“Never, never let your gun
Pointed be at anyone:
That it may unloaded be,
Matters not the least to me.
You may kill or you may miss,
But at all times think of this:
All the pheasants ever bred
Won’t repay for one man dead.”
CRACK SHOTS—I
Bailey’s Magazine initiated an interest-provoking scheme when it set its readers to work to solve the difficult problem of which twelve men were the most expert in each branch of sport. It started with polo, in an article by Mr. Buckmaster, wherein the play of each man was reviewed in the true impartial spirit of criticism. The names had just then almost been officially given to the world in the Hurlingham “recent form” list; and this the readers of Bailey confirmed. In one article the twelve best fishermen were voted for; and fly fishing, unlike polo, is a private sport; unlike shooting, it is not even carried out in private parties, and really there was nothing to go upon except the literary efforts of the fishermen voted upon. Because a man can write and can interest fishermen, he need not necessarily be a clever angler. Francis Francis was the one; by all accounts he was very far from the other. Consequently, the voting for anglers of highest form was on a totally different basis from that of the less private as well as the wholly public sports. Had we set the ballot-box going for crack marksmen (exclusive of riflemen and pigeon shots) sixty years ago, the man who must have come to the top was Colonel Hawker. He would have been there by right of the story he told to young shooters, for whether he was the superb marksman suggested by his writings or not, there was nobody to challenge it—no one who had shown that he knew woodcraft and watercraft half as well. Probably there has never been anyone since who could hold a candle to the Colonel for a complete knowledge of the latter art and science (for gunnery was as much a concern of his as the habits of fowl). Had we voted, we must inevitably have placed him top of the tree; because game shooting then was not a thing to be conducted in large parties, but was a concern only of my friend, my pointer, and myself. There were no spectators except the beaters, who were up the trees to mark, and the gamekeeper, who carried a game-bag, and perhaps rode a shooting pony.