90 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



parties, and are not known as good shots at all. There are 

 still large numbers of shooters so much sportsmen that they 

 think of woodcraft and sportsmanship first, and only of marks- 

 manship as a secondary and necessary accomplishment. 



What, after all, is putting a bullet into the heart of a stag at 

 100 or 150 yards distant? Any gun-maker's assistant could 

 make sure of doing it at the standing deer, provided he did not 

 happen to suffer from buck fever, and unless he was a sports- 

 man at heart he would not. But to stalk that stag is a problem 

 of a very different character. The novice will probably make 

 a mess of the simple business of following the heels of his 

 stalker he who carries his rifle, finds the stag, stalks him, 

 puts " his gentleman " in position, places the rifle in his hand, 

 and tells him when to fire. When the latter can do all that 

 without the stalker's assistance, he may, and will, flatter himself 

 that the mere shooting straight was quite an elementary stage 

 in the art of woodcraft, and that marksmanship counts for very 

 little indeed in the most fashionable and most sporting use of 

 firearms in Britain. Besides this, stalking is as private as fish- 

 ing with the dry fly ; and again, had our ancestors had to select 

 a stalker for premier position, it would have been Scrope first 

 and the rest nowhere, just on the same grounds as before : 

 Scrope had described his splendid sport in his book. 



Then, obviously, the shooters of grouse over dogs are barred 

 also ; because, two being company and^ three none, it would be 

 impossible to take a consensus of opinion. If it were possible, 

 what principle would choice be made upon ? The mere shooting 

 straight is very little of the work to be done. Surely the man 

 who can handle his own brace of pointers or setters, a retriever 

 also, and shoot as well, is a step above him who can only shoot. 

 Then the man who can walk for ten hours is far and away 

 better than he who is beaten in five. 



In the old partridge shooting matches it was the pace that 

 killed and the pace that won, and there are few men who can 

 walk fast all day and shoot straight ; still fewer whom people 

 would name as the best, because they would not have seen them. 

 Then there is the big-game hunter, who must be judged, though 



