288 TEAP-SHOOTING. 



CHAPTER XL 



TKAP-SHOOTINQ. 



The amusement of trap-shooting is pursued in the 

 Northern States, on the margins of the western 

 lakes — as some eminent marksmen of Buffalo and 

 Niagara Falls can testify — and on the sea-coast — as 

 some famous matches at Islip would prove. It is not 

 ■ a field sport ; it is hardly a sport at all ; and a pigeon 

 is not, properly speaking, a game-bird, in spite of the 

 instances quoted. If this work were to be confined 

 strictly to its professed objects, this chapter would 

 have to be excluded ; but for the reason that it belongs 

 nowhere else, that an account of this peculiar style 

 of shooting will be useful to many sportsmen, and 

 that no published book contains any information on 

 the subject, the writer has presumed to collate the 

 experience of his friends rather than of himself — for 

 he does not pretend to mucli skill in this particular 

 art — and to ofier it to the sporting public. 



Trap-shooting, although quite an ungrammatical 

 exjjression, is perfectly understood as a sporting 

 term, having acquired a conventional meaning; it 

 signifies neither shoonng at a trap, which its con- 

 struction implies, nor shooting out of a trap, but 

 shooting at abird — generally a pigeon — released from 

 a trap. Although not a highly scientific sport, and 

 somewhat open to the charge of cruelty, it has its 

 devotees; and certainly, amid a crowd of spectators 



