THE GUN 107 



One rabbit to three or four shots is perhaps about 

 my average on the common. 



You cannot have harder rabbit shooting than this. 

 Driven rabbits are not harder ; often indeed they 

 will cross the open spaces in a half-hearted way. 

 It is another thing with pheasants. The pheasant 

 put up by the dogs or the gun is not so hard as 

 the high bird moving at full strength over the 

 gunner in position. Yet these wild birds of the 

 wood are not the tame sport and easy victims that 

 some people think. Say they rise forty yards or 

 more from you among the trees and underwoods. 

 It often needs a quick, sure management of a gun 

 to bag your bird. But I would not strain this point. 

 Let us say frankly that those pheasants put up by 

 gun or dog, and shot then and there, are as a rule 

 easy compared with the driven bird when the driven 

 bird is skilfully " shown " by the keeper. True, one 

 has found more pleasure in the shooting of a brace 

 of birds walked up in the wood or common than in 

 many brace of driven birds; but this is partly 

 because they are so few and need such a search, 

 and partly because of the charm of these familiar 

 scenes. 



The woodcock has always been the prize of the 

 day. I doubt whether one's keenness to get a wood- 

 cock or two in the day's rabbiting loses any of its 

 edge as time goes on. The whole scene of my first 

 woodcock in boyhood is fresh in the mind to-day. 



