62 LEWIS'S AMERICAN SPORTSMAN. 



Avail yourself of every opportunity to shoot, more particularly 

 when the birds are scattered in thick cover early in the season, as 

 you will acquire by this means a knack of killing the birds even 

 when they have passed entirely from your sight behind the thick 

 foliage. This knack is a very necessary one in early autumn 

 shooting, before Jack Frost has sufficiently nipped vegetation with 

 his icy fingers. This kind of shooting requires considerable prac- 

 tice, a quick eye and a ready hand, and is the style of shooting 

 that all American sportsmen have to attain; and it is in this 

 particular more especially that they excel the great field-shots 

 of England. Most of the shooting in the Atlantic States is done 

 in the wood and thick cover, through which the birds at some 

 seasons can scarcely force their way ; and we are not astonished 

 that English sportsmen speak so disparagingly of its pleasures, as 

 partridge shooting with us is quite a different affair from going out 

 after them in the rich stubbles of their preserves ; and what is still 

 worse for them, when they have found our birds, they discover, 

 greatly to their mortification, that they cannot kill them near as 

 often as they do their own varieties, without first serving some- 

 thing of an apprenticeship to the sport, under the guidance of 

 some one of their friends more skilled in the craft of our game. 

 When shooting in the open stubble-fields, we are enabled to see 

 the game, and correctly judge of position, distance, bulk, &c. ; 

 but in the woods and coppices of our country we do not actually 

 see, but learn to guess at all these necessary circumstances; and 

 that, too, without the exercise of thought in the operation, if such 

 a thing were possible ; as the arm in most instances seems to obey 

 a sudden and irresistible impulse, no time being allowed for any 

 action of the mind upon the subject, for in thicket-shooting we 

 often kill birds without ever seeing them. The difficulty of killing 

 partridges is not the only thing that the English sportsman has to 

 complain of, as will be seen in the following extract, taken from 

 the journal of a traveller who appears to have been both dis- 

 couraged and disappointed in his expectations of sporting in 

 America : 



