2n2 



Unexplored Spain 



commotion as, realising tlic danger, each great bird with strong 

 and Labonred wino'-stroke swerves aside. One enormous harho7i 

 directly overhead receives first attention ; a second, full broadside, 

 presents no more difficulty, and ere the double thuds behind have 

 attested the result, we realise that a third, shying oft' from our 

 neighbour, is Jilso "our meat." This has proved one of our 

 luckier drives, for the hanclada, splitting up on the centre, 

 offered chances to both flanks of the blockading line — chances 

 which are not always fully exploited. 



We have stated, earlier in this chapter, that among the 

 various component factors in a bustard-drive the actual shot is 



SWERVE ASIDE TO RIGHT AND LKFT 



of minor importance. That is so ; yet truly remarkable is the 

 frequency wdth which good shots constantly miss the easiest of 

 chances at these great birds. Precisely similar failures occur 

 with wild-geese, with swans — indeed with all big birds whose 

 wing-action is deliberate and slow. Tardy strokes deceive the 

 eye, and the great bulk of the bustard accentuates the deception 

 — it seems impossible to miss them, a fatal error. As the 

 Spanish drivers put it : " Se les llenaron el ojo de carne," literally, 

 "the bustards had filled your eye with meat" — the hapless 

 marksmen saw everything bustard ! Yet geese with their 40 

 strokes fiy past ducks at 120, and the bustard's apparently 

 leisured movement carries him in full career as fast as whirring 

 grouse with 200 revolutions to the minute. To kill bustard treat 

 them on the same basis as the smaller game that appears faster 

 but is not. 



Bustards being soft-plumaged are not hard to kill. As 

 compared wdth such ironclads as wild-geese, they are singularly 



