14 ' THE COMPLETE WILDFOWLER 



has this to do with wildfowling ? The answer is simple. All 

 gunners, whether wildfowlers or no, lend each other their aid 

 and support against any common enemy. There is a free- 

 masonry among shooters more strong and real than prob- 

 ably exists in any other kind of sport. Last year, for 

 example, I was travelling from Paris to Monte Carlo. In 

 my compartment were three other men, an Englishman, a 

 Frenchman, and a Belgian, all of them, as it afterwards 

 appeared, going to Monaco upon the same errand as myself 

 — pigeon-shooting. A couple of gun-cases on the rack 

 lasted for the whole enormous journey over France and along 

 the Cote d'Azur, and started a conversation which commenced 

 friendships that show no signs of diminution up to the 

 present. 



And there is another reason also for beginning this intro- 

 ductory chapter as I have done. It is to glorify and explain 

 wildfowling in the most emphatic possible way, both for 

 the layman and for those who, like the authors of this book, 

 find in it their greatest happiness and pleasure, the Supreme 

 thing that for us, at any rate, the material aspects of life 

 have to offer. 



For, if your sportsman in covert or on roots and stubble 

 must be a man trained to the highest efficiency of hand and 

 eye, a "true sportsman " in all that pertains to his craft, I 

 have no hesitation whatever in saying that the wildfowler in 

 order to be successful must surpass him in everything. 



He must be a better shot. He must endure hardships 

 and dangers unknown in the other branch. He must be a 

 trained ornithologist, learned in the habits and appearance 

 of an infinite variety of birds — and he must be many other 

 things as well. 



In the first instance, he must be a better shot. A goose 

 and a mallard or widgeon, a plover and curlew, a redshank 

 or godwit, all fly in entirely different ways — each bird has 



