100 MANUAL FOB YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



Again, every man who loves his gun should make it a 

 point to clean it with his own hands. It is all very well 

 in Europe, where the sportsman has a gamekeeper at his 

 elbow who knows how to clean a gun, better than he does 

 himself, and who takes as much pride in having it clean as 

 he, to trust it to his servant. 



I have shot, more or less, twenty-five seasons in Amer- 

 ica, and having body-servants all the time, never had one 

 to whom I would intrust the cleaning of a valuable piece. 

 I have always cleaned my own gun before sleeping, or if 

 I have been too much beaten with work to do so, have in- 

 variably, after seeing it as well done as a man could 

 accomplish at night, given it a thorough and fresh going 

 over, before using it in the morning. 



The mode and process is as follows : 



Bring your locks to half-cock, take the ramrod out of 

 the pipes, and the barrels out of the stock, screw the brass 

 jag into the lower end of a solid cleaning rod not one of 

 the trumpery, jointed ebony or mahogany sticks which 

 come in the gun-case but a tough, seasoned hickory staff, 

 of nearly half an inch diameter, about four inches longer 

 than the barrels, with a saw-cut handpiece. Wrap the jag 

 as thickly with the finest and cleanest tow, as the bo*e of 

 the barrels to be cleaned will admit. Moisten this tow, 

 and insert it into the muzzle ; plunge the breeches of both 

 barrels into a bucket of cold water, some four or six inches 

 deep. Some persons advise hot water ; not so I. Hot 

 water cakes and hardens the dirt in the barrels ; cold 

 dissolves and loosens it. Work the rod up and down, 

 like the sucker of a pump, first in one barrel, then in the 



