CHAPTER XXXVI 

 RECOLLECTIONS OF RIFLE-SHOOTING 



I WAS a practical rifle-shot before Wimbledon meetings 

 and the National Rifle Association came into existence. 

 Hanging on the wall in front of me as I write are two old 

 muzzle-loading rifles — the one a four-grooved, the other a 

 two-grooved — which were manufactured, I suppose, seventy 

 or eighty years ago, and have seen service all over the 

 world. These venerable weapons would excite the derision 

 of the twentieth-century crack shot, accustomed to his 

 beautifully accurate match rifle. They were fitted with a 

 ponderous steel ramrod with a round top, and you had to 

 hammer the bullet down with a mallet. Yet they were 

 accurate enough up to 200 yards. I have seen some good 

 shooting done with the old Brown Bess up to the same 

 range ; and with an old Spanish smooth-bore gun, of about 

 i8-gauge, converted from a flint into a percussion, I have 

 frequently beaten rifles at 1 50 yards. 



I remember watching a detachment of the 23rd Welsh 

 Fusiliers practising with the Minie rifle just before the 

 Crimean War, and hearing military men go into ecstasies 

 over its precision. 



In those days the Yankees were supposed to be the 

 crack shots of the universe, and marvellous tales were told 

 of the riflemen of Kentucky, with their six-foot rifles 

 carrying a |-oz. bullet. Readers of Fenimore Cooper's 

 novels will remember that the target for a Christmas prize 

 shooting was the head of a turkey at 100 yards. The 

 body was buried in the snow, leaving only the head and 

 an inch of the neck visible. Yet the immortal Leather 

 Stocking never failed to cut the head clean ofl" at the first 

 shot. This, after all, was a trifle compared with hammer- 



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