bust a cap vs pick off

bust a cap

verb
  • To fire a weapon; to shoot with a gun. 

pick off

verb
  • To shoot one by one. 

  • To dispose of tasks, obstacles, opponents etc. precisely, one by one. 

  • To intercept, such as a ball in flight. 

  • To throw out a runner by tagging them whilst they are not in contact with any of the three bases or home plate. 

  • To remove by picking. 

noun
  • An instance of throwing out a batter leading off base. 

How often have the words bust a cap and pick off occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )