Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE COMPLETE ENGLISH

WING SHOT

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME

The Complete Motorist

The Complete Golfer

The Complete Photographer

H.M. THE KING AS A BOY

THE
COMPLETE ENGLISH WING SHOT

BY

G. T. TEASDALE-BUCKELL

WITH FIFTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK: McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

LONDON: METHUEN & CO.

1907

PREFACE

When the publishers asked me to write a book upon Shooting and its interest, I at first doubted whether I knew enough of the matter to fill a book of much size without repeating all the traditional lore that is to be found in every unread text-book, but I had no sooner undertaken the business than I came to a conclusion that has since been confirmed, that to deal as best I could, with the kind help of many sportsmen, with the controversial subjects would have taken the whole space at my disposal for any one of them. Consequently, ever and again I have had to decide what to eliminate, and I have tried to leave out that which most people know already, and to deal as best I can in short space with questions that are now more or less under discussion, and consequently those that game preservers and shooters in this and other countries are thinking about. It has been very difficult to draw a line between the controversial and current subjects and the unchallenged facts which have been too often repeated already, but that this is the right principle is, I think, obvious from the position that the opposite course would involve. What is meant can be best explained by glancing at a few traditional survivals in gunnery and shooting, and its accompanying unnatural history, which, along with many others, would occupy space if one were to attempt to deal with all the accepted, as well as the repudiated, statements upon them. Nobody wants to be told that he should put the powder into a cartridge-case before the shot, but to begin at the beginning would involve the necessity of giving that and other puerile information. Nobody would be the better for a learned chapter on gun actions. In the first place, these actions are no longer patents, they are open to anyone who likes to use them, and consequently the days when one selected a gun-maker because his patent action was conceived to be the better, are long gone by. The reason is that each gun-maker can be trusted to use the best principle when he has a choice of them all, or at least the best available for the money to be expended upon its making in the gun. Ejectors are nearly in the same position; but single triggers are not. I was so fortunate as to make a discovery in regard to single triggers that is now acknowledged to be of great assistance to the gun trade; the want of it had for a hundred years been the stumbling-block to the patent single triggers that had begun to trouble gun-makers in the time of the celebrated Colonel Thornton. That is referred to in its proper chapter, because single triggers now occupy the place that formerly actions held, and at a later date ejector systems usurped, in assisting to the selection of a gun-maker.

To begin at the beginning in the repudiation of frequently accepted fallacy possibly would not compel a reference to the sometime beliefs that hares change their sex; that skylarks fall into snakes’ mouths after their skyward song—a statement that troubled Mr. Samuel Pepys, who, as Secretary to the Admiralty under two protectors and two monarchs, and as a member of the Royal Society, should have been in a position to get the best information. Nor would such a beginning involve the repudiation of the belief once held that bernicle geese turned into “bernacle” molluscs, or vice versâ. But it would oblige an author to enter into repudiation of the oft-stated belief that nitro powder is quicker than black powder, although big and heavily charged caps have to be employed for the nitro, whereas the small were amply sufficient for black powder. One would also be obliged to point out that the oft-repeated prophecy, that the smallest stock of grouse bred the better August crop, has been doomed to disaster always, and that precisely the reverse is true. However, there are still people who by what they say must be judged to hold to the unproved proposition that the stones breed grouse.

COL. THORNTON’S PLUTO (BLACK) AND JUNO. BY GILPIN. SHOWING WHOLE-COLOURED POINTERS SIMILAR IN FORMATION TO THOSE OF SUTTON SCARSDALE TO-DAY

It would be necessary also to point out that some parrot cries are a hundred years old and at least forty years out of date, but are still repeated as if they were original and true. Some of these are that pointers have better noses than setters, and also require less water; that cheese affects dogs’ noses (sanitation by means of carbolic acid does so, but cheese is harmless enough); that Irish setters have more stamina and pace than any others. The latter statement I have seen disproved for forty years at the field trials in this country, and the former has always failed to find corroboration at the champion stamina trials in America. I have had great chances of forming an accurate opinion, as I entered and ran dogs at the English championship trials over thirty-six years ago, and I am the only one who has ever judged at the champion trials of both England and America.

It would be necessary also to repudiate the mistake that “foot scent” is something exuding from the pad of an animal and left upon the ground by the contact of the feet. It would be necessary to affirm that fat from the adder is not the best cure for the poison when dog or man is bitten, but that raw whisky taken inwardly in large doses is; and as dogs will sometimes point these vipers, it might be well to affirm that these creatures do not swallow their young, as is commonly supposed. It would be necessary also to state that when partridges “tower” they are not necessarily, but only sometimes, hit in the lungs, but have often received a rap on the head just not enough to render them totally unconscious; and a case has lately been reported where two unshot-at partridges in one covey “towered” and fell, and were caught alive, grew stronger, and upon one of them being killed it was found to be badly attacked by enteritis, and not by lung disease. And consequently the myth about “towered” partridges always falling dead and on their backs does not require dealing with, as might have been the case a quarter of a century ago, when nevertheless the phenomenon was only misunderstood in the laboratory, and not in the field of sport.

It is hardly necessary to assert that “pheasant disease” as commonly seen in the rearing-fields is not fowl enteritis, as it is so often said to be, because the foster-mothers are hardly ever affected by any illness when their chicks are dying by hundreds of the disease. The pheasant disease has never been subjected to pathological examination and investigation.

To start at the beginning would make it necessary to state that the “muff ’cock,” or the bigger woodcock, that comes in a separate migration, is not the hen of the smaller birds, and that distinction can only be made between the sexes by internal examination of the organs. It might be necessary in similar circumstances to say that woodcock and snipe do not live on suction, as is often believed even now; that nightjars and hedgehogs neither suck the milk of goats nor cows; that foxes do not prefer rats and beetles to partridges and pheasants; that swallows do not hibernate at the bottom of ponds; that badgers do not prefer young roots to young rabbits; that ptarmigan and woodcock are not mute, and that the former do not live on either stones or heather; that badgers can run elsewhere than along the sides of a hill, and that they are not compelled, by having the legs on one side shorter than on the other, to always take this curious course, which would involve them in the difficulty of having to entirely encircle a hill before getting back to their holes; nevertheless, this faith is still held in some parts of the country, just as it is said that the heather bleating of the snipe is a vocal sound, whereas it is often made simultaneously with the vocal sound.

I have tried to avoid dealing with any such things as these, which may be supposed to come within the region of common knowledge of any beginner in shooting, but another point has troubled me more. I have written a good deal for the press. Articles of mine have appeared in The Times, The Morning Post, The Standard, The Daily Telegraph, The County Gentleman, Bailey’s Magazine, The Sporting and Dramatic, The Badminton Magazine, Country Life, The Field, The Sportsman, The National Review, The Fortnightly Review, The Monthly Review, and elsewhere, and I am afraid that I have unconsciously repeated the ideas running through some of these articles, without acknowledgment to the various editors.

As Colonel Hawker went to school in gunnery to Joe Manton, so did Joe Manton go to school to Hawker in the matter of sport. But we have changed. That those who make guns can best teach how to make guns I do not doubt for a moment; that when they write books on the making of guns those books are regarded as an indirect advertisement is inevitable, but they are none the worse for that, if readers know how to read between the lines, and it is not necessary to go to a shooting school to do that. But when gun-makers add to their business by means of books upon sport and by “shooting schools,” they are turning the tables on us. To that I have no objection. But when it is asserted that shooting schools teach more than the sport itself, as has lately been done, then I think it is time to protest that even if they could teach shooting at game as well as game teaches it (which is absurd), that even then they cannot teach sportsmanship, of which woodcraft is one part and the spirit of sport and fellowship another.

But the greatest value of sportsmanship is, after all, that idle man should be the more healthy an animal for his idleness. Consequently, when shooting parties are made an excuse for more smoke and later nights than usual, even if the shooting is not spoiled next day, less enjoyment of life follows, and lethargically apparent becomes the missing of that perfect dream of health, that reaction after great exertion ought to bring to those who have ever felt it.

It is often said that big bags have ruined the sporting spirit. That is not so: big bags are necessary proofs that the science of preservation of game is on the right lines, and their publication is also necessary on these grounds. At the same time, it is a fact that hard walking is not appreciated as much as it was thirty years ago, and ladies can now take just as forward a place in the shooting of game and deer as men can or do. This is not all because ladies are better trained physically, but because sports have been made much easier, than formerly they were. Bridle-paths enable ponies to traverse the deer forests with ladies on their backs, and where that can be done deer stalking is not quite what it was when a Highland laird declared that he saw no use in protecting the deer, since nobody could do them much harm. But the wonder to me is not that we do not like great exertion, but that we ever did like it for itself. But then I speak as a man in years, and one who has in the foolishness of youth killed a stag and carried home his head, cut low down, for sixteen miles, rather than wait for the tardy ponies to bring it in with the carcase.

I suspect that a change of ideas will take place when it is discovered that driven-game shooting can, more than any other, be learnt at the shooting schools, and that when the trick is known it becomes the easiest kind of shot. If it is true that the schools can teach it, then everybody will learn it, and what is common property will become as unfashionable as it is the reverse at present. I believe that half the difficulty in the driven bird is in thinking it is difficult. The fastest bird at 30 yards range one is likely to meet with in a whole season does not require a swing of the muzzle faster than, or much more than half as fast as, a man can walk. What is difficult in driven game is shooting often, the swerve of the game, the changes of pace and angle of different birds in quick succession, but distinctly not the pace. Before I had ever seen a grouse butt, I remember sitting down to watch another party of shooters on a distant hill, more than half a mile up wind of where I sat to watch. I saw their dogs point, and a single bird rise, which, with many a switchback as it came, I watched traverse the whole distance between us, and I killed it as I sat. That was my first driven grouse, but it is not by any means why I say that driven game offers the easiest kind of shooting; it is because the average of kills to cartridges are so much better than they are in other kinds of shooting. Take, for instance, double rises at pigeons, which are easy compared with double rises at October grouse, and it will be noted that the crack pigeon shots do not generally kill even their first double rise at 25 yards range, and that four or five double rise kills are nearly always good enough to win, as also very often is a single double rise with both birds killed. Very moderate grouse drivers can do better than that, and pheasants that are not very high are slain in much greater proportion. The fact is that all shooting is extremely difficult if one attempts to satisfy the most severe critic of all, namely the man who shoots. But at my age I would much rather think myself fit to do a day’s hard walking than a day’s hard shooting. I think there are a good many people of that opinion, otherwise dog moors would not make more rent per brace than the Yorkshire driving moors, but they do. The trouble is that places where birds will lie to dogs are limited, and it is childish to drive packs of birds away for the sake of thinking one is shooting over dogs when one is not shooting at all, but only doing mischief. Personally, I would not try to shoot over good dogs on Yorkshire grouse. Bad ones would not matter; but then they would give me no pleasure.

When it was a literary fashion to abuse covert shooting as butchery and grouse driving as no sport, it was not done by sportsmen of the other school; and later, when the literary genius of the period was turned in the opposite direction, and we were constantly being told that a walk with a gun and dog was pleasant but no sport, it was only done by those who were a little afraid of being out of the fashion. I have been so unfashionable as to defend both by turns, and I have always been of opinion that any sport which appeared to be growing unpopular was worthy of the little support I could give it. It will probably greatly surprise those who dare not, with imaginative pens, shoot at the tail of a bird, to be told that Mr. R. H. Rimington Wilson recently informed me, that if he were to back himself to kill a number of shots consecutively he would select driven birds in preference to walked-up game; and besides, that he preferred to be let loose on a snipe bog to his own, or any other, big driving days. My opinion has been that you can always make any sort of shooting a little more difficult than your own performance can satisfactorily accomplish to the gratification of your own most critical sense.

Driving game and big bags are often, but not always, acts of game preserving.

On this subject I had written a chapter, but fearing that I had not done that view justice, after a conversation I had with Captain Tomasson, who has Hunthill and is the most successful Scotch grouse preserver by the all driving method, I asked him to criticise some articles I had previously written in the Field, the sense of which I have tried to express again in the following pages. He very kindly did so, or rather stated the case for the Highlands, which I have substituted for mine. It only differs in one respect from the sense of my own suppressed chapter—namely, it does not remark on the difficulty of explaining why, if recent Scotch driving has partly defeated disease, even more Yorkshire driving, prior to 1873, nevertheless preceded the worst and most general Scotch and English disease ever known. However, everyone will argue for himself: I can only pretend to present a mass of facts to assist a judgment, but not a quarter of those I should like to give have I room for, and I regret that Captain Tomasson is even more restricted by space.

I have shot over spaniels in teams and as single dogs, but as I consider that I know less of them than Mr. Eversfield, who probably knows more than anyone else, I asked him to read and criticise my article, which he promised to do. But in returning it he has professed himself unable to criticise, and very kindly says that he likes it all, so I leave it, being thereby assured that it cannot be very wrong.

There is one subject connected with shooting, or the ethics of shooting, about which there is much more to be said than ever has been attempted—namely, that partridge preservers are now, and will be more in the future, indebted to the fox for their sport. This may appear a wild paradox, but before I am condemned for it I would, in the interests of the gun, ask those who disagree to read my chapters on partridge preserving, where, if they still disagree, they will find a partridge success described that will amply repay their good nature, unless they know a plan by which season’s partridge bags can be doubled, doubled again, and then again, in three consecutive years.

On the subject of dogs, I may say that thirty to thirty-five years ago I recommended to some American sportsmen three different sorts of setters. Either two of them had bred well together in England. These have been crossed together ever since in America, and no other cross has been admitted to the Stud Book devoted to them. They have been a revelation in the science of breeding domestic animals, for, in spite of all the in-breeding represented there, I was enabled to select a puppy in 1904 that in Captain Heywood Lonsdale’s hands has beaten all the English pointers and setters at field trials in 1906. I have more particularly referred to this in a chapter on English setters, and in another on strenuous dogs and sport in America.

I have already tendered my thanks, but I should like publicly to repeat my indebtedness, to those who have lent me the best working dogs in England for models, or have sent me photographs of them and other pictures. These include Mr. Eric Parker, Editor of The County Gentleman, Mr. W. Arkwright, the Hon. Holland Hibbert, Mr. Herbert Mitchell, Mr. C. C. Eversfield, Mr. A. T. Williams, Captain H. Heywood Lonsdale, Mr. B. J. Warwick, the Editor of Bailey, Mr. Allan Brown, and the President of the world’s oldest established, and National, Field Trial Society, namely Col. C. J. Cotes, of Pitchford Hall, who has sent me some photographs of his, and his late father’s, Woodcote pointers and retrievers, including an original importation of 1832, and founder of his present breed of the latter race, and in doing this he has been kind enough to say:—

“I have always considered you to know more about the breaking and breeding of setters than any man living, and that it was entirely through you that the apex of setter breeding was reached about twenty-five years ago, and through your recommendation I obtained the eight setters in 1881 that founded my present breed.”

I am glad to be able to quote this, because my name is little known to younger shooters, although I write many, preferably unsigned, articles upon rural sports and other matters.

G. T. T.-B.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE COMPLETE SHOT

ANCIENT ACTIONS

By far the greatest inventions in gunnery have been made by chemists. The cleverness and boldness of many wonderful inventions for loading at the breech all aimed at the well-nigh impossible. The powder was always ignited from without, and had to be either partly or quite loose in order to facilitate ignition by means of external fire. That is what beat the inventors of five centuries, who were for ever trying to find a breech-loader, a revolver, or a magazine weapon. In default of these working satisfactorily, they tried weapons with seven barrels, and others with fewer. But it was all to little purpose; the detonator had not been discovered by the Rev. A. J. Forsyth, and the chemist to the French army of Louis XV. had not then invented fulminate of mercury. Consequently a closed-up cartridge containing its own means of ignition was impossible, for although detonating substances were known years before, they were such as did not always wait to be detonated—in other words, they were not stable. They were too dangerous for use, but nevertheless the attempts made at breech-loaders, and especially at magazines, were more than equally dangerous. One weapon had eight touch-holes in eight positions in the barrel, which was eight times charged, one load and charge upon top of the next. That nearest the muzzle was fired first (if the weapon was ever fired at all), and so on, down to that nearest the breech. What prevented the first igniting the rest, and sending all off together with a burst weapon, is not known. If they did not go off all together, one would suppose the firing of several loads in succession would give to those loads in the breech the best ramming ever known. But for this ramming to excess this invention went very near to a more perfect success than any modern magazine weapon. The trouble with all the latter is what to do with the empty cartridge-case. But this old weapon had no cartridge-case. Its ignition was from the outside, and was always ready. It is true that the difference of length of movement of shot within the barrel would make some difference to the velocity of each shot, but not more than would be equalised by a very small extra dose of powder for those charges nearest the muzzle.

Another form of repeater was a breech-loader which carried several charges of powder in the stock, which, in turn, were shaken into a revolving chamber, in front of which, before it was in place for firing, the bullet was inserted for each load, as its turn came round. Other repeaters were simple revolvers, much like the weapon in use now, but of course used without cartridges of self-contained ignition material.

Indeed, the ingenuity expended on breech-loading before the advent of detonating powder for ignition was really greater than the more modern efforts to do a much more simple thing. At the same time, had they succeeded, as they very nearly did, by doing without a removable cartridge-case, they would have accomplished that which is still required for the perfect working of magazine and automatic weapons.

The most elaborate of all the old repeaters was a revolving double-chambered German weapon. It had ten chambers, and each of these carried two charges, with a touch-hole for each. The majority of the old breech-loaders had movable blocks on the principle of the Martini, but instead of the hinged blocks being solid, as in that weapon, they were mostly hollowed out to take the charge and the bullet; sometimes held in a cartridge, but generally with the powder loose, and always loose when in the chamber, in order that there should be free communication with the touch-hole.

Sometimes the barrel was hinged in order to drop down at right angles with the stock, and this was really the forerunner of our drop-down guns of to-day, which are consequently some centuries old in principle, and had it not been for the absence of detonators there would have been nothing left for the nineteenth century to invent.

It has been said that the Prussians were first to take up the principle of the breech-loader for war, but that refers only to the detonated modern breech-loader. Some of the soldiers in the American War of Independence were armed with the breech-loader already mentioned, in which the trigger guard unscrewed the opening into the breech; but although this invention was possibly the soundest in joining of all the old ones, it was slow, and probably was not much used for that reason.

The Venetians had ships armed with cannon as early as 1380 A.D., and in Henry VIII.’s reign the wrecked Mary Rose carried breech-loaders, designed on a principle which may possibly have suggested the wire guns of the present. The tube of iron or brass (for both were used) was surmounted by rings of iron which had evidently been slipped over the tube and hammered on while red-hot. These then contracted upon cooling, and pinched the bore smaller, so that, intentionally or not, the bore was made to expand to its original size upon an explosion occurring before any stress was put on the metal of the internal surface by the powder-gas. That is to say, all the first part of the strain went to expand the rings on the outside of the gun before the inside had reassumed its natural dimensions; or, in other words, the tension between the external big circumference and the internal small one was equalised, just on the same principle as it is in the latest big guns. This is known, because some of the Mary Rose’s big guns were got up from the sea about half a century ago. She was over-weighted, and it is quite probable that her loss had a good deal to do with teaching the nation that before everything a warship must be handy, so that, when the Spaniards sent their great ships to fight Elizabeth, her smaller craft, and Britain’s uncertain weather, between them sank or squandered the whole Spanish fleet.

ANCIENT PISTOLS TO AUTOMATIC AND ELEPHANT RIFLES

Italy has the credit of the invention of the pistol, which came into being soon after the designing of the wheel-lock and the rifling of barrels. Caminelleo Vitelli of Pistoia made the first about 1540. It was in the manufacture of these small weapons that gun-makers from this date to the beginning of the nineteenth century excelled. The workmanship was generally of a high order, and the ornamentation, especially of some of the German specimens, was extremely artistic.

Moreover, during the flint and steel age, some double-barrelled pistols were built with two locks and only one trigger. Although these weapons worked quite perfectly, it must not be assumed that the makers of these pistols could have made a double shoulder gun to work satisfactorily with but one trigger. That difficulty was overcome at the end of the nineteenth century; but even then the clever designers had not discovered exactly what the former trouble was, and it was freely stated in a way that is now known to have been wrong. Indeed, the author was the first to discover the real reason for the involuntary second pull and double discharge. As this phenomenon did not occur in pistols, but did so in shoulder weapons, it apparently seemed easy to trace the cause. Very early in the nineteenth century, dozens, and since then hundreds, of designers and patentees have set out with the announcement that they had discovered the true cause of the trouble, and met it with a patent. As the latter were always badly constructed, it may be assumed that the patentees were wrong in their diagnosis. As a matter of fact, they were, as was proved when the author published the true cause of involuntary pull in The County Gentleman, and for a time had to meet alone the hostile criticism of most of the gun trade, the members of which now admit the truth of those criticised statements. Although the true reason must be dealt with under the heading of single-trigger guns and rifles, it may be briefly stated that the success of the single-trigger double-barrelled pistol was not because of its more feeble explosion, as was supposed, but because the recoil continues long enough to allow the will of the shooter to gain command of his muscular finger action, before the check to recoil occurs. Whereas, with the shoulder gun, the finger which has let off the first lock flies back as the trigger is carried from it by recoil, and this sustained muscular action cannot be stopped by the will as quickly as the gun recoil is lessened by the shoulder. Consequently, we involuntarily give a second pressure to the trigger, without knowing that we have ceased giving a first. This want of perception of what we ourselves do is caused partly by quickness of the recoil, and partly because the recoil relieves the pressure, and our wills have nothing to do with the matter. Or, to be more correct, we pull off the trigger once intentionally, but are unable to cease pulling when the trigger has given way. Consequently we unconsciously follow up the trigger as it jumps back in recoil, catch up with it, and involuntarily pull it again without knowing that we have let go, or had the trigger momentarily snatched from us.

It is clear that the understanding of this principle was as necessary to designers of automatic repeaters as it was to makers of double-barrelled shot guns, and yet the Mauser repeating automatic pistol and the Webley Fosbery automatic revolver were invented, with some others, before the reason of the involuntary pull had been discovered; and more than that, the author had tested the Mauser with its shoulder stock satisfactorily. But no satisfactory automatic rifle had been then invented, and the trouble with them was to prevent the sending forth of a stream of bullets when only one shot was wanted. The greater force being dealt with, had brought into action the difficulty of the involuntary pull. This has now been overcome; but still there are other difficulties which have been treated less satisfactorily, and those who are ambitious to use automatic weapons will be wise to confine that ambition to the many pistols and the revolver in the market. Repeating shot guns are lumbering tools, from which disqualification the automatic weapons are little likely to be free. Still, it is quite possible that a gunner could shoot more birds out of a single covey with one automatic gun than with two double guns. But what of it? The aim of the gunner is not merely to shoot at one covey, but to keep on shooting fast for perhaps half an hour. The thing that stops very fast shooting is not loading and changing guns, but heat of barrels, and consequently to make these single barrels equal to the doubles there must be four of them in place of two doubles, and six of them in place of three ejectors. The time has not yet come when anybody wants to employ three loaders to carry six guns.

There is some reason to prefer the automatic principle for pistols and revolvers, because the user’s life may often depend upon the quickness of his shots at an enemy, but there is less reason for their use in military rifles, and actual disadvantage for sporting rifles and shot guns. The author has shot the Mauser, the Colt, and the Fosbery with satisfaction to himself. The latest invention is a sliding automatic pistol of .32 gauge invented by Messrs. Webley. But no automatic pistol can be as reliable as the service revolver, or as the Fosbery, since a sticking cartridge or a misfire disables any of them.

It is often said that these spring actuated actions, on which the barrel slides back, give less recoil than others, but in practice this is not so, and in science it could not be so, although it is stated in the last Government text-book that they reduce recoil.

The principles on which it is sought to make automatic rifles are as follows:—

1. To actuate an ejector, magazine loading, and closing action by means of gas obtained from a hole in the barrel.

2. To actuate the same movements by means of recoil and rebound of the sliding barrel on to an independent stock grooved to carry the barrel, and fitted with a spring.

3. To actuate the same movements by means of allowing the whole weapon to recoil on to a false heel plate spring, and rebound from it.

4. By allowing a short sliding recoil of the barrel to make the bolting action slide farther back on to the stock and a spring, and to rebound from them.

Several of these principles have been employed in conjunction in this or other countries. The recoil is made to compress a spring, which by re-expansion completes the work of closing up the rifle, when it does not stick and fail, as in all specimens of automatic rifles has occurred at intervals.

All nations are now armed with magazine repeating rifles, but none have yet adopted automatic loading for rifles. The choice between the various magazine mechanisms is a mere matter of taste, but the shortening of the British national arm to 25 inches seems to have been done without regard to the fact that no rifle of 25 inches can compete in accuracy with an equally well-made and an equally well-loaded weapon of 30 inches, although it may compete favourably with the discarded Mark II. Lee-Enfield, which was improperly made and also badly loaded. Unfortunately, our prospective enemies are not embracing the faults of the Mark II., but are adhering to a rifle instead of a carbine. That is the correct term to employ to describe the new weapon.

The carbine of any period has generally been equal to the rifle of the preceding decade, but it has never yet been equal to the rifle of its own decade, and never will be.

Miniature rifles for amateur soldiers in the making are very numerous. The best cheap one the author has handled is the rifle with which Mr. W. W. Greener won the Navy and Army competition, which was managed by the author. What is here meant by a low price is £2, 2s., and under. The rifle was used with peep sights. But better advice than naming any maker is this. All the makers profess to put a group of seven shots on to a postage stamp at 50 yards. They all employ expert shooters who can do this if it is to be done. Buy the rifle with which they do it in your presence, and it will then be your own fault if you cannot perform likewise. This test of a single rifle is quite satisfactory; but a double rifle has to be dealt with differently, as is explained in another chapter. Of course, it is a mistake to shoot a rifle from any sort of fixed rest; the weapon, when loose in the hands, bends its barrel, or flips, jumps, and also recoils, and it is good or bad according as it does accurate work under the action of all these influences. A rest to steady the arms is quite permissible, but a vice to hold the rifle is not.

Once Mr. Purdey expressed the opinion that he could learn as much from his customers as they could from him. The author thought this so shrewd a remark, that, having a knowledge of the many good sportsmen and big-game hunters who employ the weapons of the Messrs. Holland & Holland, Messrs. John Rigby, and Messrs. Westley Richards, he wrote to each of them to ask their opinions of the best bore and weight of rifle, sort and weight of powder, sort and weight of bullet, and velocity of bullet to be expected, for each of the following animals, as if each were the only object to be pursued by the sportsman. He stated at the same time, that compromise to meet the requirements of several, or many, of these animals he regarded as a personal and individual matter to the sportsman. He pointed out also that in asking for opinions he knew that he was asking for a consensus of opinion of the past customers of the firms in question. It is interesting to compare the views of each maker as to the best rifle to use for everything, from a rook and rabbit, to an African elephant charging down on the gunner, and requiring the frontal shot. What is intended is the very best weapon to have in hand at the moment, if there were nothing else to be considered. Mr. Holland’s reply is as follows:—

“98 New Bond Street, London, W.,

“October 11th, 1906

“Dear Mr. Teasdale-Buckell,—It is impossible in the space of a short paragraph to go thoroughly into the question of the best bore, weight of rifle, etc. etc., best suited to each kind of game. A good deal must depend upon the conditions under which the rifle is used, the capabilities of the sportsman, etc., but taken generally the rifles mentioned below are those we have found to give the best all-round results, and our opinion is formed upon the reports received from a large number of sportsmen, including many of the best known and most experienced game hunters.

“Rooks.—.220 or .250 bore.

“Rabbits.—.250 bore; weight about 5 to 6 lbs.

“Red Deer, Scotch.—(1) .375 bore double-barrelled; weight 9½ lbs. (2) .375 bore sporting magazine rifle, Mannlicher-Schonauer for choice; weight 7½ lbs. (3) .375 bore single-drop block; weight 7½ lbs.; velocity about 2000 ft.; charge 40–43 grains of cordite or its equivalent; 270 grains bullet, either soft-nosed solid or hollow point.

“Chamois.—Same as for Red Deer, also .256 Mannlicher.

“African Antelopes.—.375 bore as above.

“Indian Deer.—.375 bore as above.

“Moose, Wapiti, and big 35–50 stone Deer of Hungary, etc.—.450 bore double-barrelled rifle; weight 10½ lbs.; charge 70 grains of cordite powder or its equivalent; bullet soft-nosed solid 370 or 420 grains; velocity about 2000 ft.

“Lions.—(1) 12 bore Magnum Paradox; weight 8–8½ lbs.; charge of smokeless powder equivalent to 4½ drams of black powder; 735 grains hollow-point bullet; velocity 1250–1300 ft. (2) .450 cordite rifle same as for Moose, etc.

“Tigers, from houdah or machan.—12 bore Paradox; weight about 7¼ lbs.; charge equivalent to 3¼ drams of black powder; 735 grains bullet; velocity about 1100 ft.

“Lions and Tigers, followed up on foot.—12 bore Magnum Paradox.

“Elephant, Buffalo, etc., in thick jungle.—10 bore Paradox; weight 13 lbs.; nitro powder charge equivalent to 8 drams of black powder, in solid drawn brass case, solid nickel-covered bullet 950 grains.

“Elephant, Buffalo, in more open country.—.450 cordite rifle same as above; charge 70 grains cordite or its equivalent; nickel-covered solid bullet 480 grains.”

Mr. Rigby replies as follows:—

“Rooks.—.250 bore, shooting usual Eley or Kynoch cartridge.

“Rabbits.—.300 bore, shooting usual Eley or Kynoch cartridge.

“Red Deer, Scotch.—Double-barrel hammerless .303; shooting cordite and split-nose bullets; weight of rifle about 8 lbs.

“Chamois.—Mauser-Rigby magazine rifle with telescope sight; weight of rifle 7½ lbs.; Mauser 7 mm. cartridges with split bullets.

“African Antelopes, Indian Deer, Ibex, and Tibet Wild Sheep, Lions and Tigers.—.350 bore Rigby double barrel; weight 9¼ lbs.; cordite cartridge giving 2150 f.s. m.v.; bullet 310 grains, split and soft nose, or Mauser-Rigby magazine shooting same ammunition; a grand rifle.

“Eastern Elephants, Eastern Buffalo, African Buffalo, African Elephants.—.450 high velocity cordite double barrel; weight 11 lbs.; bullet 480 grains m.v. 2150 f.s.”

Mr. Leslie B. Taylor replies for Messrs. Westley Richards thus:—

“Bournbrook, Birmingham

“October 13th, 1906

“Dear Mr. Buckell,—I regret that I could not give you the information earlier, being up to my eyes in work. I have filled in the sizes I think suitable for each kind of game gathered from our clients’ own opinions formed from experience. You will notice that in some cases I have mentioned the .450 high velocity rifle. As regards India, this rifle will now be unavailable; a recent alteration of the shooting regulations excludes the .450 bore, which like the .303 cannot be imported into that country for private use.

“The new accelerated express rifle .375/.303 will no doubt, on account of its being associated in the minds of the officials with the actual .303 bore, come under the same ban. But this is a powerful rifle, as you will gather from the enclosed particulars, and when used with the capped bullet becomes a most formidable weapon, and has been satisfactorily employed against Tiger.

“I have just introduced a new extension of the accelerated express system .318 bore, 2500 feet velocity, 250 grains bullet, muzzle energy 3466 ft. lbs., and this ranks only second to the .400 bore rifle. It is remarkably accurate, and as it is used in conjunction with the copper-capped expanding bullet, it will take the place of the .450 bore now prohibited.

“I merely give you these particulars, as you will see that very shortly, if the Indian regulations continue in force, as I have no doubt they will, the other information might be considered out of date.—Yours very truly,

“Leslie B. Taylor

“Rooks.—.250; some prefer .297/.230, a similar one.

“Rabbits.—.250 or .300; latter preferred if country will permit.

“Red Deer, Scotch.—Many sizes are used, from .256 Mannlicher; the .360 high velocity is effective. For those who prefer a very flat trajectory superior to the Mannlicher, the new accelerated h.v. .375/.303 is taken.

“Chamois.—Nothing less than .360; the .375 with copper-capped bullet is very effective, although the .256 is often used: it is found not to kill the beast.

“African Antelopes.—.360 and nickel-capped bullet, a .375/.303 accelerated express; many sportsmen are using the .303 with nickel-capped bullet.

“Indian Deer, Ibex, Tibet Wild Sheep.—.256 Mannlicher, Mauser .275, also .360 and .375 bore with capped bullet; some use ball and shot guns 12 bore.

“Lions and Tigers.—.360 to .450 h.v. express; the new .375/.303 has proved successful at Tigers with the capped bullet.

“Eastern Elephants.—The best weapon I know, of which I have the most excellent accounts, is the .577 h.v. rifle, 100 grs. cordite and 750 grs. solid and capped bullet.

“Eastern Buffalo.—.360, .400, and .450 h.v. express.

“African Buffalo.—.450 h.v. express and .577 h.v. express.

“African Elephants.—The .577 .100/.710; some use the .450, but the former is a most deadly weapon.

“I have just received information from an African sportsman that he has shot an African buffalo with a Westley Richards 12 explora, the horn measurements of which are strikingly fine, and promise to be a record.”

In reply to further questions, Mr. Holland writes as follows:—

“October 13th, 1906

“Dear Mr. Teasdale-Buckell,—I don’t think it necessary to distinguish between African and Indian elephants. No doubt the former is more difficult to kill with the frontal shot, but you must try and get another shot; then, again, the 480 grain (450) bullet gives enormous penetration, and probably would penetrate the head of an African elephant as well as any bullet you could use. For a charging elephant, there is nothing like the big bore for stopping, or at any rate turning the animal. Velocity: it is a curious thing that we appear to get practically the same elevation with the 375 (450) bullet as the 480 gr. one, and practically the same velocity. We attribute this to the extra weight of the 480 gr. offering more resistance to the powder, and thereby setting up higher pressure, greater heat, though practically making the powder do more work.

Henry Holland”

It may be said that at this moment velocities are undergoing radical change, due to the improved powder Axite, and that one maker offers rifles giving to the 303 bullet a muzzle velocity of 2700 f.s. This means a greater stride than that from the express to the high velocity rifles, and if it is accurate, then trajectories have been very much reduced.

In reply to a still further question, the following is a reply that explains itself:—

“October 15th, 1906

“Dear Mr. Teasdale-Buckell,—I have your letter of the 12th inst. With regard to the .500/.450, I think I said 2000 ft.; it should have been about 2100 ft. As a curious confirmation of the above, I may point out that in Kynoch’s book on the ballistics of various rifles, it gives 2150 ft. as the muzzle velocity of a .450 bore rifle with 70 grains cordite and 480 grains bullet, whereas with 70 grains powder and 420 grains bullet it gives the muzzle velocity as 2125 ft.

“The muzzle velocity of a 950 grains bullet from a 10 bore Paradox, nitro powder, is 1500 ft. The bullet is made either of solid hardened lead or steel cored; see the enclosed illustrations of the latter. With regard to the rook and rabbit rifles, the .220 shoots 3 grains powder and 30 grains bullet, and the .250 7 grains powder and 56 grains bullet. Solid bullets for rooks, and hollow-point bullets for rabbits.—Yours faithfully,

“H. W. Holland”

ANCIENT AND MIDDLE AGE SHOOTING

It is difficult to know where to start an account of the early history of shooting. The long-bow was used in deer shooting, as also was the cross-bow, and if we may believe the early artists—and I do not see why we should—deer running before hounds and horses were shot from the saddle with the cross-bow, and the arrow went in behind the neck and out at the throat. The artists of old were obviously as imaginative as Royal Academicians when it came to sport. For instance, nearly every picture of a woodcock or snipe on the wing, including one of J. W. M. Turner’s, puts the beak of the bird sticking out in front, on the principle of “follow your nose”; but every woodcock and snipe treats even Turner with contempt, and hangs its beak in spite of the greatest master of English landscape. Mr. Thorburn makes no such mistake, but even he has made a couple of cock partridges court one another; and it is really very difficult to believe in the accuracy of artists such as the delineators of the Bayeux Tapestry, where five men may be seen applauding Harold’s coronation and with only eight legs between them, most of them clearly disconnected with the men.

When, therefore, we see drawings of the fourteenth and fifteenth century people engaged in smiting down flying birds with an arrow from a cross-bow, we may be permitted to believe that an ideal has been drawn, and that most of those who tried to kill birds in flight in time learnt to prefer the falcon or the net. Even stricken deer that the Middle Ages artists show us shot through the neck from behind must have had totally different habits from their present-day relatives, because it is not the habit of pursued deer to hold up the neck but to carry it horizontally at such times, so that the back-to-throat arrow would be possible only from above.

It is less difficult to believe the writing in the Master of the Game and its French original than to believe the pictures with which the latter was adorned—probably long afterwards, by someone who had not the authority of the author.

Artists were not then sportsmen, but in Assyria they obviously were so. In the British Museum room devoted to that ancient kingdom, in low relief may be seen much that is looked for in vain in the technically superior sculpture of the classic periods of Greece and Rome. That is to say, the actual feelings and characters of the beasts are conveyed in the outlines. The horses were obviously of precisely the same character as the arabs and thoroughbreds of to-day. They are not obstinate brutes, little better than mules, like the ponies of the Parthenon, which all lay back their ears at their masters, but, on the contrary, the Assyrians are generous, high-spirited beasts that fight with their masters, pursue in spirit with them, and fight with ears laid back only when they are face to face with a lion, and going to meet him. The artists saw it all, or they would have blundered in the expression of the horse, which is mostly in his ears, but they never blundered. Surely this was the first shooting recorded, and whether it was done by bow and arrow or by hurling the dart matters nothing. It is the most ancient and the most authentic of all the ancient records of sport. If it were untrue, it would be the most contemptible, because the most flattering art. But it bears internal evidence of its own truth, and that the country of Nimrod produced mighty hunters, for which there is also Biblical evidence; no race or nation of sportsmen has since been able to boast similar sportsmanship. For man and horse to face a charging lion and kill him with a spear, or dart, is to place sportsmanship before human life; and even David, who killed a lion and a bear, did not do that, but merely defended his flocks, probably in the only way open to him. He was a mighty shepherd and a mighty king, but not a “mighty hunter,” and “no sportsman,” as the story of the one ewe lamb proved.

It is a long jump from Nimrod to the hunting in the New Forest, which was obviously as much shooting as hunting, when Rufus was killed by an arrow, meant, or not meant, for a hart. Whether there ever were outlaws named Robin Hood and Little John does not matter, because fiction is always based on fact, or it does not live a day. The fiction or fact of the great shooting of the king’s deer by these outlaws has lived seven hundred years, and it is more easy to believe that there were many generations of such poachers and highwaymen than that there were none at all. The highest office in the land was then one of robbery, and it is a poor king who has not some subjects who will offer him the sincerest form of flattery, namely imitation.

Gunpowder is said to have been invented in China many years before it was re-invented in Europe. We are apt to marvel that no explosive was made use of before, but learning was very much in the hands of the priests at a time when the latter class was especially sincere, and when the people were full of superstition or belief. It may be, then, that the first discoverers of gunpowder for conscience’ sake made no use of what must have appeared to be an invention of the Devil. Such inventors, if there were any, might have been the more disposed to this course because the stuff was clearly as destructive to its users as to an enemy, until the building of guns had progressed for many years.

It is not quite certain in which battle was first employed gunpowder—a fact which indicates that it did not do much for its side. It appears to have been the guns that were weak, not so much the powder, which was probably very much the same when used by Henry VIII. as black powder is to-day.

It is, moreover, not certain that guns were any better at Waterloo than they had been in the time of Elizabeth. The reason for this was the want of good metal. It is a known fact that thickness of metal becomes useless after a certain point is reached, so that iron and brass guns could not be made to take enormous charges of powder and heavy shot without bursting. This might have been done by making them very long and using a slow burning powder, but that way out never seems to have been thought of until recently. The reason modern big guns will take such enormous pressure as the big charges behind heavy shells give, is, first, that they are made of steel, and second, because the tension on the steel internally and externally is equalised by a very clever method. The guns are built up by being bound in wire in a heated state, so that when this wire cools it contracts the internal tube as it contracts itself. This being the case, when an explosion takes place in the finished gun, it has to overcome the wire contraction on the outside of the gun before the internal tube can begin to expand beyond its natural size. That is how a thickness of metal is made serviceable, and prevents a bursting of the internal surface before the external bigger surface is strained. In other words, the pressure is resisted equally all through the thickness of the walls of the barrel. This has entirely revolutionised big gunnery during the last thirty years, and has enabled ships of war to hurl 800 lb. shells through the armour of enemies who are hull down beyond the horizon.

Gunpowder was for centuries used in war before it was much used in sport. The reason for this was that there was no good method of letting off a sporting weapon. To apply a match to a touch-hole obviously took a good deal of time, and besides gave warning to the game, so that, although shooting flying game had been at least an ambition in the days of the cross-bow, shooting the game upon the ground with “hail shot” was practised for many years before anyone attempted to kill flying game with shot guns. It is curious that when this practice was in vogue dogs were taught either to point or to circle their game at their masters’ pleasure. This circling had the effect of indicating the exact position of the crouching covey, and at the same time of preventing the birds running away from the shooter. A dog that would “circle” was held in much more esteem than one that would only point, but one that would do both was far the most highly valued. The shooter had to see the birds on the ground before he could bring his lumbering weapon to bear, and begin to let it off. This probably continued long after the wheel-lock was invented, in 1515 A.D.

The flint and steel method of ignition enabled the shot gun to be used on flying game, but the flint and steel came in somewhere about the year 1600, and shooting flying game did not become general until after 1700 A.D.

Meantime there had been royal prohibitions in this country, as well as in France, against the use of hail-shot, and it can well be understood, at a time when shooting at coveys on the ground was considered no breach of sporting etiquette, that some restraint became necessary. Before the use of the flint and steel, the heavier weapons were employed by using for them a stand to rest the muzzle upon, and this was made necessary, not so much by reason of the weight as by the uncertainty of the precise moment of the explosion, and the expediency of keeping the weapon “trained” on the object until the powder chose to catch fire and explode.

Before the invention of the flint and steel, the value of rifling had been discovered. There is a doubt whether the discovery is due to the late fifteenth or the early sixteenth century, but at any rate it was well known on the Continent about 1540 A.D. There are rifled barrels at Zürich arsenal that have been there since 1544. The most ancient in this country was brought from Hungary in 1848, and bears the date 1547. There has been an idea that the first grooves in weapons were not spiralled but straight, but this does not seem to be correct, as all the most ancient grooved weapons known are spirals of more or less rapid turn. Some of them have a variation of twist within themselves. There have been many straight grooved weapons, but the object of them is lost. It has been suggested that they were used for shot, but they could have had no advantage over smooth bores for that purpose, and no advantage over muskets for ball. Nevertheless, the science of ballistics was not generally understood when they were made, and probably a rifled shot gun would have been attractive, as an advertisement, when it was known that a rifle was accurate with ball, and when the reason of its accuracy was unknown to most people.

Although it was at once recognised that the rifle was far more accurate than the smooth-bore musket, nevertheless three hundred years after the invention of the former it had not come into use for the British Army, and this in spite of the work done with it by the American sharp-shooters in the War of Independence. Even long after Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington was against arming the soldiers with the rifle, and yet he, and every authority, knew of its infinite superiority as a weapon of precision. The reason for this was very easy to understand. The muzzle-loading rifle was no more accurate than the smooth bore unless its ball fitted close and took the grooving. In order that it should do this it had to be forced down the muzzle by means of a stiff ramrod and a wooden mallet. This operation took too much time for war purposes, and it was generally considered that a musket could be used five times for once of the rifle. This was the disadvantage that did not really totally disappear until modern breech-loading was invented, although many attempts were made to get over the difficulty in various ways. One of the principal of these was the screwing of the trigger guard into the barrel, in a hole big enough to take the proper ball for the bore; then the barrel was charged from the muzzle, and loaded with the bullet afterwards from the hole in the breech. This was a clumsy makeshift, which cut away nearly half the barrel at that point, and this the metal of the day was ill able to stand. The other plan was the adoption of the principle of the expanding bullet. The best form of this bullet was that one with a hollowing out behind. This hollow, of course, admitted either the powder or the powder-gas, which expanded the rear portion of the bullet, and forced it into the grooves at the same time as it also forced it forward.

It is extraordinary to consider that the rifle had existed for three centuries and a half before this plan became effective, and made the rifle a much superior weapon to the musket. If any country had discovered it at the time of Marlborough or Wellington, it would have made that country master of Europe, just as the first use of the breech-loader as a military arm made Prussia and her needle gun invincible, until other nations also armed themselves with the breech-loader.

It has often been said that “vile saltpetre” was the deathblow to chivalry. That was not so; the long-bow and the cross-bow had before this made Jack as good as his master, and as a matter of fact the bow was much more highly valued up to the reign of Elizabeth than the gun was.

Nevertheless, one French writer attributes the loss of the battle of Crecy to the English use of guns, and he goes on to show that, although the French had used cannon in the sieges of castles, they would not employ them against men. The fact that gunpowder was known in Europe long before Crecy, and is said to have been used by the followers of Mahomet, and by the defenders of India against Alexander the Great, goes to support the French author’s views, that chivalry forbade the use of such a method of warfare.

This is no unsupported view, for Pope Innocent III. forbade the use even of the cross-bow against Christian enemies, but permitted it against Infidels. It was even said that Richard I. was killed by a shot from a cross-bow because he had disregarded the Pope’s Bull in the use of the weapon. This common belief well indicates the superstition, or religion, of the people, and is ample to account for the very slow growth of the use of gunpowder up to the time of Agincourt, which was obviously won, like the Black Prince’s victories over France, by the English long-bow; and, in the winning, destroyed the dying embers of the spirit of chivalry. That gunpowder did not do this may be gathered from the fact that Sir John Smyth, a general of Elizabeth’s army, declared he would take 10,000 bowmen against 20,000 armed with the match-lock of that period.

More than this, a match was made at Pacton Green, in Cumberland, as lately as 1792 with the bow against the gun, probably the Brown Bess, to test the two for warlike purposes at 100 yards range, and the bow won easily.

General military opinion had then gone against the bow, but obviously there was not much in it, for the rifle was only supplied to the rifle brigade, and not to the general army.

The latter was first armed with the rifle at the time of the Crimea, when the Minie rifle was adopted. A well-tempered sharp arrow could cut through armour as well as the slow bullets from hand guns, but armour remained of some use against both, and it only disappeared as big guns came into general use in the field, which was long after they had been used in and against Norman castles and town walls.

Perhaps, with the exception of the Assyrians and the ancient Egyptians, the most ancient warriors were a boasting, cowardly lot, like the leading gentlemen of Homer, and the still more cowardly understudies who stood still to watch while their chiefs were engaged in combat. Even Goliath advanced to single combat, and his side never fought at all when David’s shooting instrument went true. It is not, however, on record that Goliath had a shooting instrument, and it may fairly be urged that this early knight intended to bar shooting, and was a true forerunner of the knights of the Middle Ages, who also attempted to bar shooting by the aid of Pope Innocent III. Passing over those ancient Greek and Israelitish times to the classic period of Greece and Rome, when battles were fought by the whole of the armies engaging, we find that then shooting in any form had very little to do with results. That is to say, the bow and arrow, which became so deadly in the Plantagenet and Lancastrian wars in France, were not relied upon. The reason seems to have been that the classic Greek soldier with armour and target was pretty secure against the arrow, but the knight’s horse in the Middle Ages was not, and could not be made so. Incidentally, therefore, it is fair to assume that war had again degenerated, by means of chivalry, to the single combat championship stage, and that the first side to make the whole army fight won the day, as the British archers won it for the Black Prince, much to the disgust, as well as the defeat, of the French knights.

Until 1515, or thereabouts, when the wheel-lock was invented, the gun could only be used with a match-lock of kinds, and the circling pointer was very much in demand to indicate the exact position of the covey. The sportsman trained his hail-shot loaded gun on the spot and let it off. This form of sport became possible almost as soon as gunpowder was invented, but there is no record of it until much later, when it had become so destructive to game as to be forbidden by edict. Then the flint and steel lock was introduced, so that no sooner had the circling dog come to perfection than he found his business gone, for he was not wanted for the shooter of flying game, at a time when the latter sat well enough not only for the bad marksman, but also for the net as well.

There is a picture of a deer drive, dated 1644, in De Espinar’s book, where the sportsman has a heavy gun in a movable rest, but what kind of boring and ignition were employed is not to be discovered. It is possible, however, that both rifling and the flint and steel were employed, for they must have been very tame deer that would have remained in one position long enough, in a drive, to have been done to death by means of any device for quickening up the match-lock. Indeed, the long-bow would have been much the more deadly shooting instrument.

In modern times the long-bow has become a toy, but, even as such, shows itself capable of more accuracy than the musket had. That flying shots were not impossible with either the long-bow or cross-bow has often been proved, and there is one well-known instance where a swallow on the wing was pierced by an arrow, and remained upon it about half-way down the shaft. But when the arrow was a weapon of war the minimum distance for practice for a man was 220 yards, and the flight of an arrow then was very far beyond the powers of the toy bow now used in the pretty game of archery.

The author has practised with both cross-bow and long-bow. As a boy he has had many a shot at a flying pheasant with the former, and although he never hit one, that was probably only because the art of building cross-bows died with those who had need of them.

It is known as a matter of fact that gun metal was very poor stuff when the early cannons were made, and it can be gathered that powder was not of the best, as the proportions by weight of shot to powder were for the biggest cannon as two of shot is to one of powder, and for the smallest bores as ½ lb. of shot is to ¾ lb. of powder, and to shoot this 8 oz. of shot the weight of gun required was 300 lbs., and the bore 1 inch, or about five times as much weight as we should require now for that weight of shot, for which we should not use ¾ lb. of powder, but a couple of ounces would be ample. The only proportions of powder and shot at all like these that have been used in modern days are in some of the gun-proving charges and loads, where there was a good deal of windage between the ball and the walls of the barrel, and this is a fault in economy that the Middle Age gunners were compelled to adopt, and it probably accounts to some extent for their amazing charges of powder for the weights of shot employed, so that the powder was probably a good deal better than these proportions suggest, and the metal of the guns a good deal worse.

ON THE CHOICE OF SHOT GUNS

The first thing for the novice to do is to get advice. The difficulty will not be in the getting but in the selection afterwards. The majority of experienced shooters will not bother the novice with their views, but will advise him to go to the best gun-maker he can afford to employ and take his advice; but this amounts also to taking his guns, and it may be that a novice can do much better than that. The majority of shooters when they know what they want can possibly afford best guns from best makers, and perhaps have enough sport to justify the 180 guineas that a pair will cost. But all shooters at the beginning cannot afford to find out their requirements upon anything of the sort; this is proved by the much greater number of second and third grade than of best guns made and sold every year.

Besides, the majority of gun-shops are stocked heavily with second-hand and second-quality guns, that can be bought from £15 to £25 each, and the most difficult second-hand guns to find in London are those of the best makers, who only turn out one quality, namely the best, which are worth more.

It would be an invidious selection to name the best gun-makers, and impossible besides, for their products are the offspring of the brain, eye, and hand of the cleverest workmen,—sometimes, but rarely, their nominal makers,—and these craftsmen are human: they change, and even die. That is the reason that the best guns of one season do not always come from the same shops as the best of another. But not one amateur expert in a hundred, and not one shooter in ten thousand, will be able to detect the difference by external examination. It is there, and is important; and some day the gun that has not passed a master in the prime of critical observation will have an accident and break down, just at the wrong moment probably; whereas the best work of a best gun-maker will wear out its barrels, and then another pair, before anything goes wrong with its works, and before its splendid fitting and superior metal allow the barrels and the action to suggest divorce proceedings, by gaping in each other’s presence.

But if one cannot name the best makers and continue to live, it is possible to get over the difficulty by suggesting that most gun-makers have price lists of second-hand guns in their possession, and from these lists the status of the various gun-makers in the country can be gathered. But even this is not quite a reliable method, for those makers who turn out second and third quality guns may be represented by their best, or their worst, in these lists, whereas the men who have only one sort can only be represented by the best.

Then, again, the fashion changes, and guns which a few years ago were best and latest fashion are soon out-dated, and then they rank in price with second or third quality guns that are made in the latest fashion. Thus a hammerless gun is not now fashionable; it must be hammerless ejector, and for choice with a single trigger. Then hammer guns of the best make can be bought for a sixth of their original cost, just as muzzle-loaders are totally unsaleable except in the Colonies.

Instead, therefore, of giving 180 guineas for a pair of hammerless ejectors by a best maker, the novice may for about a third of the sum procure a pair in every way as good by the same maker, if he foregoes the ejector part of the latest fashion. But, in order to make sure of fair treatment, dealing only with the most reputable establishments is advised, because it has been known that the less particular traders have themselves altered an old-fashioned gun into an ejector, and sold it as the gun of a first-rate maker, whereas it would have been more properly described as their own work. However, there is always a check on this kind of thing, because every gun is numbered by those makers whose weapons are worth having, and a letter to the maker, giving the number and description of the gun, will probably be the cause of detection of any fraud of this kind.

In order satisfactorily to buy second-hand guns, a shooter should know exactly what bend, length of stock, and cast on or off he takes, and should also be able to measure these dimensions for himself; for it is not wise to have a second-hand gun altered to fit, not even if it is done by its own maker.

The best way is not to throw up a gun in the shop and buy it by the feel. There it may feel to fit when it does not do so; and it is possible to discard as ill-fitting the very gun that is exactly right. It is only out of doors at moving objects that most people handle a gun as they do at game. Consequently it is cheap in the end to go to a shooting school and be measured for a gun. There the beginner will be tested in every way and for every class of shot and angle of aim. It is not intended to suggest that shooting schools do not make mistakes, for they do. But the wise man will not be satisfied until he has been able to handle the try gun in a satisfactory manner when bent to his proposed measure. That is to say, the schoolmaster and the pupil have got to agree before either are likely to be right, and if the pupil cannot agree with one master he can try another.

The author knows one fine performer who placed himself in the hands of two experts in close succession. The stock measurement of one was cast-on, and a good deal of it; that of the other was cast-off, and also much of it. He had guns built to each. Naturally one might say they were both wrong, but as a matter of extraordinary fact they were both right; for this fine shooter performs equally well with both guns, and would probably do so with any other weapon. Of course he is the exception, and it would be unwise for others to attempt to shoot alternately with two guns as different as these are, because the practice with one would be unlearning for the other.

The object of taking much trouble to get a true measure, in writing, is that the testing of many guns, by putting them to the shoulder, alters a shooter’s method of doing this; and although the change may be only slight and temporary, it is enough to prevent an accurate selection in a gun-shop. The written measure reduces the number of guns to be tried, or handled, by 90 per cent., which greatly assists the process of selection, not only in the way named above, but by allowing more time for a thorough trial of each.

If a young shooter is going to shoot in parties, and not by himself, the bore of his gun is practically settled for him. It must be 12 bore, because otherwise he can be no help to other shooters in the lending of cartridges, nor they to him. This is very important, and becomes more so in exact degree as bags increase. The ammunition cart cannot be everywhere at once, and the work to be done by a host’s servants should never be unnecessarily added to when they are most busy.

On the other hand, it is quite permissible to take a 20 bore on to the moors to shoot over dogs in early August. Some people think that a 20 bore shoots closer than a 12 gauge, but that is a mistake. It spreads its shot quite as much as the larger bore, but it has fewer shot, and consequently the pattern is thinner. Few people have either kind bored to shoot as closely as possible, but when each is so bored the 12 gauge will always be the more powerful, unless heavy 20 bores are built to shoot 12 gauge loads.

This does not imply that a shooter will always get the most out of a 12 bore.

Lightness of weight assists walking, and also quickness in shooting, so that it is possible in some hands for the worst gun to do the most work. It is the fashion to use a pretty heavy gun for driving; the greater the head of game there is, the more certainly does one require a gun to kick but little; and there is no cure for kick except weight. For shooting over dogs the weight is generally a greater objection than recoil, because the number of shots fired will not be likely to be so many as to make a heavy recoil unbearable by too frequent repetition. Still, for the sake of a slight difference of weight, it is not usually necessary to have different guns for driving and for shooting over dogs. There is a mistaken idea that only a heavy gun will shoot a heavy charge well, but this is not so. Some years ago there were a good many 4¾ lb. 12 gauge guns built to shoot full 12 bore charges. Some of them shot as well as 7 lb. guns, but there are good and bad of all weights and gauges.

It is by no means urged that a 12 bore for walking up partridges and shooting grouse over dogs should be as light as those “feather-weights” were, because recoil was unpleasant from them, even if only a few shots were fired. The contention is merely that a light 12 bore will kill as well as a heavy one, provided it carries the same charge and load, and its barrels are as long as the heavy gun’s tubes. The only possible difference will be caused by the greater jump of the light gun, and this jump may in some light weapons uncentre the pattern. That is not a subject to speculate about, but is one for trial.

But it is not only light guns that sometimes do not shoot true. No double rifles can by measurement ever be put together so that both barrels shoot to the same place. This is accomplished by trial and regulating. It is done by wedging the muzzles farther apart or bringing them nearer together as the case may require. In the making of shot guns measurement is supposed to be enough; but a large percentage of guns do not centre their loads on the spot aimed at, and the two barrels frequently shoot to a different centre. Possibly choke bores are most liable to this fault; at any rate, they are much more easily detected, because their patterns are smaller than those of cylinders, and a variation from centre is more easily noticed.

When this inaccuracy occurs, people may say that the shooter is in fault and not the gun. Gunners are satisfied with such statements, although they would reject a rifle that shot with a quarter of the inaccuracy.

A gun-maker’s business is to show true shooting, and to keep a gun tester to do this work, and to show that all guns sold shoot true and well, and that all rifles can make small groups. Naturally the young shooter will believe himself to be in fault when he sees these men make central shots time after time with a gun or rifle that will not do it in novice hands. But some of these experts discover at the first shot where a barrel throws, and make the necessary allowance for it in each succeeding shot.

In order to be able to do this, a man must have wonderful confidence in himself; but some experts are well able to shoot one shot only from each barrel of a rifle, and then regulate it with no more evidence. Others are obliged to make a group with each barrel in order to negative their own faults of aim, or “let off.” That will possibly be the young shooter’s form; and if it is unfortunately so, all the same he is the man who is going to use the weapon, not the gun-maker’s expert, and consequently his own test is the best for him, no matter how blundering it may be.

There is no wisdom in being satisfied or put off with anything less than perfect central shots of the shot gun. The relative position of the shot centre in regard to a small bull’s eye is not easy to put into figures, but it can be grasped by the mind at a glance. The author has seen some close-shooting shot guns that only put the edge of the 30 inch circle of shot on to the bull’s eye. This represents an inaccuracy of 15 inches, and is very bad indeed, but 3 inches of inaccuracy is more than equally bad, because it ought not to exist; it is the worse because it is so difficult to find out. At the best there is only a 15 inch limit of inaccuracy of aim in a 30 inch pattern at going-away game. That is small enough for most people who shoot swerving partridges, twisting snipe, and rising grouse. Three inches of inaccuracy of gun reduces the man’s limit of inaccuracy to 12 inches. Is it enough? The author believes that most guns are out double as much as this 3 inches at 40 yards, and that the reason is that they are not usually treated to the same process of regulation spoken of for double rifles.

Were it not that the shot strings out into a long column with as much as 30 feet between the first and the last pellet at 40 to 50 yards range, it would be barely possible to kill at all when the pace of the game makes great allowances in front necessary.

This may be said: that 3 inches of inaccuracy is not much when many feet have to be judged, and that is perfectly true, and if the gun’s 3 inches of inaccuracy were always in the same direction as the game is going—that is, 3 inches too forward or too backward—there would be nothing in it to trouble about; but it is just as likely to be an error at right angles with the line of flight of the game, and then it does matter very much indeed. Even if a miss does not result, but if the aim is true, the game will then be made to fly through the thin part of the circumference of the shot column. For instance, if game is coming directly over the shooter, and a gun inaccuracy of 3 inches makes him shoot to right or left of the line of flight, that error is increased by his own inaccuracy or the “curl” of the game, which together may easily accomplish the other 12 inches, and then the game would be outside of the column of shot of a choke bore at 40 yards. A full choke has not a killing circle for straight going-away game of more than 26 or 28 inch diameter at that distance. On the contrary, a true cylinder has a killing circle of 40 inches.

This appears at first glance to be a very great advantage to the cylinder user, but in practice there is not much in it, provided the choke bore shoots truly to centre. If it does not, it is absolutely worthless, whereas the cylinder, with an equal fault, is a bad gun but not worthless. The reason of this is that the cylinder spreads more than the choke. The “full choke” always clusters its shot in the centre, and although the aim of gun-makers may be to get an even pattern, it cannot be done with a full choke gun, and would not suit everybody if it were done.

The author is inclined to think that a cylinder, or modified choke bore, is better than a full choke for any distance or purpose for which a full choke bore, with an even distribution of pellets, is better than another with a central clustering of pattern. Possibly pigeon shooting is an exception; because there is no use in killing outside the boundary, so that very long shots are not much wanted, and quick, hard shooting and an even, large pattern are required. But with game, accuracy of aim is preferable to extreme quickness, if either has to be sacrificed to any great extent. You go out to shoot to please yourself, and nothing will accomplish that pleasure so certainly as constantly killing game at distances that other people cannot reach. Tall pheasants and high wild duck try a gun as well as a gunner, and if the latter can keep in the line of flight he can shoot at some angles and at slow birds twice as strong with a choke as with a cylinder, but the timing of the shot is not as easy for one as for the other.

The shot spreads laterally nearly half as much again for the cylinder, but if you can keep your gun in the direction of the line of flight, that extra lateral spread will only help you for fast birds crossing at right angles. This is the least difficult thing to be done in killing driven game. The most difficult is accurately timing the shot, and here the gunner has the advantage of the longitudinal spread of the shot; in other words, a column of pellets some 30 feet long, at 40 or 50 yards, is sent in front of the game, which has to fly through the column as the latter passes the line of flight. The cylinder has slightly the longer column, and the column is slightly thicker through.

Correct timing implies that no part of the column of shot passes the bird before his head is in it, or after his legs are out of it. But this absolute accuracy of measuring the allowance in front, as well as timing the “let off,” must be very unusual.

It may be said that it is not easy to keep the gun in the direction of the line of flight, but the author cannot agree to that, except when the game swerves after the “let off.” If it does that, a spread of shot the size of a barn door would probably miss it, and the one-third bigger lateral spread of the cylinder than of the choke bore will not assist once in a hundred times.

These views, although not perhaps expressed, are largely acted upon in practice. Soon after choke-bore guns came in they became very unfashionable for game shooting, and the author was himself dreadfully unfortunate, for his form dropped 50 per cent. But the reason was that his first choke bores were not central shooters, and it was then very difficult to get guns of that boring that were true. That it was no fault of choke bores as such, the author proved by having his guns rebored, and although they afterwards shot even closer than before, they killed in the new condition.

One fault which is very bad in choke bores, and counts against shooting straight-going and straight-coming game well, far more than with cylinders, is that of patches without any shot in them in the outer edge of the circle. What is meant here is not a misdirection of the load but an erratic spread of it. In a close-shooting weapon this fault is almost as bad as a misdirection, but differs in this, that the patch varies its position with each shot. These patches sometimes extend from the outer edge to very nearly the centre of the pattern, and consistent shooting when they occur is impossible. They are not chance happenings, and can be obviated by good boring and good loading. The author thinks they most often occur when the shot can be shaken in the cartridge, and it may be that a size of pellets which do not lie evenly on the outer circle on the wad assist in deforming the pattern.

But theory is of no use, and it is the gun-maker’s business to sell a gun that he can show has none of these faults. Whether he overcomes them by a change in size of shot, quantity of them, or in an alteration of brand of powder, matters nothing to the shooter, and is not his affair. Enough has been said when the gun-buyer is placed in a position that it took the author many years to arrive at in regard to the choke bore, namely, that everything on the plate that is bad is not the fault of the shooter, but of the gun-maker.

There is another advantage of the choke bore. It shoots No. 5 shot at 50 yards as hard as No. 6 is shot by a cylinder at 40 yards, and the pattern will be quite equal at 50 yards with the large shot to that of the cylinder’s small shot at 40 yards.

This is very important in shooting at straight coming or going grouse. The farther off the first bird can be taken, the more certainly will the others be killed. No. 6 shot has enormous energy when the speed of a quick advancing bird is added to the speed of the shot. If it gets in the bird, it will go a long way through him; but when grouse are coming low, and dead straight to the gun, they glance the small shot like a shower of hail upon a duck’s back. Consequently more heavy shot will get in, although fewer will hit.

The kind of gun to be bought can hardly be determined until the shooter has settled what size of pellets he wants to use at various game. Messrs. Kynoch sell more than twice as many No. 5 shot as any other size. No. 6 comes next, and Nos. 7 and 5½ are nowhere.

With a cylinder gun only placing 100 pellets of No. 6 shot in the 30 inch circle at 40 yards, one could not expect great work from No. 5 pellets on birds as small as partridges walked up. The pattern would be too open at 40 yards, and the penetration unnecessarily high at 25 yards.

Some, at least, of No. 6 shot has penetration for a slow partridge flying dead away at 40 yards. With a very quick driven bird shot at behind, it has not more than enough penetration beyond 30 yards. The pace of the retreating game reduces the energy of the impact, but there is very little glancing off the feathers when they are struck from behind. The author is inclined to say that in shooting coming game all glancing is away from the game, and from behind all glancing from feathers is into the bird. He has himself heard the clatter of the shot on a straight-coming duck at about 30 yards when no damage whatever was done. At a low skimming partridge coming straight for an open gateway in which the writer was standing, he has shot, as at a sitting mark, for there was neither swerve nor rise or fall; he has seen the earth kick up all round the bird at about 25 yards, and has not been any nearer bagging the game. Surely nothing but glancing shot can account for such escapes.

WARTER PRIORY. LORD SAVILE SHOOTING

A bird partly crossing can be killed farther away, but a partridge coming dead on, in spite of the increase of impact caused by its speed, is far out for a cylinder and No. 6 shot at 30 yards, but with a choke bore and No. 5 shot it is well within range at 40 yards. Then a fast going-away driven bird is 10 yards nearer than it looks if you have No. 5 pellets in the gun, and a good deal farther off than it looks if you have No. 6.

So far only the actual bringing down of game has been considered, but there is the question of ethics too. With all shot there is some distance at which a body shot ceases to be effective, and when killing must depend on hitting a vital exposed part, or the wing. As the body is more than twice as big as these exposed vitals, namely the head and neck, it follows that the body will be hit twice as often as these vital parts. Beyond the distance at which body shots will kill, it follows that the shooter wounds twice for every head he bags. Consequently there is a wounding distance for each kind of shot pellet for straight going and coming game.

This wounding distance, for No. 6 shot, the author would be inclined to place at all ranges beyond 30 yards and up to 100 yards; for No. 5 shot, all distances beyond 40 yards and up to 120 yards. But as most people do not shoot at game beyond 50 yards, for practical purposes the wounding distance is from 30 to 50 yards with No. 6, and from 40 to 50 yards with No. 5 shot. Full-feathered partridges are the birds alluded to. August grouse can be killed farther away with much more certainty.

In all the public London trials of guns the patterns of cylinders have not averaged as high as 100 pellets of No. 6 in the 30 inch circle at 40 yards range. With 1¼ oz. of No. 6, of 270 pellets to the ounce, about 250 pellets in the same circle have been frequently obtained at the same 40 yards range from choke bores. But the majority of guns sold as cylinders now will put as many as 120 pellets in the circle, and the author has seen one of Holland’s put 160 pellets in that circle. In this gun there was no noticeable choke bore when a barrel gauge was used at all distances within 8 inches of the muzzle. The author did not attempt further to learn how this barrel was bored, and it would not be fair to expose it if he knew, which is not the case. But now that the principle of boring is well understood, there appear to be several methods by which a similar result would be possible. The barrels are known to stretch very considerably under the pressure of the powder-gas, and consequently any treatment of the barrels at the muzzles that would prevent them stretching with the rest of the barrel would act, more or less, like a modified choke. This might be done perhaps by an external thickening of the barrel, or by a hardening of the metal just at the right spot.

However, to prefer a cylinder that gives a high pattern to a modified choke bore that does the same, is only a fad. The former is difficult to obtain, and the latter is everywhere; and it is not the modified choke that so often is made to shoot untrue to centre, but the full choke.

The disadvantage of the choke-bore pattern is that it may plaster the game at distances nearer than the cylinder does. To compare the two patterns made at 20 yards, it is difficult to believe that the choke is almost as free from plastering as the cylinder. As a matter of fact there are several reasons for the well-known surprise that it does not often plaster feathered game.

The birds are not often coming straight at the gun nor going quite straight away from it, and any tendency to cross the line of aim is equivalent to allowing the game some benefit for any slight inaccuracy of timing the shot, and any wrong allowance in front. For instance, perhaps 5 inches too much allowance in front, with otherwise correct timing, at 20 yards, might very well allow half the shot column to go past a slow bird before he flew into the remainder of the shot column, which would be equivalent to shooting at a motionless bird with only half the pattern.

On the other hand, a very fast bird may fly right through the shot column before more than half of it has passed his line of flight. When the bird is caught by the centre of the head of the column at 20 yards range, he has but 10 inches to fly to get out of the line of flight of the shot from a full choke bore. The last pellets in the load will not be travelling more than 700 feet per second, and fast game is often going at 100 feet per second and more, although newly started game in still air may not often exceed 60 feet per second. But probably the real reason why good shots especially do not plaster their game at near distances is that they always shoot well in front, with a view to hitting only in the head and neck. At short range the slowest pellets are quite equal to killing whenever they hit straight for a vital part, exposed or otherwise. A shot aimed well forward with the intention of almost missing, by premature arrival of the pellets on the line of the bird’s flight, is almost sure to result in the cleanest kind of kill, brought about by two or three shot pellets in the head and neck and none anywhere else.

This also is often accomplished even at long distances, but not in the same way. Then the shot that succeeds must be well timed to get the bird’s body into the thickest of the pellets, and one of the reasons why the body is not plastered is that from most angles of impact, on a coming bird, the body shots glance off, and only the head, neck, and wing shots tell. The only great chance of smashing winged game that occurs is in near shots at going-away game, and then, whether a man holds a cylinder or a choke bore, he will assuredly give lots of “law,” even if, in doing so, the game passes out of sight.

There is an idea that the killing circle from a gun can be mapped out by geometric progression. That is to say, that if lines are drawn from the muzzle to the extremity of a 40 inch circle at 40 yards, you will be able to measure off, or calculate, the killing circle for straight-away game at any distance. That is not so. At the nearer distances the size of the killing circle is regulated by the pellets that, at 40 yards, are outside of it altogether. There they are too thinly scattered to count for chances. Thus the killing circle of a cylinder and of a full choke have no relationship to each other, or to geometric progression of the spread of pellets for each distance.

The author has measured many patterns at different distances, and he believes that the following table shows very truly the diameters of the killing circles covered, on the basis of that pattern which was regarded as thick enough to kill game in the cylinder days. That is to say, the latter sort of gun was tried at 40 yards where it spread fairly evenly over a 40 inch circle. But its proper distance was 30 yards, and at that range nothing else at any other distance gives the shooter an equal chance with No. 6 shot.

In the above table each circle of shot has been marked with a reference letter, which is intended to imply—

A, that all pellets will have enough strength to kill if they only hit the body, and in direct line for a vital.

B, that only the fastest pellets in the load will have enough strength to kill by body shots, and that at least half the pellets will only have enough strength to kill if they hit head, neck, or wing.

C, that none of the pellets will kill by body wounds, but only the small number that chance to hit head, neck, or wing.

The pellets that come under the description applied to C can be greatly extended beyond the distances named, and at ranges to which it would be foolish to apply the term “killing circles.” Thus the author has seen a roe deer killed at 60 yards with No. 6 shot from a 12 bore. Lord Walsingham has made four consecutive shots with No. 5 shot at wild ducks at an average range of about 88 yards, or, to be accurate, at 84½ yards, 89 yards, 84 yards, and 114 yards. But these lucky shots in vital spots do not affect the question, except to show that it is difficult to apply a limit to the killing power of even weak pellets when they strike head, neck, or wing. Outside the zone marked A one is certain to do some wounding without killing the game, but although many pellets will hit without being straight for vital spots, others will probably kill the same bird. But in the C zone it is always two or three chances on wounding to one chance of killing.

The reason for attempting to draw a distinctive line between these zones for the different guns and loads is that there is far too much unhealthy, random shooting at game, which gives rise to prolonged agony, while the sportsman is dining well, and, as he believes, sleeping the sleep of the just. Even on the baser score of economy and next year’s sport, it is wise to wound no more game than human blundering compels, and not to lay ourselves out to wound by attempting to kill when the chances are so bad that the wild shooter would not risk them upon a horse-race, much less in a mere commercial speculation.

There has often been controversy on the difference of penetration from a choke bore and a cylinder. When penetration was taken by recording the number of sheets of paper, or boards, pierced by one pellet, or even by three, the choke bore always won. But really this was merely a double counting of pattern, because when two guns shoot with the same velocity of shot, that which has the best pattern will also have most pellets through. That is how it came to be settled by the public London gun trials that choke bores had materially the most penetration. As a matter of fact, nobody knows which has most penetration. Sometimes the number of sheets pierced by half the shot which hit a penetration testing pad will be in favour of one, and sometimes of the other gun, and moreover the difference in piercing by the pellets of the same discharge may be as much as two to one.

Chronographic testing for time over a range has never proved very satisfactory, for the instrument makes but one record of time for 300 different pellets, which are known to vary in velocity over some ranges by 300 foot-seconds, and in striking velocity by 200 foot-seconds.

This was brought out by the late Mr. Griffith, who as manager of the Schultze gunpowder works had great opportunities, and took them. Powder-makers may very well use the chronograph in testing powders at 10 yards range. At this range Mr. Borland of the E.C. Company informed the writer that he could never find a difference between small shot and large pellets; which goes to prove that at the distance they have not scattered longitudinally enough to make the chronograph the absurdity it becomes when it records one time for 300, all various.

But once the chronograph was used for small shot on the right principle. This was when Mr. Griffith applied it to his revolving target experiments.

This table is only inserted because the figures contained in it have hitherto formed the bases of public knowledge and calculation; it is corrected and superseded by another on page [44]. Its errors consist in no deduction for the natural spread of the pattern and in the multiple adopted being based on the striking velocity of the first five per cent. of pellets.

He did this to discover the longitudinal spread of the shot pellets at various distances. If ever the chronograph could be used for taking differing shot velocities, this appears to be the way. But it has never been repeated, and some results appear to throw doubt upon their own accuracy. The various lengths of the shot spread on the targets moving at 200 f.s., at right angles with the line of fire, were as follows upon the top lines. On the bottom lines in the table the shot pattern spread, caused by the 200 feet per second, is multiplied by the ratio of greater speed of shot than the 200 foot-seconds of the revolving target. So that in the following table the bottom lines, in respect of each gun, represent something near the true length of shot column at each distance. The speeds taken in the foregoing table can be gathered from the Griffith figures on the next page. But if, for the 30 yards range, the truer mean speed of the shot column is wanted, this is equal to the striking velocity of the most forward pellets and the velocity of the rear of the column added together, and divided by two. For this calculation there is a slight inaccuracy originating in the following tables, because the striking velocity of the rear pellets has been taken at the full range, instead of at the length of the shot column less than the full range. This position can only be found by trial and error. It will vary the results by a yard or two. Inches have been disregarded in the tables.

It is often said that we want guns to send their shot up all together, but if we had so to time our “letting off” as to cause the game to fly on to a knife edge, with the shot spread out like a tea-tray, it is doubtful whether we should hit oftener than with a rifle. Lord Wolseley tells of seeing an officer who by means of a soldier’s rifle killed a wild goose flying high overhead.

Keeping the line of flight for such a shot would not be difficult, but the timing and allowance in front could not often be so cleverly arranged. That is the reason why there is a good deal of doubt whether we want to decrease the length of shot columns, and besides, if we did wish it, probably it could not be done. It is observable that the extra half-dram measure of powder materially increased the choke bore’s lengths of shot columns. It also had a very great influence in the increase of velocity at all distances.

The length of the column of shot from the cylinder gun is longer than the spread from the choke bore, and the longer the range the longer is the column; but strangely, at long range, according to these trials, one striking velocity of the first pellets in the load was exactly the same as that of the last pellets to strike the revolving target, although mean velocities for the range were very different. This almost shakes confidence in this chronographic record, but as the penetration tests always show more variation between pellets than the differences in any of these revolving target and chronographic records, it may be that the apparent paradox of pellets getting farther behind but nevertheless maintaining the same speed as those in front can be explained by a constant change of leaders, and if so, also of followers necessarily.

These phenomena do not occur except at the extreme distance of 55 yards, and they are totally absent even at that distance with the choke bore and 49 grains charge. It seems therefore only to be possible when the pellets have dropped to a low velocity. At shorter ranges there is sometimes an impact difference of 200 feet a second between the pellets of the same load. So that it is material to know the force of the whole charge, and the time up the range of the leading pellets is no guide, as differences equal to 320 f.s. have occurred in one load.

As these are the only chronographic tests of shot pellets ever made with a view of finding out what really takes place, the striking velocities of the various proportions of the load at different distances are given here. But although this represents the only use of the instrument for this purpose, on truly scientific principles, ever recorded in print, the author would be sorry to affirm the absolute accuracy of the instrument on this or any other occasion, although the relative accuracy of one record to the other is much more likely to be correct.

The (42) and (49), after the description of the gun in the table on p. [41] refers to the load of Schultze powder, and in all cases 1⅛ oz. of shot No. 6 was used.

In order to arrive at striking velocity from these trials, it was necessary to compare the time taken at one range with that taken at another range by a different cartridge.

That in some cases the leading pellets are recorded as slower than those behind them, is not, as would at first sight appear, an absolute disproof of accuracy, because it may be that the leading pellets are constantly dropping back, and others are becoming leaders. Obviously the fastest pellets lose speed at the greatest rate, and obviously, also, the leading pellets get least help and give most to their neighbours, by setting up air disturbance, or a breeze, in the direction of the load.

We all know from paper pad and strawboard tests that the penetration of pellets from the same discharge often varies as two to one. Some of these records do not confirm this; but as they can only be accurate on the assumption of that which must be true—the fluctuation of relative positions of the pellets in flight—this adds to their value, because that assumption is also required to explain the greater known variation in penetration than the most indicated in these tables of speed.

The above remarks have been founded on the comparison of the chronographic time of one load at one distance with that of another discharge fired 10 yards farther away; and the mean speed over the 10 yards has been taken as the striking velocity at the midway distance of the 10 yards. This is how Mr. Griffith worked out the striking velocities. And from his figures the length of the shot column can only be got at by making some use of a comparison between shots fired at one range and those fired at another. In other words, the length of shot column approximately found, as described, when divided by the difference of time between first and last pellets, brings out the average velocities of the shot column, at the instant of the leading shot striking the target, too high. That is to say, the previous length of column having been found too much, is taken merely as a basis, to indicate the position in the rear at the length of the column away from the target at which to search for the speed of the lagging pellets, and, with these found, and the speeds of the leading pellets already found, from the table upon page [41], the average speed has been discovered, and actual time between first and last being known, the length of column has been re-found in a way that must be as accurate as any records can be that are based on two different discharges and the chronograph.

Taking the length of the column of shot, it is clear that the difference of time in seconds between the first and last arriving pellets, divided by the length of the column in feet, will give the mean velocity of the shot column at the instant the first pellets struck the target. The amended figures are tabulated on the next page.

It has lately been attempted to show that Mr. Griffith’s measurements are not supported by the results on a target passing at 75 feet a second at right angles with the line of fire. But this speed is not enough to prevent the irregular spread of the shot pellets from misleading. In other words, the faster the movement of the target the less will the elongation of pattern depend upon the accident of pattern, and the more it will depend upon the length of shot column and its speed. Besides this, birds at 75 feet per second are not the difficult sort that people want to learn to kill in a wind.

In the following table it is seen that in one case the column is no longer at 50 yards than at 40 yards, and we may be quite certain shot columns are not so in reality:—

The only way that this extraordinary result can be explained is this: Mr. Griffith shot at his revolving targets set behind a hole of 4 feet diameter made in a steel plate, and the question arises, Would not any shot pellets that were only travelling at 382 feet a second drop out by the force of gravity, and never pass through the opening at all at the longer ranges? They would take a considerable fraction of a second to reach the 55 yards range, and pellets would drop a foot by the force of gravity in ¼ second, therefore some of them would not pass through the 4 feet opening. On this assumption, instead of the 50 yards columns of shot being of the lengths stated, they must be very much longer, with a continuous dropping of the weaker shot all up the range.

It is often asked how it happens that so few fast driven birds are wounded. They are either killed or not hit as a rule, even when they are high up. Another query is as often heard: “Why are fast birds more difficult than slow ones?” It appears that one answer can be supplied from the tables already given to both questions. It is often said that it is difficult to lead “tall” birds enough, but the farther away game is, the slower the gun has to move in order to race, and beat it, so that this is evidently not the explanation. Taking the corrected length of the various columns of shot at most of the ranges above 30 yards, and comparing the average speeds of the fag end pellets, as given in the table, with the distance they have to go, while the bird has merely to go from 2 to 4 feet to get out of their line, it will be found that game at 60 feet per second cannot get clear of any part of the shot column if it is timed properly, whereas game at 100 feet per second will clear about 40 per cent. of the length of column in some cases, and only incur danger from 60 per cent. as he flies through it. This seems to be ample reason for the greater difficulty of fast game.

Here are a few examples with the 42 grain charge: allowing 6 inches for half the length of the bird, and adding this to the diameter of flying shot column at various ranges, it is found that in order to get clear while the shot column is passing, the bird at 60 feet per second takes .041 of a second. At 100 feet rate of flight he will take .025 of a second, and the shot takes but .022, so that the game does not get an advantage here at 30 yards. But at 40 yards the slow bird takes .05 of a second and gets no advantage; the fast one takes .03 of a second, and here the time of the column is .036, so that, however good the timing, the bird misses some shot. At 50 yards it is still worse for the slow bird, which takes .062 of a second to get through, and better for the fast one, that takes only .037 of a second, when the shot occupies .046 of a second for the whole column to pass.

There is not much difference for the 49 grain charge from the choke bore. At 30 yards the shot column takes .027 of a second to reach the distance after the first pellets are up. The 60 feet a second bird takes .041 of a second, and the 100 feet per second bird takes but .025, or a less period than the shot column. At 40 yards the slow bird takes .050 and the fast one .030 of a second, and the shot occupies .042 of a second. At 50 yards the times are .062 for the slow bird and .037 for the fast one, and the period taken by the shot column is .050 of the unit of time; so that at the longer range the best timing possible would only give the game 37
50 of the shot he would have as a slow bird.

The cylinder bore, with its longer column of shot and wider spread as well, is a little different in effect. At 30 yards the period occupied between first and last pellet is .034 of the second, and the slow game takes .050, and the fast .030 of a second. At 40 yards .049 is the period for the pellets; and .062 and .037 of a second those for the quick and tardy game, so that there is twelve parts in every 49 of the shot rendered useless in spite of the best possible timing and the truest of allowances in front. At 50 yards the shot pellets occupy .057 of a second for the rearguard to come up to the distance, and the game takes respectively .075 and .045 of a second for the slow and the fast. So that, again, one gets all the benefit as if he were still, and the other cannot do so under any circumstances.

In the last case, at 40 yards, every misjudgment of distance to allow ahead by 1 foot is equivalent to .016 of a second off the total of .049 second occupied by the shot column, so that 3 feet of error will be equivalent to a total miss for the slow bird, whereas for the fast bird every foot of error is equivalent to .010 of a second, and 5 feet of error in judgment in allowing in front, may enable you to hit with the tail end of the shot column, but only to wound most likely.

The best shot gun experiments ever made with the chronograph, therefore, show that if you have to aim 5 feet in front, and do aim 10 in front, you do not necessarily totally miss at 40 yards; whereas if, instead of aiming 5 feet too much in front, in like circumstances, the gunner aimed 5 feet behind, or, in other words, dead on the mark with a still gun, a hit would be impossible: the game would never be in the line of the shot after the trigger was pulled. This would be so, even although the gun was following round with the bird; so as to ensure no loss consequent on the time occupied by the pull of the trigger. It is clearly better to aim greatly too much in front than a little too much behind.

Even before the author ever engaged in driving game, he had shot at the first bird of a covey and killed the last one, 7 or 8 yards behind. In shooting driven game this is not an uncommon experience for beginners, and is a very useful lesson; for nobody has ever had the opposite experience, and killed the first bird when shooting at the last. But when this shooting at the pigeon and killing the crow occurs, it is not always because of so vast a misdirection as is suggested. Five feet of error at least may be accounted for by the longitudinal spread of the shot, besides something more for the lateral spread. Indeed, two birds in the same covey, one 8 feet behind the other, have been killed at one shot; but it rarely happens. Nevertheless, when one of the two is much the further away, as well as behind, then a bird a very much greater distance than 8 feet behind the one shot at and killed, may also fly into the shot, and die too. In practice, however, it is very much easier to miss a whole pack of grouse that look to be near enough together to kill a dozen at a shot. If one tries to do a bit of “browning,” it is generally not the birds that are “done brown.” If it is not the survival of the fittest that has evolved grouse that look so much nearer together than they are, it must be a wise provision of nature in the interests of sportsmanship.

From what has been said, it will be gathered that when game is crossing fast, wounding is caused by bad timing. The game is either through the shot column before much of it has reached his line of flight, or he has not reached the shot column when the majority of it has passed his line of flight. In either case he gets but a small proportion of the shot pellets correct timing would have given to him. Wounding zones and killing circles as applied to straight-away game have little to do with it. Provided timing is right, superficial “wounding zones” help the kill, because the game that passes through them also passes through the bulk of the shot column before or after. Even patchy patterns on the whitewashed plate may be quite evenly distributed to the game flying through the section of the column of pellets. One thing that is perhaps worth noting is that if the head of the column of pellets, or first arrivals of the pattern, surround crossing game evenly, the bird will have so short a distance to go that he may be out of the circumference of the shot column before a quarter of the pellets have come up to his line of flight, and if he loses a tail feather and drops a leg it will not be because of a large wounding zone of shot in the superficial target sense; indeed, a larger wounding zone of that kind might help in such a case: the fault will be because the game had not to fly through the whole section of the column of shot.

Actions of Guns

The actions of guns were at one time so important that gun-makers were selected by reason of the merit of their patents. The tendency of the early actions to part from the barrels at the false breech was so great, that actions became of the first importance. Patents are now run out, and consequently every gun-maker can select the best and make it, and may be trusted to do so provided the weapon is to be paid for at a figure that pays for best work and best material. If this is not the case, still the gun-maker will put in the best action that can be made for the money to be charged; in other words, he will put in the cheapest good design of action, but not necessarily good workmanship. When dovetails are used to join up the barrels and the false breech, it is not because the design of action is not good enough to do without them, but simply that the workmanship or fitting is not good enough. Often the third grip does not fit, and is only for show.

Ejectors

What has been said of actions applies also to ejectors. If all the patents have not run out, plenty of good ones have done so, and the gun-maker has a great choice and nothing to pay for it.

The principle of the ejector is that with split extractors there is a connection between the fall of the tumbler or hammer and an ejecting mechanism, or lock in the fore end of the gun. The opening or closing of the gun after firing is made to cock the tumblers, strikers, or hammers, and also to put the ejector at full cock, or otherwise bring it ready for action, then when a shot is fired the fallen hammer or tumbler, or its re-cocking, is made to react on the ejector at that stage of the opening gun when the extractors have already moved the empty cartridge-case. The undischarged cartridges are therefore extracted, but not ejected, and the used cases are ejected.

Safety of Guns

The safety bolt placed upon hammerless shot guns is very necessary. It ought, when placed at safety, to prevent the lock springs working, and should prevent the possibility of the scear being released from the catch, or bent, or scear catch. Mr. Robertson, proprietor of Messrs. Boss & Co., has shown conclusively that a slight rap on the lock plates will disconnect any scear catch, and so let off the gun when not at safety, unless it is also protected with an interceptor, which is moved out of the way of the falling tumbler, or striker, only by the pull of the trigger. Mr. Robertson’s own single-trigger action is also a safety action, even when very light trigger pulls, such as 1 lb., are employed.

The strength of barrels is assured by the proof of them at the London, Birmingham, and foreign proof houses, with loads and charges larger than for service. Anyone in doubt about purchasing guns and rifles would be well advised to write to the Proof Master for the literary matter issued for the protection of the public and guidance of the trade. This changes from time to time, but at present it gives very full information of the meaning of the various foreign proof marks as well as of our own.

Cross-Eyed Stocks

It is often suggested that a thumb-stall which stands up and blocks the fore sight from the left eye is an assistance to right-shouldered shooters, and sometimes it is. But as it has no effect on the manner of bringing up the weapon, it must require revision to get the correct aim if the weapon is not brought up correctly. The author thinks that a long course of shutting the left eye will force the right eye into becoming governing eye by habit. Some people have neither eye greatly the governor, so that each has an influence on the manner of the “present,” and helps to fix the point the gun is brought up to. This point may be half-way between the extended lines from the two eyes to the foresight, and permits of no real alignment until the gun is moved after presentation, which is always slow. For such men nothing but shutting one eye will be of much use, but for those who have a controlling left eye it is different, and a cross-eyed stock, or shooting from the left shoulder, is to be recommended. Those who have a control eye need not necessarily be able to see the game with it. Provided they see the latter with one eye and take alignment of the breech and fore sight with the control eye, that is enough. If the eyes are pairs—that is, not crossed—and produce on the brain but one image of an object focused, then the direction of the alignment over or upon the game or target is accomplished in the brain, and the hands obey. That is to say, the left eye may be unable to see the sights, and the right eye may be unable to see the game, but as the images on both are superimposed on the brain the aim is quite correct for normal eyes. A beginner thinks this impossible, but if he uses a thumb-stall, and blocks the fore sight from the left eye, and puts a card over the muzzle, so as to block the right eye from seeing the target, and then focuses the latter, and not the fore sight, he will soon become unconscious that he is blocking out anything from either eye.

As the ability of the eyes has had to be referred to here, it may be well to remark that any normal eyes can see the shot in flight against the sky, and this ability has been used to advantage in coaching shooters. To see this phenomenon, stand slightly behind the shooter, and look for a little darkening of the sky in the direction of the aim; it will be easily seen about the time the shot has spread to a foot, or so, diameter. Whether anyone can see the shot much nearer than 15 yards or farther away than 20 yards is questionable; the spread of the pellets reduces the dark shade-like appearance, and it vanishes. Consequently, experts who see clay birds apparently in the middle of the pellets may be quite correct at short distances, and appearances may be absolutely wrong for game or clay targets at distances farther away than the shot can be detected. The bird may have flown another two yards by the time the shot intersects its line of flight. Consequently, this ability of the coach to see the shot should only be relied upon at about 20 yards range.

SINGLE-TRIGGER DOUBLE GUNS

The idea of a single trigger to double guns cannot be said to have occurred to anyone as an original conception, since it was natural that at the first attempt to build those toys (as Colonel Thornton considered double guns, when he was upon his celebrated Highland tour), the inventor must have exercised some ingenuity to supply these first double guns with two triggers. It was as natural to attempt to make double barrels with one trigger as for a duck to swim. First, because single barrels were the fashion, and second, because single-trigger double pistols were made and were successful. It was, however, at once discovered that the action of the double pistol would not do; it let off both the shoulder gun’s barrels apparently as one. For a century afterwards repeated attempts were made to overcome this double discharge, and many patents were taken out on the strength of the inventor having discovered “the real, true cause” of the involuntary discharge of the second barrel, by the pull off that was intended to actuate only the first. However, the problem remained commercially unsolved until Mr. Robertson, of Boss & Co., of St. James’s Street, overcame the difficulty, and took out a patent, about 1894, for an action that prevented the unintentional double discharge. The great success of this action led to some hundred patents being taken out between that year and 1902. But most of them were afterwards dropped, and found not to effect the prevention of the double discharge for which they were designed. As a matter of fact, the reason of the involuntary discharge of the second barrel was not understood, not even by Mr. Robertson, who had, by trial and error, arrived at a perfect system of overcoming the difficulty, without being aware of what really occurred.

In the autumn of 1902 the author contributed some letters to The County Gentleman, which explained the difficulty; but his discovery, for such it has proved to be, was hotly disputed in a correspondence led by some of the leaders of the gun trade. This was by no means wonderful, although it is disconcerting for a discoverer to be treated as “past hope” when he is so unfortunate as to make a find that can do him no good, but ever since must have saved much in work and patent fees to the gun trade.

The accepted view of involuntary pull prior to this discovery was that after the shot from the first barrel, recoil jumped the gun away from the finger, and then the shoulder rebounded the gun forward on to the stiff finger, which, being struck by the trigger, let off the second barrel. The author for some time previous to 1902 had become conscious that this explanation was open to question. However, it was not until he sat down and worked out the times of recoil and finger movement, that he felt safe in challenging so generally accepted a statement. But this calculation proved to him that, so far from rebound causing the unwished-for “let off,” the latter occurred in one-twentieth of the time occupied by the recoil backwards. However, the author’s powers of persuasion failed to convince everybody, and for this reason the editor of The County Gentleman, with the assistance of Mr. Robertson, of Boss & Co., and of the late Mr. Griffith, of the Schultze Powder Company, formed a committee of experts to test the point by chronographic examination. Results were published in The County Gentleman on December 6, 1902, and were to the effect that the second discharge came in one-fiftieth of a second after the first discharge, but that the recoil backwards, before rebound could occur, took from four different shooters respectively .32, .29, .34, and .38 of a second, or, roughly, an average of one-third of a second. So that it was demonstrated that the rebound from the shoulder had nothing whatever to do with the involuntary pull. The true and now always accepted cause was as the author had stated it to be—namely, that the recoil jumped the trigger away from the finger in spite of the muscular contraction that still continued after the let off of the first barrel; that this muscular contraction continued to act and again caught up the trigger, as soon as the pace of recoil was diminished by the added weight of the shoulder, and so the finger inflicted a heavier blow or pull on the trigger than in the first pull off. In the first pull it was finger pressure, in the next it was pressure acting over distance, and was measurable in foot-pounds, as work or energy is measured. This proved to be the correct solution.

Consequently, a good single trigger is one that prevents this finger blow from discharging the second barrel. It is impossible to prevent the blow itself, but quite easy to prevent it letting off the second lock. There are at least three principles employed for doing this.

The first is called the three-pull system; it is based on the necessity of either the voluntary second pull, or involuntary blow (as the gun may be loaded or unloaded), for intercepting the trigger connection which the subsequent release of the trigger allows a spring to place in readiness to receive the third trigger pull, and act on the second tumbler; this pull in the unloaded gun is observed to be a third pull, and in the loaded one is only observable as a second pull, because the second has been given involuntarily, and not consciously.

The double-pull actions are different in principle. Most of them are based upon a lengthening of the time between the first let off and the connections with the second lock coming into position for contact with the trigger. In other words, they are time movements, based upon the knowledge that the second pull, or impact of trigger and finger, came very quickly, and that to delay the intermediate connecting link between trigger and second lock until after this unconscious impact rendered it inoperative.

A third system is somewhat different, but is also a timer action. It is based upon having a loose or nearly loose piece, which is partly independent of the gun, and either by its lesser motion or want of movement, during the jump back of the recoiling gun, gets in the way of a further trigger movement, until the recoil of the gun is over, and the weak spring can replace the independent piece in its normal position again.

It has been said that the greatest advantage of a single trigger is the facility with which it can be removed and double triggers substituted. But this is merely what those gun-makers have said, who, being obliged to have a single-trigger action of their own for those who ask for them, have been too proud to pay a royalty for a good one, and have not felt quite safe in recommending their own to good customers.

The real advantages of a single trigger are many. First, one does not have to shift the grip of the gun for the second barrel. As explained above, recoil occupies one-third of a second, and one does not want to add to the jump of the gun during recoil by partly letting go, nor to be unready at the end of it, by still having to move the right-hand grip in changing triggers. In practice, the single trigger is also much the quicker. It is not necessary to say anything about cut fingers and their avoidance by the use of single triggers. But a wonderful advantage is in the more correct length of stock. If one’s gun-maker gave one a stock an inch too long, or short, in double triggers, he would be thought not to know his business. There is only one best length for everybody, but every double trigger has two lengths of stock, one an inch longer than the other.

The author is told that there are still some very bad single-trigger actions being made, but that is quite unnecessary when the best can be employed by paying a royalty, as some of the best gun-makers are in the habit of doing, or were, until the recent action Robertson v. Purdey was settled.

Probably it would be more correct to say that the principal advantage of a bad single trigger is that it can readily be exchanged for a good one. The author would not on his own authority speak of bad single triggers, because he has tried most of them, and had difficulty with none.

AMMUNITION

The time has not yet arrived for us to have a smokeless powder as regular in its action and as little affected by heat as black powder was, neither have we as free an igniting powder, which is of less moment.

Nitro powders have greatly improved of recent years, and would doubtless have continued the progress, but they have been brought up, and to a standstill, in the last two or three years by a sort of trade agreement, or an invention of “standard” loading, which may be supposed to have had its origin in the wholesale cartridge trade, since it is impossible that it can be good for sportsmen, or for those who try to fit shooters with their personal requirements, or, in other words, try to load a sportsman’s gun according to the individual requirements of gun and man.

We are still in the dark ages of “pressure” testing, or trying the strength of powders by the work they do upon plugs inserted through the walls of testing guns, and, outside, in contact with lead or other metal that the explosion, in moving the plugs, crushes. In doing this the powder-gas does “work” which would be correctly measurable in foot-tons, but is supposed to be measured in static pounds, which is similar to dropping a weight upon a scale balance and mistaking the weight for the work done by the drop. For instance, if we drop a pound weight a foot on to a scale balance, the work it does is equal to one foot-pound. But if we place it on the scale gently, it will just balance one pound on the other side. One is weight and the other is energy, which are not comparative terms. Yet in testing powders the fashion is to take the measure of some unknown proportion of the energy and to call it static pounds.

On the other hand, the fashion is to make the exactly contrary mistake in testing guns for shooting strength. The flattening of the shot pellets on a steel plate is the result of energy; here the flattening of lead by which “pressures” are erroneously taken is ignored and scouted, and velocity is considered the thing to judge by, although it is only the velocity of one pellet out of three hundred which, at 20 yards, vary by as much as 300 foot-seconds mean velocity.

In a lecture delivered by the late Mr. Griffith, of Schultze Company fame, it was said quite truly, and with proper pride, that the velocity of shot had increased during the last twenty years by 100 feet per second at 40 yards. During this time recoil has been reduced very much, only apparently in defiance of the law that action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Recoil is equal to the total momentum of shot, wads, and powder-gas, and what the powder people have done is to reduce that portion of recoil that was not represented by momentum of the shot, but was represented by the momentum of waste powder-gas.

Consequently, what has been got rid of in twenty years is some momentum of powder-gas, which has served two purposes—first, by permitting some extra strength of powder, to put some extra momentum into the shot pellets, and to somewhat reduce recoil in spite of this. That then was the tendency of the powder-makers, when suddenly they were brought to a standstill by a catchword, “standard” loading and “standard velocity.”

There would have been some sense in “standard velocities,” had it been impossible to increase velocities without also increasing recoil; but nobody believes that. The tendency has not only been the other way, but it represents the one and only great improvement in powders that has been made since nitro propellers were first invented. There is still a large proportion of recoil due to the “blast” after the shot has gone, or the momentum of lost powder-gas. It is not nearly abolished, and is only reduced. Consequently, it was no time to say, “Now we have arrived at perfection, and beyond this point it is a fault to go, and consequently we fix as a standard 1050 foot-seconds mean velocity at 20 yards as the correct velocity, above and below which nobody must attempt to carry ballistics of shot guns.” That may suit wholesale manufacturers, because it is a standard easy to accomplish in bulk, but here is what it means as a check to progress.

First, if we take a peep at Mr. Griffith’s own celebrated revolving target trials of just twenty years ago, we find that his mean velocities of those trials were all more than 1050 foot-seconds at 20 yards range. They were for the three guns and loads used 1073, 1124, and 1062 foot-seconds. But he has quite truly told us that during these twenty years the velocity has increased 100 feet per second. Consequently, the “standard loading” sets back the clock more than 100 foot-seconds and more than twenty years. That is not all: those beautiful trials exhibited the fact that the last pellets in a load had from 221 to 300 foot-seconds less mean velocity than the first, so that “standard” loading may mean 1050 foot-seconds for the first pellets, and 750 foot-seconds for the last, at 20 yards range. These trials were all conducted with cartridges loaded with 1⅛ oz. of shot. But years before that, when fine grain black powder was used, and gave to 1⅛ oz. of shot much higher velocities than those named above, Sir Fred. Milbank shot his 728 grouse in the day with ⅞ oz., on the ground that the ordinary 1⅛ oz. gave too little penetration—that is, too little velocity.

The only possible arguments left to put forward against increase of velocity are two:—

1st, that greater pressure adds to the necessity of weight of gun.

2nd, that more velocity spoils patterns.

The reply to the first is that the improvement of powders and increased velocity has been attained, as stated, by other means, and without increasing pressures; and, second, if pressures were increased it would not matter to the shooter who uses best metal in his guns, because it is quite easy to build 12 bore shot guns under 5 lb. that are quite as safe as 7 lb. guns; and weight is consequently adjusted by reason of the incidence of recoil, and not by reason of the weakness of steel.

The second proposition is equally groundless, and it is answered by the fact that not one in a hundred men use the fullest choke boring, and if velocity opens out patterns too much, ten shillings spent on a little more choking, by recess at the muzzle, will bring back the pattern in spite of the tendency of the greater velocity to open it out.

The means adopted by the powder-makers to effect the improvements referred to above have been to lighten the charge of powder, or to compress more fixed gas into a smaller solid weight. This statement more particularly applies to the light (33 grains) bulk powders. By “bulk” is meant those powders that fill the space occupied of old by 42 grain nitro powders in the 3 drams measurer meant for black powder.

But this does by no means embrace all the possible improvements. The 26 grains, and concentrated, powders occupy only about half the space of the bulk powder of whatever specific gravity, and consequently the prospect opens before them of making use of their 80 times power of expansion in the barrel, instead of the 40 expansion power of the bulk powders. This is not as great a possible improvement as it sounds, but it is a large one all the same. At present the coned cases used for this class of nitro powder bring it down below its possibilities, because, as these cones stretch under powder-gas pressure, it is similar in effect to the powder occupying more space in the chamber, and negatives a great part of its capacity for double expansions of other powders within the barrel. At present the makers of condensed powders have not been strong enough to get gun chambers generally shortened to suit them, and thus they are condemned to compete handicapped; but if we were starting to design guns afresh, and were not bound by precedent and the necessity of sometimes borrowing cartridges and lending them, gun chambers and cartridges would be shortened to make use of the possible 80, instead of 40, expansions, with an accompanying still further reduction of lost powder-gas momentum, or loss by “blast,” and its automatic accompaniment of more reduction of recoil.

Of course short cartridges in long chambers are not to be thought of from the standpoint of improvement, and in many guns they ball the shot in a most dangerous way. Thicker wadding is more objectionable than coned cases, unless it could be made lighter than the greased felt wad is now, and not only lighter but less compressible, because to compress it is to hinder it from bridging the cone between the mouth of the cartridge and the barrel proper, and it also enlarges the powder chamber in practice.

Some few years ago the cartridge-makers and the gun-makers came to an agreement, that there should be a maximum size for cartridges for each gauge and a minimum size for gun chambers. This was very wise and proper. These sizes are well known to all gun-makers, to whom they are important, but they have no interest for shooters, because the latter have not the instruments to measure either chambers or cartridges, and the usual and very proper practice is to make the seller responsible, and return cartridges that are too big to go in the chambers, or too small, so that they shoot weak, or burst the cases, or both.

Herein lies a great advantage of taking your gun-maker into confidence about cartridges. We cannot, as a rule, give bigger or smaller cases to fit chambers that may have been made, or grown, bigger before or since the agreement was come to; but if chambers are rather large for cartridges, and consequently shooting is somewhat weak, he can suggest a grain or two of additional powder to the usual charge. It is the belief of the author that a gun-maker usually delights in turning his customers out to do the best possible work, and will take any trouble to that end, not only because it is business, but because it gives personal pleasure.

Shot sizes are mentioned under the headings of the game to which they are most fitted; but although a slight advantage can be had by using hard shot, it is so slight as to be scarcely worth attention from the marksman’s point of view, and those who love not the dentist should at least refrain from breaking their own teeth unnecessarily.

Until something better is invented for the purpose of trying guns and cartridges, strawboard racks and Pettitt pads are the only means open to the shooter, and besides, when properly used, are the best means. Both vary in thickness and hardness, the latter according to the weather. But every shooter can arrange for a trial against a gun he knows, and against hand-filled black powder cartridges. Then, if he uses his “trial horse” against the same pads and boards as the other gun, or new cartridges, he will arrive at correct comparative results. This is not only the most effective but the cheapest way. If strawboards are used, the first and last boards can be renewed for each shot. The chances of having a shot pass through an already made shot hole are too remote and unimportant to matter. Then the way to assess penetration is to count the shot that struck the first board or sheet of paper, and the number that pierced the last, arranging the last in such a position that about one-half those pellets that hit the first paper also go through the last. This takes the mean penetration of the load, and was Colonel Hawker’s method. The results will then read something like this: .41, .50, .60, .55 of total shot through, say, 20 sheets of brown paper Pettitt pad.

The true way of testing the energy of the shot is by means of the ballistic pendulum, but although the author has designed a more simple apparatus than the usual device of this sort, it is not yet sufficiently tried to warrant its description.

To the very few who load their own cartridge-cases the author can offer no advice beyond this: the best cases and wadding, and the best powder, meaning the highest priced, are necessary, and not merely luxuries. The amateur loader has no means of testing powders to see if they fluctuate, and he must rely, therefore, on the maker; and that very careful person will take the most trouble over that for which he charges most. The shooter, in fact, is not buying raw material, but personal care and trouble. There is a possibility of a professional loader varying his method to suit fluctuations in strength and rapidity of powder. He can do it by means of the turnover, or by adding to or reducing the charge; but this is outside the range of the amateur’s skill. He would not know what was wanted. Even the best nitro powders do vary, batch for batch, and also by reason of the heat of the weather as well as by that of their storehouse.

The best place to keep cartridges in during the winter is the gun-room with a fire, and in the summer in the gun-room also, if it is dry enough not to require a fire; but the principal safeguard is to keep cartridges and their bags and magazines out of the sun as much as possible. The sun will easily raise the so-called “pressure” by about a ton per square inch in some cartridges. How much this may really be it is difficult to even suggest, but Lieutenant Hardcastle has estimated that “pressures” are not reliable within 30 per cent., and the author would have said by more. Fifty per cent. added is a very different proportion to 50 per cent. of reduction. In one case it is as 2 to 3, and in the other case it is as 2 to 1.

WITH PLENTY OF FREEDOM FOR GOOD LATERAL SWING

THE THEORY OF SHOOTING

Many scientific calculations have been made with a view to improving the shooting of sportsmen, or at least of interesting them. Two, which are in theory unassailable, have appeared very often indeed in the unanswerable form of figures and measurements, and nevertheless they are both misleading, and even wrong, in the crude form in which they have been left. One of these is based on the calculation that the shot and the game can only meet provided a certain fixed allowance in front of moving game is given. The calculations are quite correct, but they have no application to sport, for the simple reason that they neglect to calculate the reduction of the theoretical allowance in front, supposed to be necessary, but not all imperative because of the swing of the gun. In other words, the gunner, however expert he may be, does not know exactly where his gun points at the instant the tumbler falls, let alone the instant the shot leaves the barrel. Between the instant of pulling the trigger and the shot leaving the barrel a swinging gun will have moved some unknown distance, and this represents additional unobserved allowance. An inch of this movement at the muzzle of the gun becomes an allowance of 40 inches in as many yards of range. It will be necessary to refer to this unconscious allowance again directly, because it has a bearing upon the second oft-stated proposition.

It is this: mental perceptions in various individuals range from quick to slow, and besides this the muscular action due to mental orders and nerve impulses also range from slow to quick. Both these well-known facts are constantly asserted to necessitate an added allowance in front of game by the slow individual. In practice, however, these slow individuals never admit the yards of allowance that they are supposed to need to allow in front of fast crossing game. It has occurred to the author to question whether the man of slow perception and of slow muscular obedience does need to allow more than the quick individual. Probably it is exactly the reverse; and he has to see less space between the muzzle and the game than the quicker man and than he of what is mistakenly called less personal error.

The “personal error” seems to be in assuming that the slow individual does not subconsciously know his own speed, and compensate for it.

Apparently it is mistaken to place the actions of shooting in this or any other sequence of events. It is said, “You see the game, you aim, your eyes tell the brain your aim is true, your brain orders the muscles to let off the gun.” That is possibly correct for some people, but the author does not believe that any fast crossing game would ever be killed if it were so. His view is that there is the game; your brain now instructs two sets of muscles to move in different directions, one to move the gun and another to pull the trigger, and at the same time informs each how rapidly to act in order that lefthand gun-swing and right index-finger pressure may arrive precisely together. This is what is called hand and eye working together, but it should be hand and finger. The eye certainly may observe whether the two things have been done at the same instant of time, but when they have not there is no time for correction; all the eye can do is to inform the brain that the swing did not catch up before the gun was off, or the reverse, so that the brain may correct the missed timing for the next shot. It is necessary to observe that the finger pressure starts, as does the swing of the gun, before aim is completed, and that if the latter were got before the order to pull were given by the brain, it would be lost by the mere continued swing of the gun before the order could be executed.

What has to be considered, then, is what appears to the brain at the instant of discharge. The quicker the perception of things as they happen, the more space will be observed between the muzzle and the crossing bird as the gun races past the game. The slow perception will not observe that the gun has passed the bird when the explosion occurs, and this clearly accounts for some good shots declaring they never make any allowance for crossing game, but shoot “pretty much at ’em.” Of course they do nothing of the sort; but they tell you what they perceive. They do not observe that in the interval between pulling trigger and the shot leaving the barrel the gun has travelled past the game very considerably, and what they have observed is the relative position of gun and game at the time the trigger gave way. For their class of shooting, therefore, they must look for less daylight between gun and game than the person of quick perception, who sees most of what there is to observe.

The velocity of light is so much greater than the velocity of recoil, that it may be questioned, on that ground, whether this is the right explanation, on the assumption that only recoil would stop the perception of the relative positions of game and gun. But were it so, it is necessary to remember that the velocity of light has no relationship to the velocity of brain perception through the eyes.

But probably recoil has nothing to do with the matter for the man of slow perception, and to him the discharge is done with as soon as the trigger gives way. It appears, then, that the slower brain perception is through the eyes, the less observed allowance a swinging gun will require.

Is it possible to shoot fast crossing game without a swinging gun? For an answer to this, the author has tried to come back from the first shot to meet flying game behind with the second barrel, but has found it impossible to kill. Here the swing is in the opposite direction to the movement of the game, and it invariably carries the shot behind the game. Assuming it to be possible (as it is) to throw up the gun to a point of aim at which game and shot will intercept each other, the gun is mostly, possibly always, given a swing in the direction of the game’s movement by the mere act of presenting. That is to say, the shooter is raising his gun from a position more or less in the direction of the game when he starts the movement, and as the game is not there when the explosion occurs it is obvious that the gun has done some swinging, possibly unknown to the shooter.

Much reliance upon this kind of racing with the game has its disadvantages as well as its advantages. It reduces the necessity for accurate judgment of speed of game to a minimum. That is to say, if the gun races the game, and gets ahead of it unobserved by the shooter, the pace of the gun is set by the pace of the game, and the unobserved allowance ahead is also, and consequently, automatically adjusted by the game itself—that is, by its angle and its speed.

But this method of shooting takes no account of the height of the game, and possibly this is one reason why high pheasants are so very difficult to many excellent marksmen at lower birds.

The pace of game high and low being the same, it is, relatively to the movement of the gun, slower according as distance increases. If the gun muzzle has to move 5 feet a second to get ahead of game crossing at 20 yards away, it need move but 2½ feet per second to get ahead of game 40 yards away and moving at the same velocity. Consequently, when the whole allowance is given unconsciously by swing, and is just enough at 20 yards, it is clear that the same swing will only give the same unconscious allowance at 40 yards, and that this will not be half enough at that range, where the pellets are travelling slower and have double the distance to go.

TAKING A STEP BACK WITH THE LEFT FOOT AS THE SHOT IS FIRED SAVES THE BALANCE WHEN THE GAME HAS PASSED FAR OVER HEAD BEFORE BEING SHOT AT

For this reason, in theory—and the author’s experience supports theory in this case—it is better to make an allowance in front of all game, in addition to swing, and to increase the allowance very much for long ranges. To reduce theory to practice: with a swing to the gun automatically set by the speed of the bird, the author would find it necessary to allow 3 yards ahead of game at 40 yards, whereas the same game at the same speed would not have more than 2 feet allowance at 20 yards. But as all game varies in speed, and as all shooters see what they do differently, this has no educational value for anyone, except so far as it sets out a principle that has not hitherto been dealt with, except in some newspaper articles—namely, the principle that swing regulated automatically by the pace of the bird has more effect at short range than at long range. This is so whether the nature of the swing is merely to follow and catch the game, or to race it and get past it, or to race past it to a selected point or distance in front.

To attempt to bring home this truth to those who do not agree with these remarks, it may be expedient to point out that they explain a very common experience. One sometimes gives ample apparent allowance in front of a crossing bird, and shoots well behind him; then, with the second barrel, one races to catch him before he disappears over a hedge, fires apparently a foot or a yard before the game is caught up, and nevertheless kills dead.

The judgment of speed is not very important if one allows the speed of the game to regulate the rate of the swinging gun, and although it is frequently discussed as if no one could shoot well without a perfect knowledge of speed, it seems doubtful whether it is necessary to worry about it, when the act of getting on the game is really an automatic regulation of swinging to the movement of the bird.

But as there are very likely some shooters who would like to be able to calculate speed as accurately as may be, here is a plan which is never very much out for heavy short-winged game, such as pheasants, partridges, grouse, black game, and wild duck of kinds.

Estimate the height of the game at the moment it was shot, then measure, by stepping, the distance the dead (not wounded) bird travels before it touches the flat ground. Air resistance to the fall of the bird will be practically just equal to air resistance to its onward movement after it is dead, and the time it takes to fall, and necessarily also to go forward the measured distance, are the same. The time taken for the fall may be safely calculated by the height in feet divided by 16, and the square root of the dividend is the number of seconds of the fall. Thus, if the bird falls 64 feet, then 64
16 = 4, and the square root of 4 is 2 seconds. In 3 seconds the game falls 48 yards, so that practically all pheasants take between 2 and 3 seconds to fall, or ought to do so.

The velocity the bird is travelling before being shot does not affect the time it takes to reach the ground, but wind, with or against the game, slightly alters the distance it goes forward after being killed. With the wind the game will always be going faster than the air, and will therefore be getting air resistance from the front, and the method only partially breaks down when a heavy wind is blowing directly against the game.

H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES AND LORD FARQUHAR RIDING TO THE BUTTS ON THE BOLTON ABBEY MOORS, 1906

THE PRACTICE OF SHOOTING

Mr. Walter Winans has expressed the opinion that the better a shooter grows at the rifle targets the worse he becomes at moving objects with the rifle and gun. But it is probable that all good shooting at moving objects is based upon a beginning of steady alignments. Those who believe that shooting at flying game is to be well learnt before still objects can be accomplished seem to the author to neglect the first principles, and would run before they can walk. There is this to be considered: that one often does get, even in grouse and partridge driving, marks that are exactly equivalent to still objects. That is to say, they are coming perfectly straight at the gun. Is one to let them off without shooting quite straight because one has been taught not to align? There is no doubt the best shots do align for the very fastest crossing game if there is time to do it; and the belief of the author is that a man cannot be really quite first-rate unless he can shoot in every style as occasion requires. That is to say, he will be able upon occasion, when circumstances and time admit of but a brief sight of a crossing bird between the branches of fir trees, to throw his gun ahead to a point, as he thinks, and tries to do, without swing, and will be able to kill his game. The author has occasionally risen to such success himself, but only when he has not been trying to do it, but has grown up to it, out of the more certain method of consciously swinging past the bird to a point in space ahead, and pulling trigger as the alignment was getting to the spot, and without checking the gun. In the first-named style of shooting, when the kill comes off, there is probably always swing, by reason of the gun being put up from a position pointing much behind the bird, so that the swing occurs as the gun is going home to the shoulder, and it is not checked when the trigger is pulled, simply because no swing can be checked instantly. By this method of finding the place and shooting at it, the author can manage rabbits jumping across rides—that is, when he manages to kill them at all; but he prefers to handle winged game by the slower and surer method, which, however, he would abandon for the better style if he could. But the ability to be quick in this better style is not his for a permanency, it only comes sometimes, when there is not time to take game with a conscious swing of the gun. The late Mr. A. Stuart Wortley, who was one of the best game-driving shots of his time, has told us in one of his books that he could not hit anything until he started to shut one eye and align. Later, he thought first aiming at a bird, and then swinging forward of it, was slow, and making two operations of one. Lord Walsingham has assented to a description of shooting in which the “racing” of the bird with the gun was the principal feature, and Lord de Grey has been watched to put his gun up, try to get on, and, failing, take it down without shooting; all of which tends to show that alignment and swing are the two necessary factors in shooting, not necessarily alignment of the game, but generally of a moving point at the end of a space in front of the game. Mr. F. E. R. Fryer is very clear about the advantages of swing, and also allowance in front. As he is as quick a shot as ever was deliberate, and more deadly than those in a hurry, there can be no better proof that swing itself is not necessarily accompanied by any delay. But there are two or more kinds of swing, and it does not necessarily mean what Mr. Stuart Wortley implied. It is not always, or often possibly, a jerk after getting on the game, neither is it a following round of the game, but in its best form it is probably mostly done before the gun touches the shoulder, and is not stopped by contact with the shoulder, or by pulling the trigger. It is not supposed that those who can sometimes bring off this ideal style—which, in intention, is finding the right place in front of the game to shoot at—always find this style possible to them. At least, not invariably possible for very high and very fast game; and the author believes that the only way to it for a novice is to begin by aligning, go on by aligning, and end by aligning; for that is really what this ideal style of shooting amounts to. It is aligning a spot, which bears no mark, ahead of game, and doing it as the gun comes home to the shoulder, and with a double movement, while it swings in the direction the game is going. That is to say, it is the quickest and most accurate alignment of all. That is the outcome of all the author has been able to learn of the methods of crack shots, confirmed by his own longer but smaller experience with the shot gun.

H.R.H THE PRINCE OF WALES WAITING FOR GROUSE, SHOWING THE MUCH MORE FORWARD POSITION OF THE LEFT HAND THAN WHEN SHOOTING

These remarks have appeared necessary by reason of the large quantity of bad advice that has been given. Those who have said that no alignment was necessary, because it took too much time, seem to have a notion that the gun has to move fast because the game does so. But a muzzle movement at the rate of 3 or 4½ feet a second, or two, to three miles an hour (less than the space of an ordinary walk), will out-race any reasonable bird at 30 yards range, even if he is travelling 90 miles an hour, so that it is not pace, as such, that is difficult.

Calculated allowance in front of game, and the automatic allowance for speed by reason of swinging with the bird, have been touched upon already. The worst objections to giving a little too much allowance ahead are, that only a part of that proportion of the load that should hit the game does reach it, and that part is the weakest of the load, or, at any rate, the last pellets. Another is, that any swerve of the game ensures a complete miss, and it is swerving of fast game that causes its difficulty much more than its pace. This supposed necessity for being so very quick because of the great pace of game has spoilt more shots than anything else. There generally is plenty of time to be deliberate, to aim at the exact spot while moving the gun at least fast enough to keep ahead of the game, and it is necessary to remember that the best shots are the quickest only because they are most deliberate, and get “on the spot” before firing, or, to be more correct, know that they are about to get there by the time their fingers can take effect on the trigger. Mr. Fryer before mentioned says that he has both to swing and make allowance too for the very fast high birds.

Probably the best way to avoid stopping the gun as one pulls trigger, or waiting to see that aim is correct before letting off, is to make a rule to pull just before the right alignment is reached. It will be reached by the time the shot leave the gun.

There is no reason to say that for handling a pair of guns instinctively a loader must be trained by the shooter himself, because there are so many ways of giving and taking guns. Besides this, shooting far off with the first barrel for grouse, and as soon as partridges top the fence, are essentials to getting in four barrels at a brood, or covey, as the case may be. Moreover, it is generally a case of kill or miss in front of the shooter, and wound or kill behind him.

Shooting schools cannot help a shooter to learn to kill curling pheasants, swerving partridges, wrenching grouse, or zigzagging snipe, but they can teach the quick firing and changing of guns. And to one not in practice it is this quick firing that puts a shooter out of touch with gun and game, much more readily than swerve, wrench, zigzag, or curl.

All the talk of the speed of driven game making it difficult has frightened and unnerved many a beginner at such birds, but it is merely the echo of what was said before shooters had learnt that they had to swing and aim ahead as well. To talk of speed of game now, as if there was some mystery in it, is merely to unnerve more disciples of Diana. When once the gunner knows where he has got to shoot for the driven bird (in the singular), the shot is much easier than the going-away game, because the longer you wait in one case the worse chance you have, and in the other the better chance you have. If the shooter thinks differently, he can turn round in the grouse butt every time, instead of shooting his game coming; but he will soon give that up, because he will find his gun is not equal to the greater requirements of the going-away game.

H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES SHOOTING GROUSE AT BOLTON ABBEY, SHOWING THE VERY FORWARD POSITION OF THE LEFT HAND.

After writing the remarks above, it seemed to be the proper course to consult some of those excellent marksmen who are discussed by everybody. Consequently, the author bethought him of the article he had written for Bailey’s Magazine on the twelve best shots, and decided to ask for the views of a few of those expert marksmen who had, by the votes of others, come out as best. He was impelled to this course not with any desire to have his own views corroborated by such good authority, but in order, if possible, with the greater authority, to correct what to him appear very erroneous notions so often seen in print. As nobody can assist those who are perfect already, it is clear that the novice is the person who can benefit by a discussion of the subject. For this reason it was not so much to inquire how crack shots shoot now, as how they learnt to shoot, that was the intention of these inquiries. Often have been put forward the methods of shooters after they have become expert, which is about as helpful as telling a schoolboy, “There is W. G., go and imitate him with your cricket bat.” The author’s own fault of delay and the limitation of space has rendered it necessary to compress this information into very small space.

After disowning any more connection with the twelve best than a hundred others have an equal right to, Mr. R. H. Rimington Wilson was good enough to reply to some leading questions in much this way:—

In shooting at fast crossing game he looks at the place he is going to shoot, not at the game.

He admits that the “ideal” best form in shooting would be to bring up the gun in the nearest way, without swing, and to shoot to the right place, but he questions whether it can be done for high, or fast, wide birds. He can do it for near grouse, just as the writer has explained that he does it for rabbits. But Mr. Wilson is convinced that for far-off fast game you must “swing.” He once questioned Lord de Grey on how he shot, and the reply was that this great performer took every advantage the game gave time for. That is to say, he only shot quick, by the throwing up and firing without swing, when there was no time for swing.

For pheasants, Mr. Wilson prefers to get behind them and race his gun to the front without stopping the gun to inquire whether he has got in front, because he finds that such a stop means shooting behind. But although this is his plan, he questioned whether it was right, because when he has occasionally shot from a deep gorge, where there was no time for this method, he has found the game come down, just as he has when a quick second barrel has been sent after a first failure. The author thinks this only emphasises the use and value of swing; because in shooting at a pheasant crossing a deep gorge the very act of putting up the gun to the shoulder constitutes a swing in the direction the game is going. It is probably the fastest of all swinging, and the one to which the shooter is least able to apply the muscular stop. This, then, represents what some crack shots do now. But the most important thing to know is how did they arrive at that point? Did they begin by snapping at the place where the bird was going to be when their shot arrived, or did they begin by aligning, and so grow into the mastery of the gun?

The former has been the fashionable method to talk of in the press, but Mr. Rimington Wilson is very emphatic on the necessity of the rifle like aligning as a start. The author was very pleased to hear this, because it is one of those points on which he has always disagreed with what may be called the written schooling of the shot gun. We have all heard of the man who never would go in the water until he had learnt to swim, and probably the would-be crack shot who wishes to begin at the end will make no more progress than the would-be swimmer.

MR. R. H. RIMINGTON WILSON SHOOTING GROUSE, SHOWING THE BACK POSITION OF THE LEFT HAND

Mr. Wilson does not believe in choke bores. He thinks that the 8 or 9 yards of distance they increase the range is paid for very dearly at all near ranges. Another point made by this good sportsman is contrary altogether to accepted ideas. He does not believe driven grouse harder to kill than grouse shot over dogs, and would rather back himself to kill consecutive numbers of the former than the latter. Here, again, Mr. Wilson is in agreement with the author, who has often given this opinion in the press, and has, moreover, supported it by pointing to the wretched scoring of double rises at the pigeon traps, even at 25 yards and by the best pigeon shots in Europe. Pigeons, again, are much more responsive to lead than a right and left grouse at 35 yards rise in October. The grouse spring twice as quick as the pigeon. But Mr. Wilson was not speaking of the October grouse, but of average grouse shooting over dogs and average driving. Probably we all agree that there is an occasional impossible in almost every kind of shooting.

Another point that Mr. Wilson has assisted the author to place in its true light is that his big bags are by no means made for their own sake, but simply because the grouse are on the moor and his is the only way to get them. To hunt for grouse in driblets would be to drive most of them away never to be shot. They are so wild that they have to be broken up by the severest treatment, and as one man could drive them all away, so it takes an army of flankers and beaters to keep them on the moor during the driving days.

Mr. Wilson shoots with Boss single-trigger guns, and, contrary to expectation and ideas, one of these single triggers is often made to do duty in a day’s tramp after a couple of woodcock or a small bag of snipe.

FORM IN GAME SHOOTING—I

“Form,” like “taste,” is a very definite thing to every one of us, but probably no two persons have ever quite agreed about either. Shooting “form” is just as definite: we know for ourselves what is, and what is not, good form instantly; but again it is not an easy thing to agree upon in the abstract, although in practice when two men discuss another they will not be unlikely to agree that he is either “good form” or “bad form.” There appears to be no half-way house—it is always either good or bad. Form as it is generally understood has not much to do with success, but is more a matter of appearance. If a shooter at a covert side planted his gun at his shoulder when the drive began and so kept it until a pheasant came over into line, and then he let off, his form would not be either good or bad—it would be too uncommon for either; too ridiculous to be seen, in fact; but it is precisely that which pigeon shooters and clay bird men mostly adopt. It is outside the question of game killing altogether.

No kind of shooting requires more sharpness of eye than grouse driving, and when the gun is at the shoulder, engaged with one bird, we all know how easy it is for others to slip by unobserved, and then we get just as bad a reputation as if we had blazed away and missed.

Obviously, quickness of perception has much influence on success, but whether it has anything to do with form is doubtful. It is curious that what we all agree is the best possible style for the second barrel is the worst possible for the first. The man who takes down his gun between the double shot is a fumbler, unless he has to turn round; but the man who keeps his gun at the shoulder for the first shot is worse. The reason it is bad form in one case and good in another may not be quite the same as why it leads to success in one case and not in the other. Perhaps an appearance of ease has some near relationship to good form, and ease itself has a nearer affinity to success with the gun. It would tire out the arms to practise in game shooting the pigeon shooter’s methods, on whose arms the strain in the “present” position lasts only until he calls “pull.” The strain in game shooting would last long, and it would certainly happen that when, at last, game did come within range, the arms of the shooter would be too cramped to deal properly with it. “Form,” therefore, appears in this instance to have some relationship to success. But this is far from being always so. The author remembers one case of a young man who did not kill much, but of whom it was said it was more pleasant to see him miss than to see others kill. This was in shooting over dogs, when good style greatly depended upon “wind” and “stamina” to get over and shoot from any rough foothold.

There is “form” in walking also, and when stamina counts there can be no good style in shooting without good easy walking. Look at the different angles of body in which men go up and come down hills. In the ascent some people bend their backs over their foremost toes, and progress, truly, but they have to “right” themselves when the flush occurs, and before they have done it the bird has flown 20 yards. Again, in going down hill some men throw back their bodies, and if they have suddenly to stop they again have to “right” themselves before they can shoot with success.

But there is something worse than bad shooting style, there is bad sporting form; and coming down hill often brings it obviously to the man who is walking behind, and sees the leading man’s gun carried on the shoulder, pointing dead at the pit of the follower’s stomach. That cannot be avoided when the gun is carried on the shoulder in Indian file; but it never ought to be so carried then, and in the writer’s opinion, at least, is a deadly disregard of “good form.” In this case probably there will be no disagreement by any who from this cause have ever felt their “hearts in their mouths.” Guns can be jarred off, and the rough ground on a moorland down-hill path often occasions very sudden jars.

There are other shooters who always seem to be at the ready, whether they are going up hill or down; whether they are jumping from peat hag to peat hag; or, in the bogs, from one rush clump to another, to save themselves from sinking in the intervening soft ground. Balance has a great deal to do with it, and some there are who can shoot straight even when the foothold is rotten and is giving way under them. It is clear that good form requires that the performer should be able to shoot from any position the rise happens to find him in. If he must get the left foot forward and the weight of the body upon it, he will not be as quick as others who can get off their guns no matter where their feet may happen to be.

This seems to be all a matter of balance, and the nearer we imitate cat-like equilibrium, and not only keep our heads uppermost, but keep them cool in all circumstances, the more surely shall we get our guns off at the right moment.

The latest phase of shooting is to make it as easy as possible to accomplish the difficult. Paradoxically, we have our boarded floor in our grouse butts, racks to keep the guns off the peat, and shelves upon which to distribute our cartridges, and we place our grouse butts to favour the guns. Then, having made everything as easy as possible for the sportsman, we now attempt to make the birds as hard to kill as wings and the wind can make them. We send over the pheasants as far out of reach as we can make them fly; we take particular care to send the grouse down wind if we can; and when we have got our guns swinging yards in front of the streaks of brown lightning, then we are especially pleased if we can bring off an up-wind drive in which the birds can just, and only just, beat up against the gale, and so defeat the guns again by the new variation of flight; one in which any sort of lead on the birds, any kind of swing, will have no other effect than shooting yards in front of the game, and perhaps in turning it back to fly over the drivers’ heads and miles down wind beyond.