366 THE FOWLER IN IRELAND. 



a line might be required. If strong enough to 

 lift the gun from the bottom, it would be too 

 cumbersome in a punt, and liable to foul when 

 paid out in anxious moments, and would require 

 too large a float to support it. Take with you 

 (I do), in open waters (don't forget it in fine 

 weather), an old smooth-running salmon wheel, with 

 a strong fine cord made fast to a bung at the 

 loose end. When an au revoir has been bid to 

 the gun, and anchor fastened as directed, pitch 

 this after it, and it will unwind as it goes down, 

 leaving the cork on the surface to mark the spot* 

 But I have seen a better plan than this, namely, 

 a copper float about the size of a large orange, 

 with a deep groove round its centre, the line 

 always coiled on it (a pike-trimmer would even do), 

 and a lump of lead with a large treble pike-hook 

 as a grapnel at one end. I never but once had 

 occasion to pitch out a gun, a heavy double- 

 barrel, and by means of such a buoy, which I tied 

 to the anchor, previously made fast by its line to 

 the gunstock, it was easily recovered. Never land 

 a punt with gun and gear in her on a lee-shore 



* Though a fowler could never calculate on carrying enough rope, 

 yet a long cord would find bottom almost anywhere. A hundred and 

 fifty feet of rope would be out of the question in a punt, but a mere 

 nothing in cord. It is an easy matter to grapple up a punt-gun when 

 made fast to an anchor and its thirty feet or so of rope, and the 

 latter should be carried, if only on a chance of being so used, when 

 fowling about the coast in deep waters. Of course there are some 

 places where it would never be necessary to throw out a gun. With- 

 out being made fast to something that a grapnel would catch, a heavy 

 gun could not be raised from deep water. I know of three fine 

 swivel-guns now lying embedded in estuaries, where they are likely to 

 remain, through want of a little thought and presence of mind when 

 pitched overboard. 



