350 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



Greater accuracy may be obtained by setting a sur- 

 veyor's " transit" telescope-bearing instrument at 

 the first hole, centering the two holes with the cross- 

 hairs of the telescope, and having some one to "line 

 in " the point on the tree as in " centering" a corner- 

 post. This test may be made almost perfect. 



By putting another screen a trifle over half way be- 

 tween the gun and the last target (say at fifty-five 

 yards from the rifle for a hundred-yard shot), then 

 stepping aside and looking down the line of the 

 screens, you will see how much the bullet has to rise 

 to strike a bull's-eye at the farther target. This may 

 also be nearly obtained in inches by " lining" the hole 

 in the first screen and the bullet-hole in the tree on 

 the side of the half-way screen, and measuring from 

 that line to the hole in the same screen. It will be 

 between a third and a fourth of the fall at the tree. 



Such experiments may be simplified or made still 

 more accurate by a little care and ingenuity, and will 

 give you an idea of the most important thing con- 

 nected with the rifle an idea, too, that you will never 

 get in any other way. The ignorance upon this point 

 among even good practical hunters is positively ap- 

 palling. The vast majority even of the best shots 

 think a good rifle "shoots level" up to two hundred 

 or three hundred yards ; and he who should have the 

 audacity to assert that a rifle that will make twenty 

 successive bull's-eyes at a thousand yards may at a 

 hundred and twenty yards drop its ball many inches 

 below that of another rifle that probably could not hit 

 the same bull's-eye at all at five hundred yards, would 

 be considered a fool by fully three fourths of the best 

 rifle-shots in the country. 



