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HINTS ON PUNTING TO FOWL 255 
When the first few fowl crane their necks, and the punt is any 
distance near eighty yards, don’t delay. If a sixty-yards shot 
can be secured, put up the necks of all the fowl by shouting, 
allowing that the gun is laid right, and fire quickly, sighted just 
clear of the highest heads. Should the fowl be asleep or 
unsuspicious, and a near shot is gained, fire fair at them. 
Any distance a hundred yards or over, must have some allow- 
ance made for the drop of the shot. With a shot a hundred 
yards distance and the fowl on the alert, considerable over- 
head allowance, about eight feet, must be given the gun, as the 
fowl spring on sight of the flash or the smoke, and thus are in 
the air before the shot reaches them. Shots of this kind on 
windy days, when the smoke is blown aside, appear as though 
the shot had been a flying one, for the stricken fowl can be 
seen tumbling back out of the flock. Timing of the shot is 
here brought into practice, but not to the same extent as with 
a true flying shot. In real flying shots the lanyard is not 
pulled until the fowl are on wing. Similarly to shooting with 
a shoulder gun at a moving object, so does the punter allow 
ahead or above the fowl with his punt-gun; but, as the 
distance is much greater, so also is this allowance. The amount 
of allowance is a difficult thing to explain; in fact, it cannot 
be learned except by sheer practice, as circumstances differ in 
each case, such as the speed of the fowl and the distance they 
are from the gun. Such shots as these require skill in that 
art well known in wildfowling, but inexplicable on paper, of 
‘*timing the shot.” Although good flying shots with a punt- 
gun are pretty work, and certainly the pure art of punt- 
gun shooting, it must be remembered that to perform such, 
everything must be accurately gauged, or a very poor shot 
will be the result. Good flying shots generally return more 
fowl, but greater certainty lies upon the result of the shot if 
the fowl are taken sitting. 
We have already gained an outline of how to discharge a 
