124 GUNS 



though you are morally sure from the nature of 

 the ground that your charge will not scatter or 

 glance. Get into the way of keeping yourself well 

 informed as to the position of your right-hand and 

 left-hand neighbours when you are slowly advanc- 

 ing with beaters or dogs, or both, in a line intended 

 to be as regular as possible. Though, in rabbit- 

 shooting in thick woods and commons, the bulk 

 of every charge may safely enter the ground, 

 especially when the ground is soft and covered by 

 decaying dead leaves — the nearer you are to the 

 rabbit (and I take it that the majority of rabbits in 

 thick cover are killed at from, say, fifteen to five- 

 and-twenty yards) the likelier is this to occur — you 

 must never forget the glance shot. Though some of 

 the force of this shot will necessarily be spent when 

 it glances, it can do grave, even the gravest, harm. 

 I have been stung by several glance shot myself, 

 and, much worse than that, a glance shot from a 

 charge fired by myself did, I cannot with courtesy 

 doubt, once touch a neighbour. I shot at a rabbit 

 which could not have been in a line with my neigh- 

 bour, yet he called out that somebody had shot 

 him. I was in the thick, he in the open. I ran 

 out, half incredulous and half sick with horror. 

 Infinitely relieved, I found him upright, more ex- 

 cited than hurt. He believed he had been hit in 

 the thigh. It was a matter of a single glance shot, 

 so I gathered ; but I hope I am right in saying 

 that — like the glance shot which once struck me 

 also on the thigh, some of which I found in my 



