with* 



The Ruffed Grouse 131 



without saying, yet the fault of the great majority 

 of misses lies with the shooter. The trouble 

 with most men is that they shoot too quick. 

 The grouse has a knack of springing precisely 

 when and where he is not expected. This, 

 coupled with the roaring flush, shakes any except 

 the service-steadied nerve usual result, some- 

 thing closely akin to blind snap-shooting. But 

 the true cause of perhaps half the misses is 

 undershooting. In most cases the bird is rising 

 and rushing forward at the same time ; the broad 

 tail with its conspicuous black band catches the 

 eye, and the gun is held on the tail which 

 means just under the bird, instead of where it 

 should be, a couple of inches or more above the 

 rising back. The tail, too, helps a man to miss 

 squarely crossing shots by increasing the appar- 

 ent length of the bird. This causes one to think 

 he is centring the bird, when in reality he is 

 centring the length of the mark from bill to tail- 

 tip. This means that he is covering the after 

 portion of the body, when he should be slightly 

 ahead of the region of the crop. This difference 

 of several inches actual measurement is enough 

 to place the bird without the deadly zone of the 

 charge and within the zone of scattered pellets, 

 even at very short range. Sportsmen who have 

 tried the pheasants of Great Britain, or the varie- 

 ties of the pheasant which have been acclimatized 



