These rules are simple, and the reasons for them apparent; if the hammer is on the cap, a blow on it, or its catching on a twig, will discharge the load; if a horse runs away, as horses have an unpleasant habit of doing, even if the lock is at half-cock, the tumbler may be broken down; if a gun is capped in a house, every one but an idiot knows it is loaded; and if it is drawn towards a person—as will be often done by thoughtless people in taking it from a wagon or lifting it from a boat or from the ground—it is almost sure to go off.
In the field it should be carried either at whole or half-cock; authorities differ as to which of these two modes is the safer. If the hammer is at full cock, a touch on the trigger will set it loose; if it is at half-cock, in the excitement of cocking it when a bird rises unexpectedly, it will often slip unintentionally. I prefer the former method, believing that the sense of danger makes the person more careful, and that the risk of a twig’s touching the trigger in spite of the trigger-guard is very slight, while the weapon is ready for instant use, and only has to be pointed at the object and discharged. Moreover, I have twice seen a gun that was at half-cock discharged when the sportsman was in the act of cocking it hastily, and twice when putting it back to half-cock; but the piece should never for a moment be trusted out of the sportsman’s hands without his first putting it at half-cock; nor should he ever cross a fence without the same precaution. In changing from whole to half-cock, pass the hammer below the first notch, so as to hear a distinct click when it is drawn back.
Countrymen when about to walk a log over a rapid stream, will usually carefully put the hammers down on the caps, and placing the butt on the log, steady themselves by it, thus insuring their destruction if they should happen to slip; and if they stand on a fence they do the same thing, and rest the stock on the upper rail. Not only should such follies be avoided, but the gun should never be leaned against a tree, as thoughtless people are apt to do when they stop at a spring to drink, and never placed where it can slip or roll.
When you have fired and desire to reload, put the hammer of the loaded barrel at half-cock, and if the right barrel has been discharged, set down the butt so that the hammers are towards you, and the contrary way if the left barrel is to be loaded; in this manner you will avoid bringing your hand over the loaded barrel, and in case the other charge should go off you would lose the end of your thumb, perhaps, but save most of your fingers.
From the foregoing rules, which apply mainly to muzzle-loaders, it will be seen how much safer are breech-loaders; with them the entire charge can be withdrawn on entering a house or getting into a wagon, and there is absolutely no danger to fingers or thumb in the process of loading. And in carrying the weapon on long tramps in the woods, where it is frequently removed from boat to shoulder, from shoulder to boat, and from wagon to case, and when it has to be ready at any instant, with the muzzle-loader the only possible precaution is to leave the nipples without caps, which are to be carried in the vest pocket, and must be removed after every vain alarm; while with the breech-loader, the charge itself is not inserted till needed.
With these few suggestions, which are applicable not merely to the kinds of sport treated of in this volume, but to every species of shooting, we leave the young sportsman to his own resources and to the knowledge that he will acquire in the field, hoping that he may find something in them that will aid him to kill reasonably often the game he points at, and to avoid the dreadful misfortune of injuring a friend or companion.
CHAPTER XI.
TRAP-SHOOTING.
The amusement of trap-shooting is pursued in the Northern States, on the margins of the western lakes—as some eminent marksmen of Buffalo and Niagara Falls can testify—and on the sea-coast—as some famous matches at Islip would prove. It is not a field sport; it is hardly a sport at all; and a pigeon is not, properly speaking, a game-bird, in spite of the instances quoted. If this work were to be confined strictly to its professed objects, this chapter would have to be excluded; but for the reason that it belongs nowhere else, that an account of this peculiar style of shooting will be useful to many sportsmen, and that no published book contains any information on the subject, the writer has presumed to collate the experience of his friends rather than of himself—for he does not pretend to much skill in this particular art—and to offer it to the sporting public.
Trap-shooting, although quite an ungrammatical expression, is perfectly understood as a sporting term, having acquired a conventional meaning; it signifies neither shooting at a trap, which its construction implies, nor shooting out of a trap, but shooting at a bird—generally a pigeon—released from a trap. Although not a highly scientific sport, and somewhat open to the charge of cruelty, it has its devotees; and certainly, amid a crowd of spectators and competitors, to take the palm and carry off the prize is no mean glory. The birds probably suffer as little, cut down with the whistling charge of fine shot while on the wing, and with a chance for life, as though their necks were remorselessly wrung by the poulterer; and in either case they find their way to market and furnish food for the people.
The most serious objection to this sport is, that the wild pigeons have to be taken from their nests in the spring, and thus, either prevented laying their eggs, or hatching their broods. As the preservation and increase of all species of wild birds, animals, and fishes, and the prevention of their destruction at unseasonable times, are the first duties of a sportsman, the killing of pigeons ere they have raised their broods is on a par with shooting ducks and snipe in spring, and is excusable only because the feeling of the people does not require the enactment of thoroughly appropriate laws; and while it prevents the protection of the latter, makes the preservation of the former—which is a comparatively valueless bird—scarcely worth the trouble.