The makers of targets on the Continent employ good animal painters to make the shooting as like the real thing as possible.
I know of a range where you climb steep rocks amongst bracken, and as you get near the top, you see a model of a chamois, life-size and colour above you, half hidden in foliage, which you shoot at.
At another range, there are stags, roe deer, wild boar, even hares, life-size and colour which rush past unexpectedly like clay pigeons in an English shotgun shooting school.
“Figure” targets in the United States and England are very badly drawn (the running deer at Wimbledon was an exception, being drawn by Sir Edwin Landseer).
The “figure” targets one sees in England and in the United States are drawn by artists of the cubist, futurist, and vorticist schools. Such drawings, over which the art critics go into ecstasies, are too difficult to identify and therefore not suitable for quick rifle shooting practice.
The shooter does not know when it is safe to shoot. What he thinks is meant for a wild boar, or possibly a lynx, is really meant to be the “portrait of Miss X., the beautiful Musical Comedy Actress,” put up as a target owing to the mistake of a workman ignorant of art.
It will be noticed that the bull’s-eye and concentric rings for scoring bear no relation to the object drawn on it. It is possible to miss what looks like a bottle stopper and score a bull’s-eye, or to hit the bottle stopper and score a miss.
I have shown a proof of this last paragraph to a friend who says he understands cubism, and he tells me the target referred to represents a soldier and is a very fine example by one of the founders of cubism and it ought to be purchased for the Chantry Bequest, but I am not sure if my friend is a reliable art critic.
I confess I do not understand art criticism as I am merely a sculptor who exhibits at the London Royal Academy and Paris.