Whether many of the hundreds of shooters who filed through Oakdale Gun Club on Thursday morning could have told you that the world's first gun was invented in China in the 10th century A.D. is unknown. But probably more than a few, because many shooters take their sport seriously. Some probably even knew the first gun wasn't so much a gun as a lance, properly known as a fire lance, the prototype of the modern firearm.

In the previous century, the Chinese had invented gunpowder, and it stands to reason that soon enough they would find a way to weaponize it, to use a contemporary non-word. This was accomplished by filling a tube with black powder, attaching it to the end of a spear and striking a match (or what passed for a match) to it. As a flamethrower, it was crude. But more lethal than what the other guys had.

Thursday morning, by the time I hung a target at the 25-yard range at Oakdale, the sky was a brightening patchwork of white and blue. As with most things, selecting a rifle caliber comes down to personal preference. But for deer I like a flat-shooter that doesn't kick a lot, and for me a .270 fills the bill. Plus I've owned this particular thunderstick a long time, and by now it feels comfortable in my hands, steel over walnut.

While sighting-in, a lot of shooters ratchet a few rounds through the barrel at targets 100 yards distant, and leave it at that. Perhaps they're better shooters than I am. But I prefer to start closer, believing that if you want to drive nails at 100 yards or even 200, you expend fewer rounds of ammunition by starting closer, shooting first for groups that can hide behind a silver dollar, before moving on to Big Boy distances.

On this same topic, a long time ago, the father of a friend of mine issued an edict over dinner one night in the small kitchen of a small house in the small southern Minnesota town where he lived. His gun cred was defined in part by the neat collection of Winchesters he kept in a glass-fronted cabinet. Also in the kitchen he positioned an old scattergun, with which, while eating, before or after grace, he might pop crows bothering him in his back yard, the shotgun's barrel protruding alongside a screen door kept open by a leathered boot. This was in the kind of town where the fellow's neighbors might also drill a few of the big black birds as a dinnertime interlude.

Anyway, his wisdom boiled down to this: When sighting-in, if you're zeroed at 25 yards, you'll also be zeroed at 250 yards. Shooters won't need this explained. But for others, the point is that a rifle in the bull's-eye at 25 yards will similarly make killing strikes 250 yards out, given the rise and fall of a bullet's path. Ergo, to simplify the sighting-in process, shooters should draw down at the closer target first, at which distance adjustments can be easily made.

But be forewarned: As with the old saw, "the government wants to help you,'' this is true only in principle. Caliber, cartridge choice and actual distance matter in this mix, especially in the case of a light gun like the .270, which zeroed in at 25 will be substantially low at 250. Thus the most important shooting rule of all: Know your gun.

That said, Saturday morning, a half-hour before sunrise, when the state's whitetails again become legal for firearms hunters, marksmanship will be important, but not all-important. Stand positioning is a big deal, and will have to be considered. So too wind awareness, and its corollary, scent control. Luck, also. Galvanize these in some combination and the hunter might just get to squeeze the trigger.

Crouched now at the shooting bench, and having chambered a cartridge, I peered through my scope, aligned its crosshairs on the bull's-eye 25 yards away, and squeezed off a round at the bottom of a deep breath. Echoing my muzzle blast, a guy to my right pumped slugs downrange with a 12 gauge, while to my left, another guy jacked .223s into an AR-style semi-auto.

What everyone else was thinking while they lit up the good morning, I'm unsure.

What I thought about was the tree I would be sitting in come Saturday morning, and how if a buck approached, I hoped I would see it before it saw me.

I also thought: The .270 is shooting OK here at the gun club, with the forearm supported on sand bags. But in the woods, all shots are off-hand, deer slither behind trees, and safeties make too much noise while being switched off.

On Thursday, perhaps a substantial percentage of the nearly 500,000 sportsmen and women who will chase whitetails throughout Minnesota this weekend brandished modern variations of the ancient fire lance at gun ranges statewide, punching holes in paper targets.

Call it a prelude to the real thing, just plain fun — or both.

Those many centuries ago, the Chinese never could have imagined what they started.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com