Improbable Aiming Skills/Literature

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Examples of Improbable Aiming Skills in Literature include:

• Older Than Feudalism: Odysseus shoots an arrow through the handle rings of twelve axes in The Odyssey.
• Classic examples include Wilhelm Tell and Robin Hood. Natty Bumppo (as mentioned in the quote) was probably the first character to do this with guns, or at least to do it with guns and get famous. Mark Twain ridiculed Bumppo's sharp-shooting in this article.
• Legolas in the Lord of the Rings, though not as evident as in the film, he's never depicted as missing his target.
  • The book version does get one feat that's more impressive than anything the movie version ever did -- shooting down the Fell Beast that one of the Nazgul was flying on, while it was at hundreds of feet of altitude, while at night, while standing in a small boat going down the rapids of the river Anduin.
• In the novel Drakon, Gwen Ingolfsson intentionally shoots a running man in the knee, at 200 yards, on the first shot, with a notoriously inaccurate and ungainly "handgun" that she's never even seen before as she's just arrived from an different universe. Yes, she's a genetically-engineered superwoman, but that incredibly loud explosion was the Willing Suspension of Disbelief undergoing spontaneous combustion. The same author's Dies the Fire series features a number of improbably good archers, though at least all of them are explicitly described as practicing constantly and having been at it since childhood.
• Comes up in the Discworld novels several times:
  • Parodied in the novel Pyramids. The main character is on his final exam for his Assassination class and decides he can't kill the person sleeping in the bed, even if it means his teachers may kill him for disobeying. So he defiantly shoots his crossbow at the wall, and it happens to ricochet off several surfaces and into what turns out to be a dummy. He passes the final exam, but his instructor chides him for using showy, over-the-top methods in his assassination.
  • Parodied again and deconstructed in Guards! Guards! wherein Colon claims to amazing feats of archery lead to his friends talking him into trying to shoot at a dragon's Achilles' Heel while wearing a blindfold, standing on his head, and so on, in an attempt to get the shot to be exactly a Million-to-One Chance... because million-to-one chances always work out, right? It turns out he doesn't even hit the broad side of the dragon.
  • Lampshaded in Reaper Man when Death uses his unerring dart skills to play "badly" and hit a bystander behind him. He addresses the fact that, logically, it is a lot harder to intentionally miss the board and have the dart end up hitting a bystander behind him than to get a bulls-eye.
  • Jason Ogg used one of Binky's old horseshoes (the thing) to play horseshoes (the game), and never missed.
  • In Snuff, Willikins manages to hit a woman's broom from in the middle of a mob, without injuring the woman herself.
• In the Halo Novel First Strike, Master Chief is getting help in a battle from Linda, another Super Soldier like him, armed with a sniper rifle. During the course of the fight, Linda makes a number of difficult shots, often shooting enemy pilots right out of their fliers while in flight (and in at least one case, using a ricochet to do it). When he finally grabs a flier of his own to go pick her up, he finds her hanging from a cord, and realizes she's been doing all that shooting one-handed. Her shooting skills are helped by the fact that she wears a Power Armor that responds to thoughts, not muscle movement
• Honor Harrington puts 4 rounds into a guy, straight up the center, within centimeters of each other, before he even falls down, from the hip, before raising the gun and putting a fifth one between his eyes. From 40 meters away (over 120 feet, to us Americans not in the military). Over the span of about three seconds.
  • You forgot to add the fact that she was able to do this because a) She practiced all the time b) She practiced intensely for the duel for weeks c) She had time to line up all her shots and d) the telescopic vision mode of her artificial eye effectively gave her a sniper scope built into her head. The second duel however, is this trope to a "T" - she was wounded, had rolled on the ground and still managed to make the shots that obliterated her opponent's heart.
    • In the second instance her opponent was only about 50 feet away, and she had time to aim. Putting three shots rapid-fire into a two-inch group at 50 feet is well within normal standards for an experienced marksman, and Honor is a genetically-engineered human being who has enhanced strength, resilience, and a pain threshold that's pretty much off the charts so her wounds would not affect her aim materially.
    • Also subverted in that it wouldn't have mattered if Honor hit him or not - the police officers present at the scene were already drawing down on her assailant (shooting your opponent in the back makes it an illegal duel, hence, murder), and one of them manages to wound him fatally at the same time Honor gets off her last shot.
• The Warhammer 40,000: Gaunt's Ghosts novel Honour Guard includes a passage where the character Lijah Cuu effortlessly shoots tiny critters that even the eponymous regiment's marksman Larkin would hesitate about going after. Unfortunately, he's also the regiment's Ax Crazy...
• Subverted in Flashman by George Macdonald Fraser, where the title character participates in a duel; because Flashman has rigged his opponent's gun, the opponent misses, and Flashman decides he will not shoot his opponent, instead firing a harmless shot aimed well off to one side... which ends up blasting the top off of a bottle of alcohol some distance away. Everyone takes this as proof of incredible marksmanship, giving his reputation a major boost.
• Good old Sharpe has this a few times. Hagman, a former poacher, is an amazing shot, and proves it repeatedly by shooting Frenchmen at just the right moment. The only time he misses is the first time you see him... because he's trying to shoot a rabbit at 200 meters with a blackpowder rifle, without aiming. And he still almost hits.
• When he's not recovering from torture, Stephen Maturin of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series is a crack shot with a pistol, much to the shock of a few people around him.
• In Stephen King's The Dark Tower series (whose first novel just happens to be called The Dark Tower) Roland of Gilead is the embodiment of this trope, with improbable aiming skills demonstrated any time he draws (which is generally done at lightning speed). In fact, Roland is so adept at reloading his revolver he describes it as his "..fingers doing their reloading trick," as if they aren't even under his control.
  • The other three main characters (Eddie, Susannah, and eventually Jake) all may qualify - Eddie manages to pull off an impressive display of gunslinging with no significant experience...in the buff...just after traveling from another dimension. Granted, may have had something to do with his Berserk Button being pressed.
• The villain too can have these skills, as seen in Ian Fleming's Goldfinger.

"I have never needed more than one .25-calibre bullet to kill. I shoot at the right eye, Mr Bond. And I never miss."

• Considering everyone was forced to read this book in high school, how can we forget Atticus Finch?
  • It's much easier to hit a target coming at you as it keeps getting bigger.
• The Executioner. Cold Sniper and Vigilante Man Mack Bolan uses his marksman skills to psych out his Mafia enemies, on one occasion shooting a perfect cross through drawn drapes while talking to a man inside the targeted room on the telephone. Another trick when sniping at long-range is to predict where the target is going to run to once his comrades start dying and fire a bullet into that space. Subverted on one occasion when Bolan realises he's missed because the man is actually crawling away, using a flimsy plastic sunning board for cover. As Bolan is firing a .460 Magnum rifle this does him no good at all.
• Yasmini in S.M. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers has precognition which tells her the precise direction to point her gun and the exact moment to squeeze the trigger. She's got her eyes closed as she does.
• Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. She spent years hunting with a bow and arrow, and in the second book during training for the second Hunger Games, she hits five birds tossed into the air at once, before they hit the ground.
• Catti-Brie in R. A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels. She doesn't do anything very spectacular, but as soon as she happens to find a magic bow, the others can count on her sniping anyone from any distance, even though we've never seen her so much as practise shooting.
• Imperial Stormtroopers as written by Timothy Zahn, he of the White and Grey Morality where Imperials actually get to be competent. Most clearly seen in Allegiance. Human Shield? Not a problem for a stormtrooper who's trained as a sniper. Just shoot past the hostage's ear.
• In the Standard Fantasy Setting inversion of Villains by Necessity, Samalander, the last assassin, always hits something with a thrown knife, even if it's not his intended target. Misses will even ricochet implausibly and hit something, even if it's Sam himself.
• Eddie Drood, hero of Simon R Green's Secret Histories, has a magical gun specifically designed to allow him to do this. The Colt Repeater never runs out of bullets and will automatically hit what you want it to hit as long as you point it in the right general direction. Unfortunately, not everything he meets is vulnerable to bullets.
• In The Dresden Files Kincaid displays this kind of accuracy, firing off dozens of shots with perfect accuracy while dodging wildly, but Harry claims that Kincaid can't be human because of his ability; all humans sometimes miss. Kincaid denies this, indicating that he's just that good. He's lying through his teeth. He's centuries old, and apparently half-demon.
  • Johnny Marcone, Fool Moon. Hangs upside-down, tied up, slowly spinning, throws a knife at and hits/cuts the rope tied to a tree so Murphy, Harry, and the Alphas can get out of the pit and beat loup-garou butt. Did we mention this was at night?
• Sword of Truth: Richard Cypher develops this ability around the second book, apparently a sign of his magical powers becoming evident.
• In Shogun, the samurai Buntaro nails a gatepost that is behind him with an arrow fired from inside a house. Admittedly the walls were only paper, but still...
  • Not only does he hit the gatepost several times, the arrows are stated to all go through THE SAME HOLE in the ricepaper walls. He's also been drinking heavily.
• Raj Whitehall from The General owes his Improbable Aiming Skills to the computer he's telepathically linked to.
• Percy Jackson pulls off an incredible shot nailing a monster through all three hearts with one arrow, all the more incredible because he is the worst archer at Camp Half-Blood. Luckily in his reality prayers are instantly answered - providing your divine relatives are feeling helpful that is.
  • A better example would be the children of Apollo or the Hunters of Artemis, neither of which require the direct assistance of the Goddess-Queen Hera to shoot projectiles straight out of the air.
• In Prince Caspian, Susan demonstrates her skill as an archer in a contest by piercing an apple at such a distance that her opponent, another excellent archer, claims it looks like a cherry, not an apple. Justified in that while she's good at archery, she's also using a magic bow, given to her by Father Christmas.
• In The Wheel of Time this is the hat the Two Rivers. One of the main characters almost ends up in a fight with his foreign wife when she jokingly asks him if all of his people are as skilled as he is, and he honestly answers that no, the older men are much better.
• In the Codex Alera, woodcrafters are incredibly accurate and powerful archers, able to thread arrows between inch-wide gaps in Legion shieldwalls and accurately put arrows into the crewmen of enemy ships moving at full speed on rough seas at three hundred yards.
• In One Shot the hero realizes that the Improbable Aiming Skills of a sniper are really too improbable. The guy was only an average sniper in his army days and had only sporidically practiced in the years since. He was cheating by shooting his practice targets from short range and then claiming that he did so from 600 yards. In turn another shooter who had below average scores on the shooting range was really an amazing sniper. He 'cheated' by not actually aiming at the bulls-eye but another spot on the target. He always hit what he aimed at but no one else realized that. Both men only used the shooting range when nobody was around to witness their deceptions.
• Wax, in The Alloy of Law, is such a good shot that he was able to shoot a bullet he had previously fired to change it's trajectory and get a headshot on someone hidden behind a human shield (though he had some help because he was able to calculate where he needed to hit the bullet in a bubble of fast time and then he fired as soon as the bubble ended).
• Every member of the Ranger Corps from Ranger's Apprentice can fire off five arrows and have a sixth at full draw before an enemy could draw their sword. Halt has managed on two occasions to imagine where a target will be, fire without fully seeing where it is, and hit it dead on both times. From the day they start their apprenticeships to the day they retire, Rangers practice their aim whenever they get a moment, meaning that they're expert marksmen in months and uncanny shots in a year. The Temuji are just as good or even better than the Rangers.
• Ayla from the Earth's Children series once hit four clods of dirt thrown in the air with her sling before any touched the ground, and in general has better aim than anyone else in the series.

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