CRACK SHOTS 95 



Grey and Walsingham, when, amongst the trees, they accounted 

 for four partridges each, or the whole covey of eight birds. 

 Lord de Grey is a very deliberate shot when he has time to be 

 so, and he has been seen to swing his gun some distance 

 without succeeding in getting on his game, and in consequence 

 to refrain from shooting. Therefore no question can arise 

 about the fact that he aligns, at least when there is time. 

 Lord Walsingham wrote some years ago to describe to a 

 newspaper his method of killing wood pigeons, which, amongst 

 other evolutions, had been occasionally chased by a falcon. 

 He said : " The way in which a certain measure of accuracy, 

 although by no means a satisfactory measure to myself, was 

 attained in shooting at these wood pigeons could scarcely be 

 better described than in the words of your correspondent. 

 He writes : ' I myself race the birds, as it were, in my mind 

 without bringing up the gun ; I then swing it and fire. This 

 swing or pitch is all done in one motion ' ! So far I go with 

 him entirely, but when he adds, ' and the gun is not stopped 

 even after the trigger is pulled,' I differ from him in practice. 

 In my case the gun is stopped at the instant of pulling the 

 trigger, having been swung to as nearly as possible to the 

 exact spot the bird may be expected to reach by the time the 

 charge can get there to intercept it." Lord Walsingham was 

 using 3^ drams of Hall's Field B powder and ig- oz. of No. 5 

 shot from a cylinder gun. 



The number of cartridges used for the 1070 grouse in the 

 day in 1888 was 1500. As a feat of endurance and woodcraft 

 this is hardly likely ever to be surpassed, especially with black 

 powder. Only a shooter who never suffered from gun headache 

 could have done it. But even when that is said, the keeping 

 the birds on a 2200 acre moor for 20 drives is the point of the 

 story. When the late Sir F. Milbank killed his 728 birds, he 

 reduced his shot to -| of an ounce in order to get penetration, 

 and declared that he would still further reduce to of an ounce 

 for the sake of still more penetration. 



Mr. F. E. R. Fryer has been observed to have three 

 pheasants dead in the air at once, and yet in another page he is 



