62 Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



is one great thing to remember in pheasant shooting, and that is to 

 hold far enough forward, and that is the difficulty. A pheasant well 

 on the wing goes a tremendous pace, and unless you pitch the gun a foot 

 or two or more, according to distance and pace, in front, you will be 

 exactly that distance behind the bird when the shot reaches his distance. 

 Of course, the further the bird is off, and the faster he is going, the further 

 in front must you pitch your gun to get on him ; and it is the instinctive 

 calcvdation of eye and hand in this particular that makes the good pheasant 

 shot. It is astonishing, sometimes, how dead a bird will come over when you 

 have pointed as you thought perhaps almost too far in front. You may kill 

 any number of birds hand running flying away from you, unless they are 

 rising at the same time, as they mostly are, when you must shoot high ; but 

 aiming across or over it is another pair of boots. 



I shot one the other day. I am ashamed to say that he was something 

 like sixty yards off ; but it was rather an experiment. He was harking back 

 and coming down the middle of the wood well above the hazels forty miles 

 an hour, and apparently had dodged all the guns. I was standing on an 

 open, high bit, and could see well over the bushes. My gun shoots very 

 close and hard, and I determined to try for him; and I pitched the gun 

 about four feet or so in front of him. I thought at the time it was too 

 far, but he came over as dead as a stone, and left quite a cloud of feathers 

 in the air." 



" Who shot that pheasant ? " cried a voice just under the feathers. It 

 was my host on whose head almost I had dropped the bird. 



" I did," I called out. 



" Deuce of a long shot, wasn't it ? " 



" Rather. Is he dead ? " I asked. 



" Dead as a stone. That gun of yours must be a tearer. Hare to the 

 right! " Bang! bang! and over went a brace of somethings, for my friend is 

 a tearer too, and when he pitches lead does it to some purpose usually. 



Cover shooting, under any circumstances, is more or less dangerous, and 

 no matter how careful your shots may be, shots will glance; and you never 

 know exactly where everybody is, and when it comes to ground game — 

 unless it is going back— it is always more or less dangerous shooting, more 



