3 i6 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



FLAPPER SHOOTING 



Flapper shooting is killing wild duck before they have got 

 their full powers of flight. Its sport consists in getting shots. 

 Very good spaniels are wanted to make the flappers rise at all. 

 They are very easy to kill, and even teal flushed before the 

 sportsman are about as easy as a sitting mark. Indeed, to some 

 people they are more easy, because a sitting mark is very often 

 missed not only by pigeon shooters but also by platers of guns. 



ENCOURAGING THE FOWL 



It seems curious that wild fowl that spend most of their time 

 in the water particularly dislike wind, but so it is, and in making 

 teal pits or improving them, or in attracting fowl to a river, 

 the more artificial shelter you can afford the fowl the more they 

 will be attracted to your water. Near the coast this is generally 

 well understood, and there, too, the roughness of the sea greatly 

 influences the birds to seek peace and shelter inland ; so that 

 there are naturally good days and bad ones for shooting from 

 the "gazes." In a smooth sea and fine weather duck seem to 

 prefer to go to bed, which they do in the daytime, on the sea. 

 But in rough weather the majority will find out any quiet places 

 on fresh water where the presence of other duck prove to them 

 that there is safety. For this reason some half-tame wild duck 

 are a great attraction to the really wild ones, but the former can 

 be only kept at home by good feeding, for wing-clipped fowl are 

 no attraction to the really wild birds. Home-bred birds appear- 

 not so much to attract as to go and fetch the wild ones, and 

 this is the reason that wing-clipped birds will not do. On the 

 "gaze" system 800 duck have been killed in four days' shoot- 

 ing by a party. Mr. John Mills, of Bisterne, using an 8 and a 

 12 bore, has killed 1 30 fowl in a day from one " gaze," and on one 

 occasion 100 cartridges were shot away from one " gaze " in a few 

 minutes, and the shooter ran out of cartridges and had to stop 

 and look at the fowl for half an hour. He killed 60 duck, 

 and thought he could have doubled his bag with another 



