AIDS TO SHOOTING 455 



Shooting," "Skill in shooting is not born in any one. 

 Just like reading and writing, it must be learned ; and, 

 like reading and writing, the more practice one has 

 the more easily and better it is done. Many a pro- 

 fessional gunner who is a wonderful shot would find 

 it labor of the hardest kind to sit down and write a 

 four-page letter; and many a business or professional 

 man, who goes gunning perhaps once in two or three 

 years, finds that killing the fowl that give him shots 

 is something that he cannot accomplish. Many men 

 have noticed that sometimes at the end of a season 

 they can shoot very well ; and then, if for two or three 

 years they do not go shooting, they find that they can- 

 not hit anything, and have to begin at the beginning 

 and learn it all over again. They have, perhaps, for- 

 gotten how to hold on their birds, and besides, their 

 muscles, through disuse, refuse at first to act with the 

 brain as they formerly did. This reflex action, so 

 called, can only be regained by practice." 



From the books on shooting much may be learned 

 about how to hold on straightaway birds, incomers, 

 quartering birds, and cross shots. It is well to remem- 

 ber that at twenty-five or thirty yards the charge of 

 shot from a cylinder-bore gun covers a circle two or 

 three feet in diameter, and that on quartering birds, 

 and those flying across one at such a distance, a cer- 

 tain allowance may be made for the great area of the 

 charge. In other words, if the shooter fires one foot 

 ahead of a crossing bird it will be quite certain to fly 

 into the load. If the shooter fires a little behind the 



