The left-hand should be held well forward. This gives much more power over the gun, it also looks much better. With regard to the position of the feet, it is well to recollect that elegance is compatible with ease!
It is a matter of some difficulty, at first, to judge distance correctly. The novice generally begins by blowing her game to bits, to make sure of killing it, I suppose, though in reality this makes it far harder. The other extreme, firing very long shots, is equally reprehensible, as nine times out of ten the game goes away wounded, even when occasionally it is dropped by a fluke. Any distance between twenty and forty yards is legitimate, though the latter is rather far for a hare going away from you.
Never hand the gun cocked to an attendant, and always unload when getting over a fence, and on putting the gun down for luncheon.
Now for a few words on aiming; but I must here protest that this does not profess to be a shooting "Bradshaw," but merely, as it were, an A B C guide!
For a beginner, no doubt the easiest way, in the case of any ordinary crossing shot, is to put up the gun on the object, then fling it forward as far in front as is thought fit, and fire, but, after a time, I think this kind of double action will no longer be found necessary. The gun will be put up at once in front of the game, the eye taking in by instinct and practice the line of the object, and experience telling how far in front of the game to hold the gun. This is certainly true with regard to ground game. Quite high-class aiming is to put the gun up a little before the head of the object, and swing the gun forward with the bird, pulling the trigger without stopping the gun. This is beyond doubt the best and most correct method, but not easy to accomplish.
I take it for granted that you shoot with both eyes open.
It is impossible to lay down a rule how far in front to hold the gun for a crossing shot. It depends upon the pace the bird is going, and its distance from you, but, roughly speaking, for an ordinary shot at twenty-five yards, the object's own length in front may be enough (but I write this with some diffidence). For a driven bird or high pheasant, my experience is, you can't get too far ahead! For a rabbit or hare going away from you aim at the back of its head; coming towards you, at its chest.
One of the greatest charms of shooting is its "infinite variety." Let us take for example, to begin with, a day's covert shooting.
The waggonette with its pair of matched bays (of course we have the best of everything—on paper) stands at the door. You pack yourselves in, with a goodly amount of rugs and furs, and away you go, ten miles an hour, through the park. There has been a sharp frost, the cobwebs are all glistening in the sun, and the road rings under the horses' feet in a manner ominous to the lover of the chase proper, but music in the ears of the shooting-man. The leaves are mostly off the trees, but here and there some few remaining ones shiver gently to the ground; the bracken is brown and withered, and rustles crisply as the deer brush through it, startled at the sight of the carriage. The wind is keen and biting, but you turn up your fur collar and defy "rude Boreas."
Arrived at the starting point you take, on your way to the first cover, two or three rough grasses. The rabbits having been previously ferreted and otherwise harried, have forsaken their strongholds, and have, so to speak, gone under canvas—they are dotted about all over the fields in seats. (It is astonishing how easy it is, until the eye becomes practised, to miss seeing a rabbit in a seat.) You form a line, a beater or two between each gun across the pasture. Before you have gone ten yards, a rabbit jumps up from underneath a beater's foot, and makes tracks for the nearest hedgerow or plantation, only, however, to fall a victim to the right-hand gun. The report alarms another, who, without delay, seeks to follow in the steps of his predecessor, but a charge of No. 5 interferes with his scheme, and he also succumbs to fate.