468 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



to hard-luck stories, which oftenest have their origin 

 in incompetency ; and the other man, who might be 

 sympathetic, right or wrong, is more than likely to 

 have troubles enough of his own. 



There are shooters who have a belief that they can 

 produce better cartridges loaded by hand than those 

 made by machinery. Such belief is fallacious. Given 

 like materials, the machine-loaded cartridge is likely 

 to be the better of the two. To a certainty it will have 

 more uniform loading, as the pressures on the wad- 

 ding will be automatically alike. This uniformity is 

 beyond the compass of the hand. The kind and quality 

 of wadding, however, is an important factor in the ef- 

 fectiveness of any load, hence a well wadded hand load 

 may surpass a poorly wadded machine load; but this 

 is a matter of material and not of methods. 



For the 16 and 20 gauges the loads of shot should 

 be comparatively light, from three-quarters of an ounce 

 to one ounce, with from two to two and a half drams 

 of bulk powder, or a corresponding quantity of dense 

 powder. There should be no attempt to arbitrarily 

 make the smaller gauges equal to the 12 in weight 

 of ammunition. As already suggested, the advan- 

 tage of the smaller bores is in their lightness, and 

 therefore in their fitness for upland shooting, which 

 does not exact such hard killing qualities in a gun as 

 does wild fowl shooting. 



The gun should be selected with a view to its fit- 

 ness for the special shooting of the owner, his physical 

 strength and skilful capabilities, which, summed up, 



