454 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



unable to continue to do this work their services are 

 no longer required by the people who hire them. 



In old times the best shots that we used to know 

 were the market shooters. Many of them were men 

 who worked at some trade when they were not shoot- 

 ing for a living, their muscles were hard, their health 

 good, and they were in the pink of physical condi- 

 tion. When they took up their guns in summer or 

 autumn they shot all the time, and their constant prac- 

 tice, together with their strength and hardiness, made 

 them most destructive of the game they followed. In 

 the same way to-day, we find that the best shots along 

 the south Atlantic coast are the gunners who shoot 

 ducks for the market. Farming during the spring and 

 summer, fishing in late summer and early autumn, 

 and gunning through the autumn and winter, they 

 are always in splendid condition, and always in good 

 practice. 



Very different is the case of the city or office man, 

 who perhaps spends fifty weeks of the year at his desk, 

 walking each day only a few blocks. When his vaca- 

 tion comes he sets out on his shooting trip, and is sur- 

 prised and disappointed to find that he can neither 

 tramp nor shoot. Why should he be able to do either ? 

 It is not by doing a thing half a dozen times a year 

 that one acquires skill in it. The man who is to under- 

 take tasks requiring skill, muscular effort, long wind, 

 or endurance of any kind, must prepare himself for 

 the task which lies before him. 



As I wrote some years ago, in " American Duck 



