WHAT WILDFOWLING REALLY IS 15 
a distinct and peculiar method. All these must be studied 
and learnt by means of long and arduous experience, and 
there are fifty or sixty varieties of fowl the gunner may 
meet with. In addition to this the fowler must generally 
shoot in the most uncertain lights—dusk, dawn, and moon- 
light. He must shoot from cramped and seemingly im- 
possible positions, and often with a rapidity and certainty 
that may spoil or ensure the only shot he will obtain for 
many hours. 
I have said that the wildfowler must endure hardships 
and dangers, and indeed, both of them are inseparably 
attendant upon him. 
He must lie in wait in the bitterest cold and dark to 
circumvent the wariest and most cunning of created things. 
Up to his waist in ice-cold waters when the touch of the 
lock and trigger burns like fire, prone and motionless in a 
frail punt upon some deep and treacherous estuary of the 
sea, leaving his bed at all hours of the dark to face roaring 
winter winds—these are some of the things the wildfowler 
endures and glories in enduring. 
And his knowledge of the habits of his quarry must be 
profound. He must distinguish the myriad calls of the wild 
birds of marsh and sea; he must literally understand what 
they are saying to each other, what each individual note means 
to him ; he must be skilled in locality, in plumage, in species ; 
he must be able to judge exactly what this or that species of 
bird will do under the most varying conditions of wind and 
tide, in all kinds of weather and light. 
Yet another point goes to the education, and must be part 
of the equipment of the complete wildfowler. He must have 
a comprehensive knowledge of guns and ammunition far more 
extensive than is necessary for the ordinary sportsman. The 
question of punt-guns with their intricate mechanism must be 
at his fingers’ ends. He must know all about eight-bores, 
