i86 Goose-shooting 



game is up ; whether you have judged the moment rightly or not, 

 the Geese see the movement, and sheer away at once ; therefore you 

 abase yourself until the very last moment, then struggle to your 

 knees, with a heavy gun, or to your feet if you care to waste more 

 time, and do the best you can with the Geese that are rocketting 

 nearly straight up into the air as hard as they can go, and whose heads 

 and necks are about the only part of them you cannot see. 



I should like to see what kind of performance a first-rate 

 Grouse or Pheasant shot would make if he were compelled to lie 

 flat on his face in the grouse-butt or outside the cover, and only 

 allowed to rise and fire when the birds were directly over his head. 

 A free, comfortable and upright position counts for a great deal 

 in shooting, and these hardly ever fall to the wild-fowler's lot. 



All the difficulties which beset the deer-stalker are present and 

 magnified in stalking Geese, with the single but important exception 

 of the K'ind. 



This, with deer, is of supreme importance ; with Geese, in my 

 opinion, it is of small account. 



But against this must be set the difficulty of the shot itself. 

 " Take time, take time ! " the stalker whispers when he has got you 

 up to within loo yards or so of a stag. 



There is no time to take, once you are in sight of Geese ! As 

 you crawl over the ridge, they see you, and spring at once. Almost 

 every successful stalk is finished in this way, with a snap shot at 

 the birds on the wing, a deliberate shot at them on the ground being 

 the rarest exception. 



As with deer, so with Geese, any abnormal sound or movement 

 readily scares them. A Curlew, a Crow, or a Raven passing over 

 the prostrate stalkers will often put the Geese up, with their 

 sudden cry of alarm. A startled sheep cantering into view of the 

 Geese, generally means the end of everything — even a panic- 

 stricken rabbit may cause a carefully-planned stalk to come to a 

 sudden and disastrous conclusion. 



I will conclude with a few extracts from the diary, showing 

 the ups and downs, mostly downs, that attended me in this 

 sport : — 



December 22nd : Milton. — Mackintosh had marked some Grey 

 Geese (Grey-lags) down on the bog before our arrival, so he posted 

 the guns, and went round to try and shift them in our direction. 

 They had, however, miraculously disappeared, and we never saw 

 anything. He then tried to drive rather a large flock of Barnacle, 

 feeding on the Macher, over Kildonan Loch. Three guns were 

 placed rather widely apart. In the end, I was the only one they came 

 anywhere near. They were certainly high, and I was very cramped 

 up behind a miserable httle stone, but I ought to have had a couple : 

 as a fact, I clean missed. 



