FINISHING LESSONS IN SHOOTING. 137 



FINISHING LESSONS IN SHOOTING. 



I shall now add a few little hints, that may possibly 

 be of service to many of my readers who have had some 

 practice in shooting, but who, I trust, will not be of- 

 fended at my offering a few finishing lessons, under an 

 idea that something, in general, may be learnt even 

 from the most inferior person, and because that, after I 

 had shot for more than twenty years, not a season, no, 

 not even a month or a week elapsed without my dis- 

 covering that I had been previously ignorant of some 

 trifle or other. If, therefore, a person feels himself 

 above hearing an opinion in this, as well as in every 

 other art, he decidedly gives the greatest and most 

 positive proof of his own deficiency and narrowness of 

 conception. Safely, however, may it be said, that in 

 field sports, as well as in other pursuits, there are 

 thousands who fancy that no one can show them any 

 thing, when they have literally not learnt above a 

 twentieth part of their art ; and such people are always 

 best left alone; as, like blighted fruit, they have a 

 bastard colour of maturity, that must for ever debar 

 their coming to perfection. 



With apologies for this digression, let me now 

 endeavour to recollect what hints I can, that are not 

 universally known. 



In killing snap shots fix your eyes, and immediately 

 pitch your gun and fire, as it were, along, or rather 

 over, the backs of the birds. Recollect they are 

 generally rising, and not flying forward, when you 

 take them very quick ; and that as the birds required to 

 be so taken are usually at a distance, an elevation, at 



