94) Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



The hardest shooting I ever had was at a place among some sandhills 

 and broken ground on the Welsh coast, not far from Borth. The proprietor 

 of this rabbitinical Eden let fellows shoot there for a shilling per diem — 

 so my informant told me. 



" But you give up your rabbits, of course ? " I said. 



" No ; that's the best of it. You have all you kill." 



" Then there ain't any rabbits there." 



" Heaps, so they say ; I don't understand it." 



" Nor do I. I suppose the fellows who come are just dufEers mostly, 

 and if one does come now and then who can shoot a bit, he just sets the 

 duffers to balance him. I'll have my bob's worth anyhow ; I'll show 'em 

 how to do it ! " I mentally resolved, for I fancied myself muchly at rabbit 

 shooting, having had a lot of all sorts, and frequently in cover bagging 

 ten or a dozen without a miss. 



But " vaulting ambition doth o'er leap itself ; " and so did mine. I 

 paid my shilling and sought the warren with a bag to carry the rabbits. 

 Ha ! ha ! It was a rough bit of ground, on old sand heaps, aU hummocks 

 and tussocks, covered with coarse, long, wiry grass. There were lots of 

 rabbits, but you never saw more than a white tail vanishing into a run 

 between the tumps or tussocks ; and when you got your gun up you were 

 always too late, and there was an eighteen-inch tussock between you 

 and that tail which kindly received your charge of No. 7's. I used to 

 be a pretty quick snap shot, but I was no use at all — I wasn't in it. Not 

 one single solitary rabbit did I bag. 



The only other thing I ever saw at all approaching it was a match 

 at sparrows that once came off near the old Copenhagen, when we used 

 to cricket there. They were shooting at green birds — linnets and a 

 mixture of all sorts — one day, when a sharp chap bet one of our members 

 — I think it was Tony Gipsum — that he couldn't kill six birds such as 

 these out of a dozen at eighteen yards, if he'd let him pitch the trap 

 where he pleased. Tony stipulated that he should have a clear view 

 of the trap and accepted the bet. On the day Mr. Wideawake led the 

 way to a cabbage garden with high broccoli stumps, and in the middle 

 of these was a small space cleared, so that at eighteen yards you could 



