Single barrel pistols of 28 shotgun bore, 10-inch barrels are made to shoot shot, and these are very good for such shooting and train timing and swing in snap shooting.
At eighty live pigeons at twelve yards’ rise I have got more than half I shot at. One has to be quick, as the pigeon is so soon out of range. No. 7 shot is best for this, but the pistol only shoots half an ounce of shot, and makes a very small pattern.
I will explain in the next chapter how to shoot so as to compel quick shooting without the cumbersome machinery for making a target appear and disappear.
If you count seconds for yourself or have them counted for you, the time varies and one cannot help dwelling on the counting when a fraction more time is needed for your aim to be correct.
The utmost care must be taken, if you have an assistant to go to and from the target, not to point in his direction or to load before he has come back. Even at otherwise well-managed shooting clubs, there is too much carelessness in this respect.
Targets which draw up and down on trolleys are a great nuisance, and yet almost all shooting galleries are equipped with them, and their presence is considered the acme of good gallery equipment in England.
This may be all right for preventing markers being shot, but I prefer an iron man target, life size, standing on his feet in a green field with a suitable background. One can shoot so much better than at a figure painted on a flat background.
You see a miss by the momentary puff of dust where the bullet hits the ground, instead of having to look for a bullet hole in the painted background.
It would be possible to make a target which drops down and rises again from the impact of the bullet.
I have a target in the form of a stag which when you hit his invisible heart, he half rears, then bends his hocks and plunges down on his knees, throwing back his head in the most realistic manner. This stag, stood amongst long bracken and stalked, gives a most lifelike performance.