152 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SPOE.TSMEN. 



No one, however good a shot, has ever returned, after 

 a campaign with the rifle against deer, or what you will, 

 to the snipe-meadow, without finding that he requires some 

 days' practice before he can cut down the long bill so soon 

 as he tops the rushes, with the precision and instinctive 

 swiftness he had before he visited the prairie or the forest. 



For the person who desires, above all things, to be a 

 first-rate performer with the shot gun on the wing, who is 

 so, and who only cares about rifle-shooting as a superfluous 

 accomplishment, for which he expects to find little occa- 

 sion and less exercise on its legitimate game in the field, 

 I advise that the rifle be let alone in toio. So nearly do 

 I hold the two accomplishments incompatible in their 

 perfection. 



I do not mean that a first-rate flying shot may not 

 shoot enough with tho rifle not to be a complete bungler, not 

 to miss a deer or a man standing at a hundred yards ; but 

 I do mean that if he be ambitious, and once get so far with 

 his rifle, he will be apt to proceed, until he succeeds to 

 the utmost, and then — good-bye ! to his lightning-like dasb 

 and swiftness on the wing. 



The same is, more or less, the case, vice versa; but as> 

 it is, I believe, quite impossible that a person, who has 

 become by years of patient practice a perfect and uner- 

 ring rifle shot, without any early knowledge of the shot 

 gun — as is the case with hundreds on hundreds of foresters 

 and woodmen in the West and East — can ever, by any 

 amount of practice, at a late day in life, become a crack 

 shot on the wing, so will the attempted practice of it 

 interfere the less with his old acquired habits. 



