332 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



him, might as well shoot at the moon, in the hope of bring- 

 ing it down with a charge of a double B. To kill him the 

 instant he shows his nose out of the brake on one side of 

 the footpath, up with your gun and blaze away, like 

 lightning, at the edge of the bushes on the opposite side. 

 If you take your level at' the right height — that is to say, 

 Iovj enough — when he has disappeared across the path in 

 the shrubbery beyond, and you have reloaded and recapped 

 your gun, you will find him dead, shot in the forepart, 

 lying just where he fell, having turned one summersault 

 after the shot struck him. 



A single couple of beagles is all that is absolutely 

 necessary for this pretty and enlivening pastime ; but it is 

 Leedless to say, that the more there are in the field the 

 merrier is the cry and the greater the sport. 



Wherever there are extensive ranges of scrub-oak 

 barrens, pine barrens, or any tracts of low bushy under- 

 wood, there is little doubt of finding the smaller hare in 

 abundance. 



He is plentiful in the woodlands of southern New Jer- 

 sey, and in the old fields and worn-out lands of Maryland, 

 Delaware, and Virginia. 



In the pine forests of Maine the larger hare is abun- 

 dant, and with two guns and ten couple of the right sort 

 of hounds, I could desire no better sport than to hunt him 

 on some fine bright September morning. 



