ABOUT SHOOTING. 17 



Nor is it possible for every one to become an artist in gunnery ; 

 a "crack shot," like a poet, is born, not made. For myself I 

 make no pretensions to genius in that direction ; for although 

 I generally make fair bags, and have destroyed many thousand, 

 birds in my time, this is rather owing to some familiarity I 

 have gained with the habits of birds, and a certain knack, 

 acquired by long practice, of picking them out of trees and 

 bushes, than to skilful shooting from the sportsman's stand- 

 point ; in fact, if I cut down two or three birds on the wing with- 

 out a miss I am working quite up to my average in that line. 

 But any one, not a purblind " butter fingers," can become a 

 reasonably fair shot by practice, and do good collecting. It 

 is not so hard, after all, to sight a gun correctly on an immov- 

 able object, and collecting differs from sporting proper in this, 

 that comparatively few birds are shot on the wing. But I do 

 not mean to imply that it requires less skill to collect suc- 

 cessfully than to secure game ; ou the contrary, it is finer 

 shooting, I think, to drop a warbler skipping about a tree-top 

 than to stop a quail at full speed ; while hitting a sparrow that 

 springs from the grass at one's feet to flicker in sight a few 

 seconds and disappear is the most difficult of all shooting. 

 Besides, a crack shot, as understood, aims unconsciously, with 

 mechanical accuracy and certitude of hitting ; he simply wills, 

 and the trained muscles obey without his superintendence, 

 just as the fingers form letters with the pen in writing ; 

 whereas the collector must usually supervise his muscles all 

 through the act and see that they mind. In spite of the pro- 

 portion of snap shots of all sorts you will have to take, your 

 collecting shots, as a rule, are made with deliberate aim. 

 There is much the same difference, on the whole, between the 

 sportsman's work and the collector's, that there is between 

 shot-gun and rifle practice, collecting being comparable to the 

 latter. It is generally understood that the acme of skill with 

 the two weapons is an incompatibility ; and certainly, the best 

 shot is not always the best collector, even supposing the two to 

 be on a par in their knowledge of birds' haunts and habits. 

 Still, a hopelessly poor shot can only attain fair results by 



MAXUAL. 2 



