558 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol XX. 



cannot find out if a man is a good shot hy the result of one day's 

 shooting. Sometimes birds seem specially sluggish, the walking 

 is good and the shooter fit so that missing seem harder than hitting; 

 other days birds are unaccountably wild, the walking is deep and 

 treacherous and the powder consequently wasted. Possibly calcu- 

 lating on a whole cold weather's shooting the man who gets one 

 bird to every two cartridges expended may call himself a good shot, 

 he who finishes up the season with an average of two in three is a 

 good shot, whilst the man with an average of three in four is hard 

 to beat and may consider himself a really crack shot. 



The best shooting I have ever seen was done by my father 

 Mr. E. B. Baker in 1884 at Hugli. He commenced with 12 

 consecutive kills, then a miss and 12 more kills, then another 

 miss and 14 kills, and after a third miss yet another dozen birds. 

 This meant 51 birds in 54 shots, and his final bag for the day was 

 84 birds in 92 shots. 



The best shooting I have ever heard of, which was properly 

 authenticated, was the performance of Mr. H. Cornish, then 

 Superintendent of Police, Orissa. The shooting was the result of a 

 bet of 25 to 1 that he could not shoot a hundred birds with a 

 hundred cartridges, 10 to 1 that he would not get 96 and 3 to 1 

 that he would not get" 90. Mr. Cornish got up to his 50th bird 

 without a miss and eventually failed by exactly four birds to get his 

 hundred birds in a hundred shots. On this occasion the walking, 

 as might have been expected, was as near perfection as possible, 

 and the birds so numerous that it was never necessary to take 

 difficult shots. Even under these circumstances the shooting was 

 wonderful, and it will be long before it is beaten. 



As to what constitutes a good bag, this depends entirety on the 

 locality. In Upper India bags of 100 couple to two or three guns 

 are always possible, but to a single gun bags of anything over 50 

 would be considered good. In Southern India such bags would 

 be quite exceptional and in Ceylon practically unknown. In 

 Assam a bag of 30 couple is good, though in Sylhet and 

 sometimes in Cachar and Goalpara much bigger bags are obtained. 

 In Bengal however it is every snipe shot's ambition to get 100 

 couple to his own gun, and though few ever realise this ambition 





