[Chip. IX, 



4 5 PARV. 2H.| 



dead (two others fell, but disappeared) and proved to be a 

 common Pochard, The fact is that the wing-rustle varies 

 a good deal according to whether the fowl are going with 

 or against the wind and whether the air is dry and clear 

 or loaded with mist and drizzle ; and only a very practised 

 fen-man can always be quite sure of every bird at all times 

 by the sound of its wings." 



Hume's remarks generally in this connection, given 

 in his own vivid style, may be quoted. "To an old 

 Norfolk Hight-shooter the best part of the sport com- 

 mences... when in cold, cloudy weather, such as we get 

 about Xmas, it gets pitch-dark soon after sunset, and you 

 shoot entirely by the whistle of the wings and at most 

 catch, just as you fire, the faintest glimpse of a shadow 

 just flitting across the gloom above. How the gun 

 cracks at such a time ! What a blaze of liglir it 

 sheds, lightning-like, around for an instant, and then 

 how pleasant, in the midst of the intense darkness that 

 succeeds, to hear tlie one, two, three heavy thuds or 

 splashes of the victims which in a very few moments your 

 dogs will lay at your feet! It is just when it is too dark 

 to see and when you have to shoot, judging not only 

 direction and distance, but rate of flight also, by ear, that 

 flioht shooting becomes a real sport. But then for this 

 you must not be posted on the far side of the jhil, where 

 the birds will circle, but some distance on the near 

 side, at a place where the birds will pass over with 

 arrowy straightness, if also with arrowy speed. At no 

 time, I think, does the sportsman feel a greater sense of 

 elation than when standing thus in a clump of bushes, a 

 cold wind and drizzling rain bracing his nerves, he suc- 

 ceeds in making flight after flight, as they swish past 

 unseen, each steadily contrilnite its quota to his bag. Hut 

 I suspect that, to make any liand of this night work, you 

 must have practised it from cliildhood, and even then, no 

 doubt, it is uncertain work. Sometimes you cannot hit 

 anything, and sometimes, just as at billiards, you get 

 your liand in and not a wing can liurtle past without pay- 

 ino- the [xMialtv." For tliis sort of shooting, good dogs are 

 a ^ine qua uon, but there are few people who are fortunate 

 enough to possess them in India. Was it, by the way, 

 his addiction to this metiiod of fliglit shooting at night 

 that makes Hume give the curious advice that " it is 

 always wrong to fire at fowl coming towards you? " " You 

 should, he says, always let them pass before drawing- 

 trigger," and lie adds that the breast-feathers of a Pintail 

 will turn comparatively heavy shot at very moderate dis- 

 tances. He did not know, evidently, the pleasure which 

 the votary of the modern twelve bore feels when he takes 

 an incoming bird neatly in the head. Any shooting is 

 apt to be chancy when it is so dark that you cannot see 



