If a rifle is required for small game such as rabbits and young rooks, a 300-bore Holland rook rifle would be useful. Rifle shooting is a far more difficult thing, and requires more practice than shooting with a gun. You must have a very steady hand and straight eye to be a good rifle shot. It has often been remarked that a woman as a rule shoots better with a rifle than a gun. I do not quite know why this should be the case, but so it is. When shooting with a rifle one must never forget that a bullet from even one of the smallest rifles goes a very considerable distance.
I used, as a girl, to have many an enjoyable evening's sport with my rifle in the park at home, stalking "Brer" rabbit, of which there were any number, but the difficulty was to get up to them, as they were very shy from being constantly shot at, and at the slightest noise used to scurry off and disappear like lightning down their burrows. Some evenings I used to bring home two or three rabbits, though oftener than not, none at all, but whatever the result, it was all the same a very pleasant way of spending a summer's evening, and there was a good deal of excitement about it. Then another great amusement of both my brother's and mine was rook shooting. Most people, unless they have tried it themselves, would think there couldn't be much sport in shooting at a young rook sitting quietly on a branch of a tree unable to fly away, but let them once try rook shooting with a 300-bore rifle, when there is enough wind to blow the trees about, and they will find it requires no small amount of skill to fetch down a young rook from the top of a high tree which is gently swaying to and fro. There are two difficulties in this particular form of shooting which affect a woman perhaps more than a man. The strained attitude in aiming, necessitated by the height at which the rooks build their nests, causes serious stiffness at the back of the neck, which soon communicates with the muscles of the shoulders and obliges one to rest awhile. Again, and this more especially occurs when the tree-tops are moving, the tiny target a young rook makes when peeping out of its nest, will soon become indistinguishable among the twigs and branches around it, unless the sight taken is both instantaneous and accurate. Many a time has it happened to me to gaze and gaze down the barrel of my rifle vainly attempting to draw a bead upon the swinging rooklet, until everything becomes blurred and blotted, and I was perforce obliged to bring the rifle down in despair.
I may say at once that I have a decided preference for the rifle as opposed to the gun, though I should be the last to minimise the pleasures of pheasant and partridge shooting. I am not one of those women who prefer the excitement of a regular "battue" to the more sober joys of a quiet pot-hunt. To begin with, there is no doubt that a woman is a great bore at anything like an organised shooting party. It would do the intending lady-shot good to see the faces of the men on hearing that they are to have the honour of her company during the day. The smothered grumbles of the younger sportsmen are drowned in the more forcible ejaculations of the older generation. But apart from this, and I am not for one moment assuming that it is the duty of women to consider exclusively the whims of the sterner sex, there always seems to me to be some special enjoyment in sallying forth with the object of replenishing an exhausted larder, and with the certainty of having to work one's hardest to accomplish the task. Every shot then becomes of importance, and the comparative scarcity of the prey redoubles one's vigilance and activity. Should the wily partridge elude your aim on these occasions, you feel as if some tremendous disaster had occurred, and your spirits do not recover their normal condition until some special success has rewarded your efforts, and a long and difficult shot has added another victim to the bag. In shooting, as in so many other pursuits, it is quality not quantity that should be sought.
From a Painting by Miss Maud Earl.
POINTER ON PARTRIDGE.
One of the most amusing day's shooting I ever remember was a hare drive in Austria. We left the house at one o'clock and drove about eight miles through a very flat country to the "rendezvous," where we found a perfect army of beaters who were chatting volubly in an unknown tongue. I discovered later that they were talking Polish, which is the common language of the peasants in that part of Silesia adjoining the Austrian-Russian frontier. The men were mostly barefooted, but in other respects resembled the average English beater. The keepers were distinguished by their green livery and Austrian conical hats. They carried horns slung from their shoulders, and when a line had been formed some quarter of a mile in length, the signal was given by the head-keeper on his horn and was taken up by his subordinates. An excellent method was observed in allotting a certain number of beaters to the care of each keeper, who was then responsible for their maintaining a good line and preventing stragglers.
The ten guns were of course distributed at intervals along the line, and we started across level fields of potato and beet-root sugar roots which took the place of our turnips, and were much easier to walk through. There were no fences, and the fields were divided by ditches and low banks. Game was plentiful, and although we only shot for about two-and-a-half hours, we succeeded in killing about two hundred hares and several partridges. The beater who carried my cartridges was greatly excited whenever I was fortunate enough to kill a hare, and jabbered away in his native tongue. I have never heard anything approaching that language. It is a fearful and wonderful thing, and I wished I could have brought some of it away with me to use on special occasions in England. The only drawback was the weather. It rained cats and dogs, and while I was glad to note that England has not the monopoly of inclement weather, I must confess that the Austrians think no more of a wet jacket than we do. At five o'clock we gave up, and returned home wet to the skin, but none the less my husband and I have the pleasantest recollection of our first day's shooting in Austria.
Before closing this article I must refer shortly to the subject of dress. The first thing to remember, is always to have a dress of some dark or neutral tinted material that will not be conspicuous on a moor or when birds are being driven, and which will also keep out the rain. A short skirt, breeches, thick boots, and either woollen stockings or gaiters, and a double-breasted loose coat are the most convenient as well as the most sportsman-like. But the coat must be loosely made, so as to allow one to bring the gun up to the shoulder quickly and easily, otherwise it will seriously interfere with the shooting.