106 FRANK SCHLEY'S PARTRIDGE AND PHEASANT SHOOTING. 



ing. It is the difficult and uncertain shots that try the skill 

 of the sportsman, and it is these shots particularly that a 

 good sportsman loves to make successfully. One difficult, 

 cramped, and uncertain shot, at long range, that brings 

 down the game, gives more real enjoyment and pleasure to 

 a good shot than forty slow-flying certain ones, because it 

 tasks his skill to the utmost to bring the bird down. It is 

 the number of doubtful, difficult, cramped, and uncertain 

 shots by which a sportsman kills game in a day's hunt that 

 makes him superior in skill to the man who refuses to fire 

 except when an easy, certain chance oifers at short range. 

 The sportsman who takes every chance when in the field, 

 or in the thicket, or wood, and fires whenever a bird oifers 

 a chance to be hit, if he kills three birds out of five, day 

 in and day out, is doing excellent shooting, and where one 

 sportsman comes up to this standard of shooting you will 

 find five hundred that will not. A good shot can go out in 

 the open fields the first of the shooting season, when the 

 birds are young and tame and fly very slowly, and by pick- 

 ing out his birds to shoot at, he can kill, if birds are plenty, 

 a large number in a day's hunt, and by only shooting easy 

 and certain shots at short range, and refusing all long range 

 and difficult ones, he can kill in this way a good number 

 of birds before he misses. But late in the season, in De- 

 cember, when the birds are strong and wild, and fly like 

 bullets, it takes a good, quick shot to bring them down. I 

 have yet to see the sportsman who can, at this advanced 

 period of the season, kill every bird he fires at, whether he 

 picks his shots or not. It is not the sportsman who kills 

 the greatest number of birds without missing, in a day's 

 hunt, that is the best marksman, but the sportsman that 

 kills the greatest number of birds, or bags the most game, 

 in the day's shooting. I have seen sportsmen, when in the 

 field, who had the reputation of being expert marksmen, 

 and men that never failed to hit, and in order to sustain this 

 character would manufacture all kind of excuses for not 

 shooting at birds that offered the fairest mark. Being afraid 

 of missing they would go poking about, aiming at every 



