After wounds or extensive bruises of the sole, or where the sole is thin and flat and tender, it is sometimes covered with a piece of leather, fitted to the sole, and nailed on with the shoe. This may be allowed as a temporary defence of the foot; but there is the same objection to its permanent use from the insecurity of fastening, and the strain on the crust, and the frequent chipping of it: and there are these additional inconveniences, that if the hollow between the sole and the leather be filled with stopping and tow, it is exceedingly difficult to introduce them so evenly and accurately as not to produce some partial or injurious pressure—that a few days’ work will almost invariably so derange the padding as to produce partial pressure—that the long contact of the sole with stopping of almost every kind will produce, not a healthy, elastic horn, but horn of a scaly, spongy nature; and that if the hollow be not thus filled, gravel and dirt will insinuate themselves, and cause unequal pressure, and eat into and injure the foot.—The Horse.
Shoot, v. To discharge anything so as to make it fly with speed or violence; to discharge from a bow or gun; to let off; to perform the act of shooting; to germinate; to be emitted; to protuberate; to jut out; to pass as an arrow; to feel a quick pain.
Instructions in Shooting—But (to be brief, which is here my study) allow me to suggest an humble attempt for the instruction of the complete novice, first, let him take a gun that he can manage, and be shown how to put it to his shoulder, with the breach and sight on a level, and make himself master of bringing them up to a wafer.
Then, with a wooden or bone driver (instead of a flint) let him practise at this mark; and when he thinks he can draw his trigger without flinching, he may present the gun to your right eye, by which you will see, at once, if he is master of his first lesson. In doing this he must remember, that the moment the gun is brought up to the centre of the object, the trigger should be pulled, as the first sight is always unquestionably the best.
Then send him out to practise at a card with powder, till he has got steady, and afterwards load his gun, occasionally, with shot, but never let the time of your making this addition be known to him; and the idea of it being, perhaps, impossible to strike his object, will remove all anxiety, and he will soon become perfectly collected.
The intermediate lesson of a few shots at small birds may be given; but this plan throughout must be adopted at game, and continued, in the first instance, till the pupil has quite divested himself of all tremor at the springing of a covey, and observed in the last, till most of his charges of shot have proved fatal to the birds. If he begins with both eyes open, he will save himself the trouble of learning to shoot so afterwards. An aim thus, from the right shoulder, comes to the same point as one taken with the left eye shut, and it is the most ready method of shooting quick.
Be careful to remind him (as a beginner) to keep his gun moving, as follows: before an object, crossing; full high for a bird rising up, or flying away very low; and between the ears of hares and rabbits running straight away. All this, of course, in proportion to the distance; and if we consider the velocity with which a bird flies, we shall rarely err by firing, when at forty yards, at least five or six inches before it. Till the pupil is au fait in all this, he will find great assistance from the sight, which he should have precisely on the intended point, when he fires. He will thus, by degrees, attain the art of killing his game in good style, which is to fix his eyes on the object, and fire the moment he has brought up the gun. He may then ultimately acquire the knack of killing snap shots, and bring down a November bird the moment it tops the stubble, or a rabbit popping into a furze-brake, with more certainty than he was once used to shoot a young grouse in August, or a partridge in September.
Many begin with very quick shooting, and kill admirably well, but are often apt not to let their birds fly before they put up their guns, and therefore dreadfully mangle them, and, I have already observed, are not such every-day shots as those who attain their rapid execution on a slow and good principle.
As shots in the field, at game, Mr. Jenkins, near Petworth, Sussex, and Cottingham, who was formerly gamekeeper to Lord Roos, are perhaps the best. The former has killed twenty brace of partridges in a day, at forty shots, without selecting the shots, but took them fairly as they happened; and in four days’ shooting, has never missed. The latter I was out with when he killed, in two days, forty-three successive shots (many of them in covert) at partridge, pheasant, woodcock, and hare; and his style of shooting, when open, and he could give time, was most regularly deliberate.