CHAPTER VIII. 
PUNTING IN CHICHESTER HARBOUR. 
I HAVE never lain with my nose at the tail of a punt gun, and cannot, 
therefore, dilate on the joys of ‘‘ putting two and half lbs. of B.B. nicely into a 
company of several thousand Wigeon.”’ Personally, I have always felt that, 
granting the undoubted difficulties that lie in the way of such an achieve- 
ment, there is a suggestion of the ‘‘ pogrom” about it after all. I would 
sooner stalk the said thousands with a shoulder gun, and pick out the 
handsomest drake, than I would train a punt gun on them with such well- 
timed accuracy as to stretch forty or fifty on the mud. It is the Collector’s 
view, no doubt, not the Sportsman’s, and I am quite ready to admit that, if I 
did set to work to train the punt gun, I should be morally certain to hit the 
mud, and nothing else. 
My experiences of punting, in the sense of shooting from a punt with a 
shoulder gun, have been confined to Chichester Harbour in the autumn, where, 
at that season, or, for that matter, at any other season, the question of how to 
deal with several thousand Wigeon is unlikely to bother anyone, inasmuch as 
the largest bunch of wild-fowl that I ever encountered there myself consisted 
of two Teal! There is much to be said, nevertheless, for the harbour as a 
place wherein to take one’s first lessons in punting. To begin with, at Dell 
Quay you can nearly always secure a punt—there seems no great competition 
for them—and, what is here no less necessary, a pair of mud-pattens; for the 
muds are treacherous in the extreme. Secondly, if you can learn to pick your 
way through the surrounding network of mudflats, when the tide is running 
out, without getting stuck, you may congratulate yourself on having acquired 
considerable slimness as a punter; while the man who gains sufficient mastery 
over the art of what is termed “sculling” to propel his craft against the 
current that runs past the quay, may henceforth pose almost as a pro- 
fessional; and last, but not least, the place is quiet and unfrequented, so that 
if you do find yourself stranded on a mudflat, or clinging monkeywise 
to a mud-embedded oar, while the punt glides away with your feet, there will 
