312 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
while the tide is rising, as fast as the power and skill of 
the man who pushes the sportsman with a long punt pole 
can accomplish. The higher the water, and the greater 
the speed at which the skiff is propelled, the more the 
sport. The birds will only take wing when the tide is 
rising, and then only when the boat is forced upon them 
with such rapidity that they can neither run nor swim 
away from it. When they have no other choice, they flap 
up just as the gunwale is run over them, fly awkwardly 
and lazily away for ten or twenty yards, and then drop 
again, if not knocked over, which can be done with the 
merest touch of the shot. 
Unless they are killed dead, however, they are rarely re- 
covered, as when wounded they dive to the bottom, and hold 
on to the weeds and water-grass till life actually leaves them. 
All the skill in this sport lies in the pusher, and with him, 
in fact, it depends whether the gunner has sport or no; 
for he has not only to push the boat, on which depends half 
the battle, but to mark the birds which go down, whether 
dead or without a shot, to a yard’s distance, and if killed, 
to retrieve them. 
All that the shooter has in fact got to do, is to stand 
firmly in the boat as it runs over the smooth, moist weeds, 
which is a knack easly acquired with a little practice, and 
to shoot as slowly and as coolly as he can. 
The birds get up so close to him and fly so slowly, that 
he cannot, if he were to try, be too slow or deliberate 
with them. The further they get away, the surer he is 
not only not to miss, but to bring them to bag without 
smashing or disfiguring them. As to missing them, after 
