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98 WILDFOWL SHOOTING IN THE WESTERN STATES. 



able to appreciate improvements and avail himself of 

 them. Patrick Mullin of New York City, Abbey of 

 Chicago, Manton, Egg, and others did good work in 

 their day, and their memory will long be respected 

 and remembered ; but we must advance ; nothing 

 shows the rottenness of a state, and, I will add, of a 

 sportsman, so much as want of progress, or, in other 

 words, keeping up to date. 



In England I venture to say that there is no difficulty 

 in getting any type of arms that you require, and at 

 what appears to me very moderate prices. I gave my 

 order on one occasion to a Birmingham firm, and, not 

 to put all my eggs in one basket, ordered first one 

 gun. This I had duplicated, and, except for the stocks 

 being slightly different in the run of the grain of the 

 wood, no difference in finish, bend, or execution was 

 perceptible, and their very best performances are 

 with exactly the same charges. I tried both the 

 weapons in Scotland at the end of last season, and, 

 therefore, when the birds were strong and well 

 feathered, if any escaped me under a range of sixty- 

 five yards, I am convinced the fault was mint, not 

 that of the guns. Last spring I also gave them a 

 lot of work on ducks and geese in Northern 

 Nebraska, U.S., and I would be afraid to say what 

 long shots I made, in case the reader put me down as 

 a " blower." The " fowl," too, were all old birds, in 

 perfect plumage and strength. Englishmen maydoubt 

 this, but American spring ducks and geese are, as a 

 rule, harder to kill than " fall " birds, for the reason 

 that they have all reached maturity when they return 

 northward in the first-mentioned season, have not 

 exhausted themselves by long migrations — for they 

 only follow up on the edge of the thaw — and being 

 about to proceed to their far-off northern breeding 

 grounds, for the purpose of reproducing their own 

 species, are of necessity in the most robust health. 

 To arrive at a description of the guns in question I 



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