314 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



fully brought off without drivers. We have read of Mr. Abel 

 Chapman's success by the tub method in the Spanish marshes, 

 and also of a royal son of King George III. and his want of 

 success in shooting fowl from a tub on the Berkeley Castle 

 haunts of the wild goose. At the latter other methods are 

 now adopted, but the sport is not very great, although this is 

 because of the difficulty of getting shots, and not because of any 

 scarcity of fowl. Mr. Chapman had splendid sport in Spain, but 

 the fowl there were greatly in excess of their numbers in 

 England, and besides, they appear to have flown conveniently 

 low. Much shooting by many guns generally makes the fowl 

 mount very high, unless the shooters are very widely distributed, 

 and really the great objection to wild wild-duck is that they 

 take a mean advantage of the gun-maker, and often fly at heights 

 no shot gun will reach them. But very much depends on the 

 frequency with which they are disturbed, and unquestionably 

 they have very pretty days of sport on the Hampshire rivers 

 by means of these " gazes." Where there are very many birds 

 some will be certain to fly low enough to shoot, and they do not 

 usually mount, in flying down a river, as they do in circling 

 round a pool, to see whether a descent is safe. Probably this is 

 because they believe themselves to be leaving danger behind 

 when following the course of a river. 



In making these " gazes " it is necessary that there should be 

 protection from the sight of the fowl coming from both up and 

 down the river, and also that the shelters should be so arranged 

 as to enable shooters to get into them without flushing fowl 

 close by. The way the shooting is arranged is for the manager 

 to point out each man's "gaze," or hide, or butt, to him, and give 

 him just long enough to get there a minute or two before shoot- 

 ing is to begin. Each gunner is requested not to fire until a 

 certain time by the watch, which is fixed upon so as to allow 

 the man with farthest to go to comfortably reach his "gaze" 

 before time is up. Mr. Robert Hargreaves, who has done a 

 good deal of this kind of shooting as well as most others, is of 

 opinion that teal for the second barrel give the most difficult 

 of all shooting. He describes the action of a company of teal 



