272 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



seen a friend who could cut the spots of a playing- 

 card at twenty yards almost without fail for a long 

 series of shots miss almost every shot at the heads of 

 squirrels in trees not twenty yards high. And this was 

 not because of excitement, but from causes I shall 

 hereafter mention, such as overshooting, varying 

 play of light on sights, dimness of marks, etc. 



The insatiable appetite of lead for circumambient 

 space becomes still more marvelous when it is fired 

 at large game. Fire twenty shots at a target as care- 

 lessly as you please with a shot-gun, and you will 

 find about every load scattered quite evenly around 

 the bull's-eye. You may of course notice that the 

 bull's-eye is not exactly in the center; but it is so nearly 

 so that if the charge of shot had been a solid mass it 

 would have hit every time within two or three inches 

 of the center. This is, however, more apparent than 

 real. Now what could be more reasonable than to 

 suppose that the same aim with a rifle at a deer at 

 fifty or sixty yards would surely hit him somewhere? 

 The rifle is far more accurately sighted than a shot- 

 gun; it shoots far more accurately; you look at the 

 sights and see them plainly on the body of the ani- 

 mal; there is a margin of ten or twelve inches for 

 possible error; a clear miss seems impossible. Yet a 

 person shooting a rifle as he would a shot-gun can 

 miss twenty successive deer standing broadside at 

 only forty yards with about the same ease and cer- 

 tainty that he could hit them with a shot-gun. For a 

 whole year the very best target-shots will at seventy- 

 five yards probably miss more deer than they hit; 

 and at a hundred and fifty yards the very best game- 

 shots will always do the same: and all this without any 

 "buck-ague" or nervousness entering into the ques- 



