Hot Red Head Reloads Annie Oakley Trick Shot

Little Lady, Big Stick

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a certain little lady carried a big stick.  Her name was Annie Oakley and her “stick,” was firearms.  A “big stick” for 2 reasons.  One being she was a shade over 5 feet tall so all guns looked large in her hands.  And the other was she is probably the most capable female marksman of that era, if not ever.  

She was known the world over for her unique and quick trick shots.  Entertaining dignitaries, royalty, and others across the globe, she quickly became a household name.  A few of her shots where made world famous by her and rarely, If ever, duplicated.  One of those is the “splitting of a playing card, on the edge, with a .22LR.” 

Modern Day Contender

Stepping up to the plate today is Kirsten Joy Weiss of the “Joy of Shooting,” show on YouTube.  You will remember her from an article a while back where she hit an egg at 300 yards with a .22LR.  Well this time around she is picking up her AR15, some .223 cartridges, and a playing card to reload Annie Oakley’s famous “on the edge playing card split.” Kirsten is as fine a shot as she is to look at for those of you who are unaware.  

The Play By Play

Standing the same 30 paces back from an edge on playing card Kirsten lines up the sights on her AR15.  As you can see from the picture, this is one tricked out weapon, but we’ll get to that soon enough.  She fires her first shot, a miss.  Then a second shot, once again a miss.  Remember Kirsten like to show all her misses so you can understand the actual difficulty in accomplishing the shots she films.  

She then adjusts her stance to something resembling what she used in the 300 yard .22LR shot she had made previously.  She lines her sights up, slow steady squeeze, bang, HIT!  The card is sliced in 2, almost completely.  Only a small fraction of card holds it together.  She yelps with joy at her hit.  

 

After inspection she realizes, she hasn’t split the card fully.  So she heads back to the firing line, lines up and pops off another .223 down range.  It whizzes by the card.  So she sends another .223 at Mach 3 barreling at the target, and another miss.  Then she does the same odd “precision stance,” she used for the first hit and for previous trick shots with rifles.  She lines up the 6th shot, slow steady squeeze, bang, and the card is zipped in 2.  Kirsten exudes much rejoicing.  Mission accomplished ma’am. 

Not the same as before…

However, for  the history buffs out there you may have noticed that there is a few differences already with the original shot and the one we see here.  First off, Annie Oakley used a Marlin model 1891 lever action .22LR when she did the trick, originally.  This is a smooth bore barrel vs. the AR15’s rifled barrel.  This gives more accuracy to the rifled weapon.  Also, Annie’s Marlin was a lever action weapon.  And Kirsten’s AR is a semiautomatic.  Not a big difference except that when Annie did the trick, she would shoot the top half of the card multiple times after cutting it with a shot, before it hit the ground.  That’s Re-God-Damned-diculous if you ask me.  Too bad there is no video of that shot…

To add to the differences in the shot, Annie used iron sights, and Kirsten clearly had some form of magnification here.  Maybe as small as 2x or as much as 6-8x.  Kirsten didn’t list the exact optic model and magnification level used, but she did have more than iron sights.  Additionally, Kirsten’s AR had a massive muzzle brake on it that will greatly diminish recoil.  Giving her near .22LR recoil.  This off sets the large difference in powder amounts used in the different rounds as well.  In my opinion, the faster, more powder .223 round from the AR15 has an accuracy advantage over the ancient smooth bore weapon Annie used. 

The bottomline

The final difference is the .22LR Annie Oakley used slightly smaller round, by .003 inches in diameter and they had different shapes as well.  Size matters, but shape I think is negligible here.  In my opinion, our modern day Annie Oakley performed an easier iteration of Annie Oakley’s original shot.  However, I’d much rather watch Kirsten drop targets than Annie.  Not knocking Ms. Oakley, but Kirsten is just too easy on the eyes.  

I will say, I am not sure anyone else has ever performed this shot before with an AR15, so I think we can give this one to Kirsten as a first.  Definitely the hottest chick to ever do trick shots that I’ve ever seen.  I’m sure we will see more of her in the future.