HOME AND FOREIGN SHOOTING. gi 



Gentlemen who live at home at ease are generally 

 able to go out on such occasions accompanied by every 

 element of comfort and convenience which wealth and 

 an ultra-civilization can place at their disposal, and 

 we are among the very last persons who feel disposed 

 to depreciate in any way the good things of this kind, 

 which come in as aids to enjoyment when out for a 

 day's shooting. By all means let us brighten this short 

 life in every way that may be possible, and use to the full 

 every advantage and every comfort which circumstances 

 place at our disposal. At the same time w r e must always 

 bear in mind, when we have put the sea between ourselves 

 and home, that conditions such as we have become 

 accustomed to, do not generally apply to the novel 

 circumstances which surround us in a foreign land: 

 especially when, leaving the neighbourhood of civiliza- 

 tion, we desire to penetrate into a wild country 

 about which very little is known, and where it is often 

 next to impossible to obtain information of a really reliable 

 nature about it ; and thus it comes to pass that a man 

 may be accounted a very fair shot at home and, as one 

 of a shooting party, may be able to hold his own with 

 the others remarkably well ; yet if this same individual 

 goes out for his first day's shooting in a great forest 

 country, or upon the vast expanse of the prairie or 

 the desert, he will find himself nearly as helpless and 

 almost as much out of his element as a child taken 

 out by his father to try his first shot at a mark. 



If it be in the forest, as we shall presently explain, 

 the initial difficulty of making out the game has to be 

 surmounted. It may however at first sight seem almost 

 absurd to suppose that the form of a large animal could 

 be invisible at close quarters; nevertheless we shall 



