HOW TO LEARN TO SHOOT. 131 
moment of firing. The same malpractice will be frequent- 
ly produced, even when a person is steady, by the trigger, 
which is expected to yield to the accustomed pressure, not 
giving way without a jerking pull; and still more so by 
the cap, after giving the ineffectual click of a miss-fire not 
followed by a report, suddenly exploding a second too 
late. The head is nearly certain to go up, and the shot 
to be wasted above the mark. 
The writer, doubtless, does not intend to be understood 
as asserting that, after keeping his eye low down behind 
the breech, the practised shooter takes aim at a flying bird, 
or running animal, as he would do with a rifle at a mark, 
along the barrel. The beginner must do so in a degree, 
but so soon as the facility of so doing is acquired, the 
practice must be laid aside* or the learner will never rise 
to any thing above mediocrity, but must always continue a 
poking shot. 
This is the cause which renders it so extremely diff- 
cult for a person, who has become by long practice a. first- 
rate rifle shot, and has grown by use perfectly one with 
that weapon, ever to become a crack shot on the wing. 
He dwells too long on his aim, and follows or pokes— 
as it is technically called—after his bird, and rarely 
attains the art of cutting it down, sharp and sure, at a 
snap shot, as it flashes across an opening in a brier brake, 
or twists among thickset saplings. 
The art to be acquired is this: to bring up the gun 
with its sight on the object, or so much above, below, or 
before it, as you intend to fire, of which more anon, hav- 
