x THE COMPLETE SHOT 



not all because ladies are better trained physically, but because 

 sports have been made much easier, than formerly they were. 

 Bridle-paths enable ponies to traverse the deer forests with 

 ladies on their backs, and where that can be done deer stalking 

 is not quite what it was when a Highland laird declared that 

 he saw no use in protecting the deer, since nobody could do 

 them much harm. But the wonder to me is not that we do not 

 like great exertion, but that we ever did like it for itself. But 

 then I speak as a man in years, and one who has in the foolish- 

 ness of youth killed a stag and carried home his head, cut low 

 down, for sixteen miles, rather than wait for the tardy ponies to 

 bring it in with the carcase. 



I suspect that a change of ideas will take place when it is 

 discovered that driven - game shooting can, more than any 

 other, be learnt at the shooting schools, and that when the 

 trick is known it becomes the easiest kind of shot. If it is 

 true that the schools can teach it, then everybody will learn 

 it, and what is common property will become as unfashionable 

 as it is the reverse at present. I believe that half the difficulty 

 in the driven bird is in thinking it is difficult. The fastest 

 bird at 30 yards range one is likely to meet with in a whole 

 season does not require a swing of the muzzle faster than, or 

 much more than half as fast as, a man can walk. What is 

 difficult in driven game is shooting often, the swerve of the 

 game, the changes of pace and angle of different birds in 

 quick succession, but distinctly not the pace. Before I had 

 ever seen a grouse butt, I remember sitting down to watch 

 another party of shooters on a distant hill, more than half a 

 mile up wind of where I sat to watch. I saw their dogs point, 

 and a single bird rise, which, with many a switchback as it 

 came, I watched traverse the whole distance between us, and 

 I killed it as I sat. That was my first driven grouse, but it 

 is not by any means why I say that driven game offers the 

 easiest kind of shooting ; it is because the average of kills to 

 cartridges are so much better than they are in other kinds of 

 shooting. Take, for instance, double rises at pigeons, which 

 are easy compared with double rises at October grouse, and it 



