

PREFACE 



It is perhaps the fact of collaboration which makes a preface to a book 

 of this sort necessary. 



More than two years ago Mr. Stanley Duncan and myself agreed 

 that a complete Wildfmoler should be written. A good deal of 

 material was already available, most of it consisting of Mr. Stanley 

 Duncan's constant and valuable contributions to The Shooting Times 

 and The Field on the subject of wildfowling, the rest being my own 

 notes extending over a considerable period of one's sporting life. 

 From the time of Colonel Hawker until fifteen years ago, all the pub- 

 lished books upon wildfowling were excellent in their measure and in 

 their day. The later books have been excellent also, but have been 

 shorter and more in the fashion of the handbook or manual. It 

 seemed good, therefore, to the collaborators that they should make a 

 sustained effort to produce a book which might possibly be a standard 

 work for a considerable period. 



It will be as well to give some indication of the respective parts 

 taken by the collaborators in the production of this work. It has 

 fallen to me to be the general editor. It has been a labour of love 

 and a strange relief from the continuous production of fiction. 



The book, however, owes its real value undoubtedly to the work in 

 it of Mr. Stanley Duncan, the chief organiser and honorary secretary 

 of the Wildfowlers' Association, and a sportsman whose name is as 

 well known to all fowlers as his genial personality and remarkable 

 excellence with the gun is known to a certain section of them. 



I myself have written the introductory parts and the chapters deal- 

 ing with guns and ammunition, "The Complete Gun-Room," etc. 

 etc. The important branch of shore shooting and the chapters on 

 punt-gunning have been written by Mr. Stanley Duncan, though 

 edited by me. The illustrations and diagrams are also the work of 

 Mr, Stanley Duncan. 



The ornithological part is a joint production, with the aid of many 

 of the leading authorities upon the subject. 



I have here to say, and I say it with some complacency, that the 

 chapter upon shoulder guns was submitted to Mr. W. W. Greener 

 himself; one or two suggestions he made I very gladly incorporated. 



ivi34895l 



