some idea of what to expect.