CRACK SHOTS 89 



Had we voted, we must inevitably have placed him top of the 

 tree ; because game shooting then was not a thing to be con- 

 ducted in large parties, but was a concern only of my friend, 

 my pointer, and myself. There were no spectators except the 

 beaters, who were up the trees to mark, and the gamekeeper, 

 who carried a game-bag, and perhaps rode a shooting pony. 



Pigeon shooting did a little, a very little indeed, to make 

 for publicity years afterwards; and there were occasional matches 

 shot at partridges, but these were sometimes more by way of 

 testing the game capacity of estates than the shooting skill of 

 the marksmen. Thus on one occasion there was a match shot 

 in the south-west corner of Scotland and in Norfolk on the 

 same day, and although Norfolk won by a little, the bags were 

 near enough together to prove that the two districts were then 

 very equal as natural partridge country. That they are very 

 unequal now only proves that the more care has been bestowed 

 upon game in the Eastern Counties. 



But had there been any voting for crack marksmen in those 

 days, it is certain that, after Hawker, the men who were most 

 talked of (the match makers) would have come out next. They 

 alone were heard of by all sportsmen, and the sporting maga- 

 zines had chronicled their prowess. Other shooters were " born 

 to flush unseen, and waste their powder on the desert hare" 

 to misquote to fit the occasion. 



In these times in a sense it is different. Men do see each 

 other shoot in parties up to fourteen. But it is clear that when 

 parties, even half as big, are constantly changing, and meeting 

 fresh guns every time, that the form of any individual amongst 

 them soon gets to be known as accurately as that of any race- 

 horse in training at headquarters. This is how it happens that 

 it has been possible to select a dozen men of mark and marks- 

 manship difficult to displace in the consensus of opinion of the 

 men they meet and shoot with. 



But just as the majority were never heard of when George 

 Osbaldeston, Lord Kennedy, Horatio Ross, Coke of Norfolk, 

 Colonel Anson, and the rest, were shooting matches, so it may 

 very well be that the best shots of our day never shoot in big 



