ABOUT SHOOTING. 17 
Nor is it possible for every one to become an artist in gunnery ; 
a “crack shot,” like a poet, is born, not made. For myself I 
make no pretensions to genius in that direction; for although 
I generally make fair bags, and have destroyed many thousand 
birds in my time, this is rather owing to some familiarity I 
have gained with the habits of birds, and a certain knack, 
acquired by long practice, of picking them out of trees and 
bushes, than to skilful shooting from the sportsman’s stand- 
point ; in fact, if I cut down two or three birds on the wing with- 
out a miss I am working quite up to my average in that line. 
But any one, not a purblind “butter fingers,” can become a 
reasonably fair shot by practice, and do good collecting. It 
is not so hard, after all, to sight a gun correctly on an immoy- 
able object, and collecting differs from sporting proper in this, 
that comparatively few birds are shot om the wing. But I do, 
not mean to imply that it requires less skill to collect suc- 
cessfully than to secure game; on the contrary, it is finer 
shooting, I think, to drop a warbler skipping about a tree-top 
than to stop a quail at full speed; while hitting a sparrow that 
springs from the grass at one’s feet to flicker in sight a few 
seconds and disappear is the most difficult of all shooting. 
Besides, a crack shot, as understood, aims unconsciously, with 
mechanical accuracy and certitude of hitting ; he simply wills, 
and the trained muscles obey without his superintendence, 
just as the fingers form letters with the pen in writing; 
whereas the collector must usually supervise his muscles all 
through the act and see that they mind. In spite of the pro- ° 
portion of snap shots of all sorts you will have to take, your 
collecting shots, as a rule, are made with deliberate aim. 
There is much the same difference, on the whole, between the 
sportsman’s work and the collector’s, that there is between 
shot-gun and rifle practice, collecting being comparable to the 
latter. It is generally understood that the acme of skill with 
the two weapons is an incompatibility ; and certainly, the best 
shot is not always the best collector, even supposing the two to 
be on a par in their knowledge of birds’ haunts and habits. 
Still, a hopelessly poor shot can only attain fair results by 
MANUAL. 2 
