16 THE COMPLETE WILDFOWLER 
single or double, ten-bores, long-chambered 12-gauge guns, 
and so forth. 
In short, the true wildfowler is as complete a modern. 
sportsman as can be found anywhere in the world. 
One of the great charms of fowling is its uncertainty, 
another lies in the fact that when at last infinite patience and en- 
durance have been rewarded, the smallest bag becomes invested 
with an importance and gives a thousand times greater plea- 
sure than any comparatively easily won trophies can ever do. 
‘‘Wildfowler” of Zhe #zeld, a legitimate descendant of 
grand old Colonel Hawker, has voiced these sentiments in: no 
uncertain way. In the introduction to his book of twenty-nine 
years ago—long the standard work on wildfowling—he 
says :— 
‘‘No branch of shooting has such very ardent votaries as the art 
of wildfowl shooting, and the reasons for the extraordinary hold which 
this pursuit invariably obtains on all sportsmen who try it are not very 
far to seek. Firstly, it is the only sport nowadays wherein success 
is absolutely uncertain and totally beyond any preconceived arrange- 
ment ; secondly, you must go into decidedly wild spots, and submit 
to dangers of many kinds, if you wish to find the birds; and, thirdly, 
there are so many ways of carrying on the pursuit that one never 
wearies of them all. Thus shooting, when it has wildfowl for its 
object, combines all the elements which tend to make of it a strictly 
‘enticing sport, since the uncertainty is so great as to keep hope always 
burning within one’s breast, and since every branch of the calling has 
to be carried on in quite a distinct manner and in totally different 
spots, and is generally accompanied by a degree of peril which renders 
the pursuit perfectly fascinating. The all-round wildfowl shooter, to 
be a successful man, must therefore be of a buoyant nature, and not 
easily put out; he must be doggedly determined, at all costs, to 
carry out his plans; he must also be hardy in his constitution ; he 
must be a good oarsman, an excellent sailor, a good shot, and a 
‘knowing’ sportsman, full of wrinkles and expedients ; and he must 
enjoy that average amount of pluck which is a sine qué non in his 
pursuit. 
‘*To the well-to-do educated man, the sport is of the most charm- 
