46 THE COMPLETE WILDFOWLER 
most sparingly, the wood being afterwards polished to a bright 
surface, first with chamois leather, and afterwards with an old 
silk handkerchief. 
There is one thing which wildfowlers have to contend with, 
in contrast to other kinds of sportsmen, which spoils the look 
of a gun as much as anything. This is the mud which almost 
certainly gets into the fine chequering of the fore end and 
grip. This may be easily brushed or wiped off surface-smooth, 
but a dry residuum of a light brown colour will remain be- 
tween the lines. To remove this with a pin or piece of wire, 
or worse still the point of a pocket-knife, is to risk cutting and 
scratching the wood. I have found nothing so good as a 
simple quill tooth-pick run quickly up and down the lines each 
way, when the dust removed can be blown off. Finally, when 
putting a thoroughly cleaned and oiled gun back into its cup- 
board, hold it by a piece of wash-leather, so that no unsightly 
finger-prints may be left upon its shining barrels and furniture. 
It is a good plan to insert snap-caps into the chambers of 
hammerless guns before putting them away, but before putting 
new snap-caps into use it is as well to slightly loosen the vulcanite 
cap, by means of the screw inside the shell. If the triggers are 
subsequently pulled there is not so much jar to the striking-pin. 
These are few enough, for when anything goes 
GUN-ROOM 
TooLs Wrong with the locks of a gun, amateur inter- 
ference—even when a man is of a mechanical 
bent—is undesirable, the gun-maker should be consulted at 
once. It is far safer and better to do so in every way. A 
couple of small screwdrivers—of good steel and a fine edge— 
a nipple-key, perhaps, for hammer weapons, and a few ex- 
tractors are nearly all that the fowler requires. 
Two kinds of extractors are sold, the brass ring and hook 
variety, which is clumsy and practically worthless, and the 
steel-tweezer kind, which is much better. But even this latter 
is a nuisance to the wildfowler, however useful it may be in the 
