14 THE COMPLETE WILDFOWLER 
has this to do with wildfowling? The answer is simple. All 
gunners, whether wildfowlers or no, lend each other their aid 
and support against any common enemy. There is a free- 
masonry among shooters more strong and real than prob- 
ably exists in any other kind of sport. Last year, for 
example, I was travelling from Paris to Monte Carlo. In 
my compartment were three other men, an Englishman, a 
Frenchman, and a Belgian, all of them, as it afterwards 
appeared, going to Monaco upon the same errand as myself 
—pigeon-shooting. A couple of gun-cases on the rack 
lasted for the whole enormous journey over France and along 
the Céte d’Azur, and started a conversation which commenced 
friendships that show no signs of diminution up to the 
present. 
And there is another reason also for beginning this intro- 
ductory chapter as I have done. It is to glorify and explain 
wildfowling in the most emphatic possible way, both for 
the layman and for those who, like the authors of this book, 
find in it their greatest happiness and pleasure, the Supreme 
thing that for us, at any rate, the material aspects of life 
have to offer. 
For, if your sportsman in covert or on roots and stubble 
must be a man trained 'to the highest efficiency of hand and 
eye, a ‘‘true sportsman” in all that pertains to his craft, I 
have no hesitation whatever in saying that the wildfowler in 
order to be successful must surpass him in everything. 
He must be a better shot. He must endure hardships 
and dangers unknown in the other branch. He must be a 
trained ornithologist, learned in the habits and appearance 
of an infinite variety of birds—and he must be many other 
things as well. 
In the first instance, he must be a better shot. A goose 
and a mallard or widgeon, a plover and curlew, a redshank 
or godwit, all fly in entirely different ways—each bird has 
