Bevis: The Story of a Boy

by Richard Jefferies

To avoid these you must take your mind from the game to guide your gun to the shoulder. If you took your mind from the game the continuity of the glance was broken, and the aim snapped in two, not to be united. Therefore, he insisted on Bevis choosing a position in which he would habitually carry his gun when in the presence of game.

Bevis at once selected that with the gun in the hollow of his left arm, the muzzle somewhat upwards; this was simply imitation, because the governor held it in that way. It is, however, a good position, easy for walking or waiting for ground game or for game that flies, for hare or snipe, for everything except thick cover or brushwood, or moving in a double mound, when you must perforce hold the gun almost perpendicular before you to escape the branches. This being settled, and the governor having promised him faithfully that if he saw him carry it any other way he would lock the gun up for a week each time, they proceeded to practise the bringing of the gun up to the shoulder, that is, to the present.

The left hand should always grasp the stock at the spot where the gun balances, where it can be poised on the palm like the beam of weights and scales. Instead of now taking it just in front of the trigger-guard, now on the trigger-guard, now six or seven inches in front, carelessly seizing it in different places as it happens, the left hand should always come to the same spot. It will do so undeviatingly with a very little practice and without thought or effort, as your right hand meets your friend’s to shake hands.

If it comes always to the same spot the left hand does not require shifting after the butt touches the shoulder. The necessary movements are reduced to a minimum. Grasping it then at the balance lift it gently to the shoulder, neither hastily nor slowly, but with quiet ease. Bevis was particularly taught not to throw the butt against his shoulder with a jerk, he was to bring it up with the deliberate motion of “hefting.”

“Hefting” is weighing in the hands—you are asked to “heft” a thing—to take it and feel by raising it what you think it weighs.

With this considerate ease Bevis was to “heft” his gun to the shoulder, and only to press it there sufficiently to feel that the butt touched him. He was not to hold it loosely, nor to pull it against his shoulder as if he were going to mortice it there. He was just to feel it. If you press the gun with a hard iron stiffness against the shoulder you cannot move it to follow the flying bird: you pull against and resist yourself. On the other hand, if loosely held the gun is apt to shift.

The butt must touch his shoulder at the same place every time. Those who have not had this pointed out to them frequently have the thick or upper part of the butt high above the shoulder, and really put nothing but the narrow and angular lower part against the body. At another time, throwing it too low, they have to bend and stoop over the gun to get an aim. Or it is pitched up to the chest, and not to the shoulder at all—to the edge of the chest, or again to the outside of the shoulder on the arm. They never bring it twice to the same place and must consequently change the inclination of the head at every shot. A fresh effort has, therefore, to be gone through each time to get the body and the gun to fit.

Bevis was compelled to bring the butt of his gun up every time to the same spot well on his shoulder, between his chest and his arm, with the hollow of the butt fitting, like a ball in its socket. One of the great objects of this mechanical training was that he should not have to pay the least attention to the breech of the gun in aiming. All that he had to do with was the sight. His gun, when he had thus practised, came up exactly level at once.

It required no shifting, no moving of the left hand further up or lower down the stock, no pushing of the butt higher up the shoulder, or to this side or that. His gun touched his shoulder at a perfect level, as straight as if he had thrust out his hand and pointed with the index finger at the bird. Not the least conscious effort was needed, there was nothing to correct, above all there was not a second’s interruption of the continuity of glance—the look at the game. The breech was level with the sight instantly; all he had further to do with was the sight.

With both eyes open he never lost view of the bird for the tenth of a second. The governor taught him to keep his eyes, both open, on the bird as it flew, and his gun came up to his line of sight. The black dot at the end of the barrel—as the sight appears in the act of shooting—had then only to cover the bird, and the finger pressed the trigger. Up to the moment that the black dot was adjusted to the mark all was automatic.