He is wound up in various places and the shock of the bullet on a buffer releases the movements in succession with momentary intervals.
It was made by a very ingenious target mechanic, who also makes monkeys which run up a tree when hit, parrots who turn a somersault on the branch they are sitting on when hit, a man who takes off his hat and bows to you when you hit him properly, a chamois who tumbles over a precipice.
The maker, who has a shooting gallery on the Continent, makes a good profit out of it, as the bull’s-eyes are very small and difficult to hit, and people keep on paying to shoot in order to amuse their companions, and children beg their parents to try to set the automatons in motion.
CHAPTER XIV
PRACTICAL TARGETS
The pistol being, primarily, a man-shooting weapon, the target for practice should be the shape of a full-sized man.
The man target we used at the Olympic Games at Stockholm in 1912, was a coloured paper target of a soldier standing at attention, full face. This was pasted on a wooden board cut to the same shape.
The bull’s-eye was an upright oval on the breast, surrounded by concentric upright ovals.