FORM IN GAME SHOOTING 87 



things are not quite the same; for although care implies that 

 shooters' bodies are safe, it does not always refrain from attack- 

 ing their nerves. For instance, when empty guns are jerked 

 about, aligning everybody in turn, it is quite safe for the bodies, 

 but very bad for the nerves of those who do not know the guns 

 are unloaded. 



Drawing for places is the best plan of posting guns. The 

 author has found any other way, such as trying to give the best 

 places to the honoured guest, very unsatisfactory. You never 

 can give the best places to some people, for they do not know 

 how to stand still. The writer has sometimes had the best 

 shooting himself when he has taken the worst place, simply 

 because the " honoured guests " were acting as " flankers," and 

 sending the game elsewhere that should have gone to them. 

 To show yourself as little as you like, but to move not at all, 

 is obviously a part of good shooting form. 



It is hardly necessary to say that it is not the best of form 

 to tell a fellow-guest that the management of the beat is 

 " rotten," and then to make some remark that your host trans- 

 lates into flattery. The fellow-guest may have taken your 

 criticism as a useful hint to the host already, with your own 

 "great authority" attached to it. 



Somewhere the author has heard that His Majesty has ex- 

 pressed his opinion that a pheasant shared is a good deal worse 

 than a pheasant missed ; and in the head keeper's room at 

 Sandringham hang some verses which therefore obviously have 

 the King's approval, the more surely because they hang there 

 in spite of their greater precept than polish. They appear to 

 round off a chapter on form in shooting with a Royal behest. 

 Part of them read 



" Never, never let your gun 

 Pointed be at anyone : 

 That it may unloaded be, 

 Matters not the least to me. 



You may kill or you may miss, 



But at all times think of this : 



All the pheasants ever bred 



Won't repay for one man dead," 



