CHAPTER XXXVIII 



DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS OF THE 

 GUNNING-PUNT 



I have already stated my experience that during- mild 

 winters, and under certain conditions of weather, wildfowl 

 are practically unobtainable, even with the complete 

 appliances of punt and stanchion-gun. I refer to the 

 ordinary type of gun as generally used on the coast. Of 

 course, if the size and weight of wildfowling weapons is to 

 be increased indefinitely, the case might be wholly altered ; 

 but surely good taste should impose some limit in this 

 direction. Geese might, no doubt, be reached with shrap- 

 nell at many hundred yards, for a season or two ; after 

 that they would leave this country for good. 1 



The unfavourable conditions referred to may prevail 

 throughout the whole winter and quite an inappreciable 

 proportion of geese will be killed, though hundreds, or 

 even thousands, may daily be seen. Yet there have been 

 written books to tell us how to get them — and to get 

 them in numbers — under any conditions whatever. Such 

 conceits would, on our bleak and shelterless north-east 

 coast, prove misleading, and probably lead their exponents 



1 Reading the above paragraph after eighteen years, it sounds almost 

 prophetic ; for we have since suffered the very abomination foreshadowed, 

 in this abuse of huge swivel-guns by shrapnell-shooting Pompommers. 



