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CHAPTER VIII. 

 PUNTING IN CHICHESTER HARBOUR. 



I HAVE never lain with my nose at the tail of a punt gun, and cannot, 

 therefore, dilate on the joys of " putting two and half Ibs. of B.B. nicely into a 

 company of several thousand Wigeon." Personally, I have always felt that, 

 granting the undoubted difficulties that lie in the way of such an achieve- 

 ment, there is a suggestion of the " pogrom " about it after all. I would 

 sooner stalk the said thousands with a shoulder gun, and pick out the 

 handsomest drake, than I would train a punt gun on them with such well- 

 timed accuracy as to stretch forty or fifty on the mud. It is the Collector's 

 view, no doubt, not the Sportsman's, and I am quite ready to admit that, if I 

 did set to work to train the punt gun, I should be morally certain to hit the 

 mud, and nothing else. 



My experiences of punting, in the sense of shooting from a punt with a 

 shoulder gun, have been confined to Chichester Harbour in the autumn, where, 

 at that season, or, for that matter, at any other season, the question of how to 

 deal with several thousand Wigeon is unlikely to bother anyone, inasmuch as 

 the largest bunch of wild-fowl that I ever encountered there myself consisted 

 of two Teal ! There is much to be said, nevertheless, for the harbour as a 

 place wherein to take one's first lessons in punting. To begin with, at Dell 

 Quay you can nearly always secure a punt there seems no great competition 

 for them and, what is here no less necessary, a pair of mud-pattens ; for the 

 muds are treacherous in the extreme. Secondly, if you can learn to pick your 

 way through the surrounding network of mudflats, when the tide is running 

 out, without getting stuck, you may congratulate yourself on having acquired 

 considerable slimness as a punter ; while the man who gains sufficient mastery 

 over the art of what is termed " sculling" to propel his craft against the 

 current that runs past the quay, may henceforth pose almost as a pro- 

 fessional ; and last, but not least, the place is quiet and unfrequented, so that 

 if you do find yourself stranded on a mudflat, or clinging monkeywise 

 to a mud-embedded oar, while the punt glides away with your feet, there will 



