Popular Science Monthly 



U5 



the wise gunner puts the muzzle a foot 

 or two to the left or right of the bird, 

 as he may be angling from the straight 



When the bird is ascending the hunter 

 shoots well over him to make sure of a hit 



line. No swing is possible, because the 

 distance from the straight line is slight. 



The soaring bird is another deceiver 

 of the simple huntsman. No old duck 

 shot needs to be told how much one has 

 to hold over the duck which leaps from 

 the reeds and darts almost vertically 

 for the blue voids. I remember shooting 

 about one box of shells at a covey of 

 quail, broken up and lying just over the 

 crest of a rocky ridge. The birds simply 

 dropped down the ridge like stones, and 

 most of the box of shells went while I 

 was thinking that I had to hold lower 

 and lower below the dropping bird to 

 make the shot charge intersect his flight. 

 When I saw two or three feet of daylight 

 'twixt the muzzle of the gun and the bird 

 above, then the bird usually quit flying 

 and went tumbling down the slope. 



All of this holding v/here the bird isn't 

 and all this swing prove necessary merely 

 because of the relatively slow flight of 

 shot, which has about the • velocity of 

 sound for a short distance, and then less 

 as the range grows longer. If we could 

 give shot the sustained velocity of our 

 Government rifle, hitting with the shot- 

 gun would be a matter merely of holding 

 correctly on the bird — and so "like 

 shooting fish." 



As I have said, applying the mathe- 

 matics of the case to the actual shooting 

 is difficult, because of the unknown factors 

 in the problem; but it is possible to get an 

 approximation of the right distance ahead 

 necessary for the various ranges, and so 

 avoid the inclination to shoot behind the 

 bird, which is the most common fault of 

 the shotgun man. 



A load of No. 7 shot flies like this over 

 the various ranges: 



The speed of birds is usually over- 

 estimated. British experiments with ac- 

 curate time-measuring apparatus years 

 ago showed that pheasants fly little more 

 than thirty miles per hour in the open, 

 while the buzzing partridge, like our own 

 quail, flies less than this. The duck, 

 down-wind, is the fastest thing our gun- 

 ners have to shoot at, but it is doubtful 



'T^-^^^^'^^^ 



The hunter does not aim at the spot where 

 the rabbit is but at where he is jumping 



over 60 miles an hour 

 yarns of the returned 



if they get up 

 despite all the 

 huntsman. 



The same general rules which are given 

 for shooting birds on the wing also apply 

 to rabbit hunting. The rabbit usually 

 gives the hunter only the slightest glimpse 

 of him in passing an open stretch of 

 ground, so that some rapid calculations 

 must be made in order to hit him at the 

 next clearing. 



