22 SHOOTING THE DUCK 



miniature cannon always miniature cannon on the 

 helpless again always helpless birds, and blows 

 them out of the water. After blowing one flock out 

 of the water, he paddles off and does the same thing 

 to another flock, and so on and so on, feeding his 

 debased slaughter-lust to satiety. The picture is not 

 overdrawn. 



These good people have no idea of the realities 

 of the wild-fowler's craft, or of the realities of any 

 kind of shooting. To their unsophisticated humani- 

 tarian intelligences all sport is wanton and in- 

 human, all sportsmen are degraded victims of the 

 lust for blood. Punt-gunning needs no defence in 

 the eyes of those who know what it really is, namely, 

 the most arduous, exacting, and uncertain of all 

 forms of English sport, a pursuit which demands con- 

 summate observation, calculation, patience, skill, and 

 virility on the part of whomsoever would engage in it 

 successfully, and in which the disappointments and 

 failures are very many and the rewards very few and 

 very small. One would like to take some of the 

 idiots who, wholly ignorant of the practical side of 

 the subject, air their periods in gratuitous defamation 

 of ' blood sports ' and sportsmen, and subject them 

 just for a time to a compulsory course of punt- 

 gunning experiences. Unless their nerves gave way, 



