ROUGH SHOOTING 241 



Part of a heavy charge hurtling over your 

 head, as you are crawling up a bank to look 

 over it, will shake your faith in trusting to 

 bird-calls ; unless, as we have stated, you 

 have seen the creatures. Plovers are erratic at 

 times, dashing here and there ; and concealed 

 shots are dangerous. 



Thirty-two years have passed away, but even 

 now, as I write, a feeling of general creepiness 

 comes over me at the thought of a narrow 

 escape I once had when out shooting. It is 

 all very well for those who are not near, to 

 theorise about the way in which certain fatal 

 accidents take place, and how they might have 

 been prevented ; all takes place in reality so 

 quickly that there is not time for thought, and 

 there is a dead man, and a live one looking 

 with wide-eyed horror down on him, in no time. 

 It has happened, God only knows how, more 

 than once in my own experience. If any one 

 has not been well tutored, in the first instance, 

 concerning the rules to be observed in general 

 shooting, usually designated as rough, he had 

 better carry a walking-stick than a gun. Very 

 few ever recovered from those accidental shot- 

 wounds. It is, I know, the correct thing to sneer 

 at the old Mantons, and others as famous ; but 



Q 



