152 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



that he fires at random, with long odds on a clean miss, or 

 that the birds fly up, when, if Ducks (which spring high), his 

 whole charge passes harmlessly beneath them. 



The stanchion-gun, in short, does not lend itself kindly to 

 accurate sighting when afloat that is, as sights are ordi- 

 narily taken. Accuracy of aim is required even to secure a 

 half-grown young rabbit placidly cropping the grass on a 

 summer evening when close at hand. How much more 

 necessary it obviously must be effectively to reach wildfowl 

 at perhaps nearly a hundred yards' distance on the sea ! Yet 

 a skilful fowler will, in a majority of cases, succeed in placing 

 his charge at or near the point of greatest advantage, though 

 the means by which he does so are hardly reducible to paper. 

 They undoubtedly comprise a combination of technical experi- 

 ence, judgment, and decision in action, together with cool- 

 ness and the absence of that flurry which is often provoked 

 by the near propinquity of large numbers of fowl. 



But enough of the argumentative and critical ; let us 

 glance at the sport from another point of view. To a lover 

 of Nature, or to any one who delights in the observation of 

 wild-life, a gunning-punt affords unrivalled indeed unique 

 opportunities for studying, at moderately close quarters, 

 some of the wildest creatures in existence. So intensely wild, 

 indeed, and so intolerant of the human presence, are many 

 kinds of our winter wildfowl, that, except by this means, it is a 

 simple impossibility to form even a remote acquaintance with 

 them, or to observe their life-habits and interesting idiosyn- 

 crasies. While, as to obtaining them, despite all the foolish 

 things that have been written, the use of the stanchion-gun 

 is an absolute sine qua non. A wildfowling trip to the coast 

 with a shoulder-gun is usually a mere farce, and results, as 

 Colonel Hawker well remarked, "in a 10 bill, and perhaps 

 bagging a couple of sea-gulls." 



Probably no other class of our British fauna is less pre- 

 cisely understood, or presents more promising material for 

 investigation, than the numerous family of wildfowl. To a 

 mind appreciative of such subjects, therefore, the winter 

 months on the coast possess abundant attraction. There, on 

 the open salt water, in a favourable place and season, very 



