LONG-RANGE SHOOTING AT GAME. 313 



copying everything that savors of a good fat " whop- 

 per," such as the stuff that has gone the rounds of the 

 United States this year about the Boers of South 

 Africa knocking over spring-bocks at eight hundred 

 and nine hundred yards as a matter of course. 



3d. Sincere and natural mistake in overestimating 

 distance, a thing that scarcely any of us can learn to 

 avoid, and that causes the oldest hunter many a miss. 

 The beginner sees a deer at a long distance, looking 

 more like a small fawn than a full-grown deer. He 

 shoots, and. perhaps the deer falls at the first shot. 



" Ge ra shus ! What a shot! Four hundred 

 yards !" exclaims the delighted novice. He hastens 

 to his game without stopping to measure the ground. 

 He pants and puffs in getting over it as I have seen 

 older hunters do in lifting a hundred-and-twenty- 

 pound buck on a horse, trying to make themselves 

 believe it weighs two hundred and fifty pounds 

 When he reaches home the ground, still plainly seen 

 by Fancy's eye, has expanded to four hundred and fifty 

 yards. When he comes to tell of his wonderful shot 

 he very naturally wants to do himself full justice, and 

 so he leaves himself a little margin of fifty yards more 

 for possible error. And to the day of his death he 

 will sincerely believe that he killed that deer at almost 

 five hundred yards. And to the day of his death this 

 idea will be a mental whirlpool that will suck in and 

 whirl out of sight all the driftwood of contradictory 

 facts that years of later experience can throw in his 

 way. 



Now the novice was perfectly right in one point 

 that he made a very long and very fine shot. The deer 

 was only two hundred yards away, but he was still 

 right in calling it a long shot; for notwithstanding 



