At 09:14 on the morning of August 22nd, 1944, Corporal Roy Tanner told Lieutenant Briggs he could stop the German advance across that open French field using the same technique he used hunting pronghorn in the Wyoming plains. Briggs said that was the most useless comparison he’d heard since basic training. Two men nearby laughed.

One said pronghorn didn’t carry rifles. Tanner said he knew that. Pronghorn ran at 55 mph and changed direction without warning. A German soldier running across an open field was the slowest moving target he’d worked with in 12 years. 150 Germans were crossing 600 yd of open ground toward 30 trapped Americans.

Briggs had no artillery, no support coming, and no good options. Tanner had a Springfield, a Weavers scope, and 12 years of leading targets that moved faster than anything on a European battlefield. He told Briggs he’d never had an easier calculation in his life. Briggs told him to prove it. What happened in the next 3 hours is why the army started asking recruits whether they’d hunted pronghorn.

If you want to see what a Wyoming pronghorn hunter did when 150 Germans started crossing 700 yd of open French farmland, hit the like button. It helps us share more forgotten stories like this. Subscribe if you haven’t already. Back to Tanner. Roy Tanner grew up in Sublette County, Wyoming. High plains country.

Wide open sagebrush flats stretching to the Wind River Range. Elevation above 6,000 ft. The kind of terrain where you could see 10 mi in every direction, and there was nothing between you and the horizon but grass and sky. His father ran cattle on a spread outside Pinedale. The ranch covered 12,000 acres of open range, and the open range had pronghorn.

Pronghorn were not like any other animal in North America. They were built for speed in a way that nothing else on the continent was built for speed. A mature pronghorn could sustain 55 mph for half a mile and reach 60 in a sprint. They had eyes set wide on their heads, giving them nearly 300 degrees of vision.

They could detect movement at 4 mi. They were the second fastest land animal on Earth, evolved over millions of years to outrun predators that no longer existed. Still running as fast as ever because the speed was built into them at a level that couldn’t be switched off. Hunting pronghorn with a rifle was not like hunting deer.

A deer flushed and ran for cover. A pronghorn flushed and ran across the open plain at full speed for as long as it wanted because there was no cover to run to, and it didn’t need cover. It had speed. The only way to kill a pronghorn was to shoot it running at distance, leading it by the exact amount required for the bullet to arrive at the same point the animal arrived at the same time.

Miss the lead calculation, and the bullet hit empty air behind the animal. The pronghorn didn’t notice. His father started taking Roy at 15. The first lesson was about distance. Pronghorn were rarely closer than 400 yd when they flushed, often 500, sometimes 600. When they moved, they moved fast and far, and you had one shot before they were out of effective range.

The second lesson was about the lead calculation. A pronghorn at 55 mph moved approximately 80 ft per second. A .30-06 bullet at 2,700 ft per second took .2 seconds to cover 500 yd. In those .2 seconds, the pronghorn moved 16 ft. You aimed 16 ft in front of the animal, not at it, at the space it hadn’t reached yet.

Most hunters found this calculation impossible under field conditions. Roy’s father had a method. Distance first, estimated by terrain features the same way a surveyor worked. Wind next, watching the grass and the way the animal’s coat rippled. Lead last. Once he had distance and wind, the lead was arithmetic.

He’d done the arithmetic thousands of times. It wasn’t fast thinking. It was automatic, the way any calculation became automatic after enough repetitions. Roy spent 3 years working through this method before he made his first clean pronghorn kill. He was 18. The animal had been running at approximately 50 mph at 408 yd, quartering away with a light crosswind from the right.

He held 14 ft of lead, adjusted 2 in for wind, fired. The pronghorn ran three more strides and dropped. His father looked at it and said the shot was acceptable. Roy knew that meant it was exactly right. His father didn’t give other grades. By 25, Roy had killed pronghorn at distances from 380 to 560 yd, all running, all at full speed, all with single shots.

He kept a log. Date, distance, wind, speed estimate, lead held, result. The log had 47 entries when Pearl Harbor happened. Average lead distance held, 13.2 ft at 450 yd. Pearl Harbor happened in December 1941. Roy was 23. He enlisted in January 1942. At the rifle range, they tested him on stationary targets.

He qualified expert without difficulty. They tested him on moving targets, a mechanical sled crossing at walking pace. Every other shooter in his class tracked the target and fired as the sights crossed it. Roy calculated the lead and held it fixed, letting the target walk into his shot. The instructor asked what he was doing.

Roy explained the lead calculation method. The instructor said that wasn’t how it was taught. Roy said he knew. It was how it was done. His scores on moving targets were the highest the range had recorded that month. They assigned him to infantry and sent him to France in June 1944. By August 1944, Tanner was with Fox Company, Fourth Infantry Division, pushing south through France toward the Loire.

Fox Company had been fighting for 7 weeks. On the morning of August 22nd, they were in a very bad position. 30 men on a ridgeline, limited ammunition, no artillery, no forward observer. At 08:30, German infantry appeared at the far treeline, 700 yd south, at least 150, forming up for an advance across the field toward the crossroads Fox Company was holding.

Support was coming, but not for 2 hours. The Germans would be on the ridge in 40 minutes. Tanner had been watching the field since the Germans appeared, not watching the formation, watching the field itself. The grass, the way it moved, the distance to the fence line at 300 yd, the stone wall at 450, the treeline at 700.

He was building the same picture he built on every Wyoming flat before a hunt. Distance markers established, wind estimated, the calculation preparing itself. He told Briggs he could slow the advance and maybe stop it. The Germans would have to cross 700 yd of open ground. Running Germans at 500 yd were slower than standing pronghorn at 400.

He’d been making this shot for 12 years. Briggs told him to prove it. The German advance began at 09:17. The formation moved out of the treeline, spread wide, moving at a steady walk. At 09:23, the lead elements crossed the 500 yd stone wall. Tanner fired his first shot. The lead German was moving at approximately 8 mph.

At 500 yd with that pace and a light left crosswind, Tanner calculated 4.2 ft of lead. He held it as automatic as breathing and fired. The German dropped mid-stride. The soldiers around him slowed. They thought it was a lucky shot. Tanner worked his bolt and fired again. Second German down at 490 yd. Now they started running.

Running was the mistake. Tanner had been waiting for them to run. A soldier in full kit ran at approximately 10 to 12 mph, roughly 1/5 of a pronghorn’s speed. The lead calculation that had taken years to develop for 55 mph required almost no adjustment for 12. He was hitting slower targets than he’d ever missed in Wyoming.

Third shot, fourth shot, fifth shot. Three hits in 45 seconds. The formation broke into clusters. At 09:35, a German officer tried to rally the scattered soldiers. He was visible at 420 yd, standing to gesture toward the ridge. Tanner led him by 2.8 ft and fired. The officer went down. The advance lost coherence. Instead of 150 men moving together, there were now clusters making individual decisions.

Briggs had been watching through binoculars. He asked Tanner how he was leading the running targets. Tanner said the same way he led pronghorn in Wyoming. You calculated the distance, estimated the speed, multiplied by the bullet’s travel time, held that much lead. Briggs said that sounded like a lot of math to do while being shot at.

Tanner said it didn’t feel like math. It felt like pointing. After 12 years, it was the same as pointing at where the animal was going to be. At 09:51, the Germans reorganized and coordinated short rushes, five or six men at a time, moving fast for 5 seconds while others provided fire support.

Standard doctrine for crossing fire-swept ground. It was harder than sustained movement. It wasn’t beyond Tanner’s range. A soldier running from cover to cover committed to a line and ran it straight. They didn’t cut and juke the way a pronghorn did when truly alarmed. Tanner read the cover, identified where the next rush would go before it started, and had his lead held when the soldiers moved.

At 10:03, he killed a German at 360 yd who stood too long at a rock formation. At 10:11, a soldier moving between the drainage ditch and a depression 300 yd out. At 10:19, another officer at 440 yd. The officer stood twice to give commands. The first time the wind shifted and Tanner waited. His father had said never take a shot you weren’t certain of.

The second time the wind settled. He fired. The officer dropped. 11 kills by 10:30. German movement had nearly stopped. The soldiers who had made it to the 300 yd mark were pinned in the open, aware of the threat, unable to move safely in any direction. He controlled 700 yd of field from one position with one rifle.

At 10:45, German mortars opened up. The first rounds fell short. Tanner relocated 30 yd north along the ridgeline, found a new position behind a boulder, settled back in. The third salvo hit where he’d been. He resumed watching the field. The mortar fire changed the German calculus. With the sniper suppressed, they thought 14 soldiers rose simultaneously and ran hard toward the ridge, 200 yards to cover.

Tanner fired five times in 22 seconds, four hits. The four who dropped broke the group’s momentum. The remaining 10 dove to the ground or turned back. None reached 150 yards. 15 total kills by 11. German radio intercepts picked up later would describe a single American marksman who appeared to be firing at any movement anywhere in the field.

Two different reports used the same word, impossible. At 11:47, American artillery finally opened. Shells began impacting the tree line in the open field. German soldiers pinned in the open rose and ran for the trees. Tanner fired seven more times during the retreat, hitting four. 19 confirmed kills.

The German advance had failed completely. The crossroads behind Fox Company’s position was still American. Briggs came to Tanner’s position after the artillery stopped. He asked how many rounds Tanner had fired. 29 rounds, 19 confirmed kills, 10 misses or unconfirmed. Briggs said he had told Tanner it was impossible. Tanner said he knew.

Briggs asked what made it possible. Tanner said pronghorn, 12 years of them. Germans were bigger and they ran in straight lines. Briggs said he had been thinking about Wyoming wrong his whole life. Tanner continued with Fox Company through the rest of the French campaign and into Germany. By December 1944, his confirmed kill total had reached 38, all on running or moving targets at ranges from 280 to 560 yards, all using the lead calculation his father had taught him.

He never fired at a stationary target if a moving one was available. Stationary targets were too easy after 12 years of pronghorn. He returned to Sublette County in October 1945, back to the ranch, back to the plains. Pronghorn were still everywhere, still running at 55 mph across the same flats. Tanner still hunted them every fall, still kept the log, still used his father’s calculation method.

His log from 1946 through 1968 showed kill distances and lead calculations indistinguishable from his entries before the war. Same distances, same leads, same results. The war had not changed the calculation. He never talked about France. When people asked about the war, he said infantry, Europe, came home.

When hunters asked about his shooting, he talked about the calculation method, the importance of the log, the years required to make the arithmetic automatic. Nobody connected the two things because he didn’t connect them in conversation. They were connected in the log. 1944 entries sitting between 1943 and 1945 entries. Same format, same columns, different targets, same calculation.

In 1981, a military historian found Briggs’s after-action report and tracked Tanner down in Sublette County. He was 63, still ranching, still hunting. The historian asked about August 22nd. Tanner confirmed the details and said the shooting wasn’t the interesting part. The interesting part was the calculation.

The historian asked him to explain it. Tanner pulled out his log and showed him. The historian looked at the 1944 entries, then at the Wyoming entries on either side of them. The format was identical. Date, distance, wind, speed estimate, lead held, result. The historian asked if Tanner had thought about the 1944 engagements the same way he thought about hunting.

Tanner said he’d thought about them exactly the same way. Germans weren’t pronghorn, but they were targets moving across open ground at a calculable speed and calculable directions. The arithmetic was the same arithmetic. After 12 years, it was as automatic as breathing.

The only real difference was that pronghorn were harder. They ran faster and changed direction without warning. Germans ran slower and in straight lines. Wyoming had given him a harder problem to solve than France ever presented. Roy Tanner died in 1999 at age 81. His obituary mentioned the ranch, his family, and his service in the army.

It did not mention August 22nd, 1944. His family found his hunting log when they cleared the house. 53 years of entries, the same green composition notebook replaced every few years, the same handwriting getting slightly slower in the final volumes. His son found the 1944 section and read the entries from that August.

They looked exactly like every other entry. Distance, wind, speed, lead, result. His son kept the log. It did not go to a museum. It stayed in Sublette County in a drawer in the house where Tanner had kept it since 1932. Some records belong to the family. Some things don’t need a placard to be worth keeping.

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