4 LETTERS TO YOUNG SHOOTERS LETTER 



* driving ' and ' walking up.' To drop birds dead as 

 they are driven towards you at sixty miles an hour, 

 perhaps high over lofty trees, is certainly a difficult 

 feat, but a fascinating one to accomplish. 



There is little satisfaction, however, in killing the 

 very same birds as they flutter up when you are 

 walking through a covert or a field. There is more 

 downright sport in tumbling from the sky one high 

 fast-flying pheasant (though you fail at five others) 

 that careers along down wind at express speed, and 

 sails defiantly over your head as if nothing on earth 

 could interfere with him, than there is in slaying 

 a score in succession, without a miss, that fly slowly 

 away as they rise in front of your toes or your dog's 

 nose as you march forward. With the first method 

 the game has fair play and a chance of escape ; with 

 the second it has none to speak of. 



Though grouse and partridges do not often afford 

 such grand shots as high rocketing pheasants, still, 

 when driven to the gun they offer, as a rule, far more 

 sporting and difficult chances than they do when 

 walked up, or when shot over dogs.* 



A material benefit conferred by the system of 

 1 driving ' is that, in the case of grouse and partridges, 



* Should grouse or partridges lie well to pointers or setters, a child 

 could almost shoot them ; it is the simplest aiming in the world. If 

 grouse or partridges do not lie to dogs, but spring wild, then as many 

 birds are likely to be wounded as killed ; and it would be more 



