Now the way to overcome this missing behind is to “swing” and “time.” These are shotgun men’s terms, never used or understood by pistol or rifle shots, and this is the reason so few riflemen can hit moving targets, and chase them with the bayonets instead.
Suppose you have a shotgun in your hands and a pheasant comes flying across you. The thing is to hit him in the neck with the centre of the charge so as to make a clean kill without a flutter in midair—“neck him,” as we call it.
Most men try to shoot without moving their position and so hamper and cramp themselves unnecessarily by having to twist the body if the bird is passing them at an awkward angle.
Turn like a soldier does in “right about face” to either side, so that the bird gives you the easiest crossing shot. Whilst doing so, follow an imaginary point in front of his head with your eyes, the distance in front varying with the bird’s speed and distance from you. Whilst doing so bring up your gun (not looking at the gun), the gun swinging as your body swings in the direction the bird is travelling. As the gun comes to your shoulder press the trigger.
If you look at the bird, you will shoot at the bird, and consequently shoot behind where he was at the moment the trigger was pulled. If the bird was forty yards off you will have missed clean behind him.
If nearer, owing to the shot spreading over a thirty-inch circle, you may have hit him far back in the body, what is called “tailored him,” and he will go off and die a lingering death.
If you shoot forward enough, you will either kill him clean or miss him clean (a miss in front).
That is the great thing. If it must be a miss let it be a clean miss, in front. Not shooting far enough forward is the chief cruelty in shooting—wounded animals going off to die in agony.
Always remember this when shooting at animals and birds. The forward end is the vital end; hitting it causes sudden, painless death, so swing far enough forward.
To hit bird after bird, animal after animal, too far back, as one sees some men do, to an accompaniment of screams of hares and rabbits, and fluttering birds, is disgusting.