106 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



the day's sport unless it be faults of marksmanship ; 

 and these at times are galling. In the shoots or 

 among the thick rows of scrub on the common, 

 especially on the gently-sloping brows between com- 

 mon and wood where the undergrowth is thick dead 

 bracken, rabbit after rabbit one day is missed. The 

 day before, or next day, perhaps, every other rabbit 

 shot at will be bagged, but I should say that this 

 is above the average. Where there is but one gun, 

 he will naturally try for game, furred and feathered, 

 which, with two or more guns out, would fall more 

 easily to a neighbour. Besides, these rabbits, hunted 

 by terrier and spaniel, go very quick at times through 

 the thick undergrowth and across the narrow rides 

 and tracks. Even on the open common between 

 the furze clumps and the blackthorn rows a rabbit 

 is easy to miss when it is moving at its best pace. 

 But in the open there are, say, forty yards of space in 

 any yard of which to shoot him that is, if he comes 

 out of a furze clump within ten yards or so of me. 

 It is different in coppice and thicket. Here often 

 I have only a clear or partly clear space of a yard 

 or so to shoot the rabbit whilst he is in the zone 

 of fire. So that to get half-a-dozen rabbits without 

 a miss among the blackthorns on the common or 

 in the thick coppice wood rabbits, I mean, that 

 are full-stretched with the dogs after them is a 

 little feat in its way. To do this two or three 

 times in the season is to do well with the gun. 



