44 FIELD SHOOTING. 



or pleasure. I choose a stock of moderate length, 

 and one that is rather crooked one with a drop 

 of about three inches. This sort of a gun comes 

 even up to the shoulder with most men, and you 

 do not have to crook the neck much in taking 

 aim with it. Some people pretend that there is 

 no need to look along the rib at the bird in 

 order to shoot well. They shoot well, and they 

 say they do not do so. I believe they are mis- 

 taken. Taking aim does not mean dwelling on 

 the aim and pottering about in an uncertain way 

 with the gun at the shoulder. Even in snipe- 

 shooting there is a distinct aim taken, though, 

 when a good-fitting gun is brought up to the 

 shoulder, the aim is almost instantaneous, and the 

 discharge follows on the next instant. At pigeons 

 some men do shoot without sighting the bird ; 

 but they know just where the bird must fly 

 from, and they have the trick of covering the trap 

 by raising the breech and lowering the muzzle as 

 if done by a gauge, and then they blaze away. 

 Such men often kill the bird before it gets on the 

 wing, and this proves that practically they shoot 

 at the trap and just beyond it, rather than at the 

 bird. This sort of thing is impracticable in the 

 field, and there, if not everywhere else, the man 



