HINTS ON PUNTING TO FOWL 255 



When the first few fowl crane their necks, and the punt is any 

 distance near eighty yards, don't delay. If a sixty-yards shot 

 can be secured, put up the necks of all the fowl by shouting, 

 allowing that the gun is laid right, and fire quickly, sighted just 

 clear of the highest heads. Should the fowl be asleep or 

 unsuspicious, and a near shot is gained, fire fair at them. 

 Any distance a hundred yards or over, must have some allow- 

 ance made for the drop of the shot. With a shot a hundred 

 yards distance and the fowl on the alert, considerable over- 

 head allowance, about eight feet, must be given the gun, as the 

 fowl spring on sight of the flash or the smoke, and thus are in 

 the air before the shot reaches them. Shots of this kind on 

 windy days, when the smoke is blown aside, appear as though 

 the shot had been a flying one, for the stricken fowl can be 

 seen tumbling back out of the flock. Timing of the shot is 

 here brought into practice, but not to the same extent as with 

 a true flying shot. In real flying shots the lanyard is not 

 pulled until the fowl are on wing. Similarly to shooting with 

 a shoulder gun at a moving object, so does the punter allow 

 ahead or above the fowl with his punt-gun ; but, as the 

 distance is much greater, so also is this allowance. The amount 

 of allowance is a difficult thing to explain ; in fact, it cannot 

 be learned except by sheer practice, as circumstances differ in 

 each case, such as the speed of the fowl and the distance they 

 are from the gun. Such shots as these require skill in that 

 art well known in wildfowling, but inexplicable on paper, of 

 "timing the shot." Although good flying shots with a punt- 

 gun are pretty work, and certainly the pure art of punt- 

 gun shooting, it must be remembered that to perform such, 

 everything must be accurately gauged, or a very poor shot 

 will be the result. Good flying shots generally return more 

 fowl, but greater certainty lies upon the result of the shot if 

 the fowl are taken sitting. 



We have already gained an outline of how to discharge a 



