156 THE MALLARD. 
any suspicion of danger, and at these a shot, however long, 
at the first sign that they are on the guz uive, is most likely to 
tell. Then you must be able to tell, from the way they hold 
their heads and tails, the way they move and face, when they 
first begin to suspect that there are hostile influences in the 
neighbourhood ; you must know the exact tone of their calls as 
suspicion deepens into alarm, and when they resolve to be 
off. To fire at the exact nick of time is half the battle, and 
this is only possible after careful study of the behaviour of 
each species when gradually or suddenly alarmed. I say sudden- 
ly, because it will often happen that you can only geta good 
shot, by yourself starting the fowl by a kick on the side of the 
boat, or a slap with a paddle. You must be exactly in the 
right place withreference to your bore and size of shot, and 
you must be able to judge distances extremely correctly, lying 
flat at the bottom of the boat with your eye only about ten 
inches above water level. And you must be able to allow for 
the pitch of the boat, since even in our broads and lakes 
wavelets of considerable size get up under a stiff breeze. And 
above all you must have strong arms and wrists and dogged 
perseverance, to work up dead to windward against a good 
wind ( this is perhaps when the heaviest bags are made,) lying 
flat, with only your hands over the gunwale just behind the 
bulge of the boat. I say nothing about the necessity of care 
as to where exactly your face and arm are with reference to 
the butt of the gun, but this too is a serious matter ; for staune 
cheons w7// break, and the long swivel dart back to the stern, 
and cheek bones and arms suffer if due count of such contin- 
gencies has not been taken. 
There is more skill, knowledge, and endurance brought into 
play, and therefore more sfort, in one day’s big gun shooting than 
in a week of even shooting such as Captain Butler describes ; 
but punts and swivels, here and at home, have utterly gone 
out of fashion, and no gentleman now-a-days knows how to 
use them, (the professional fowlers no doubt stick to them, and 
with vastly improved and bveech-loading guns, and only an old 
fowler knows how much this means), and it isuseless playing 
the part of a /audator temporis acti, or saying more of a form 
of sport which, however glorious, is as much extinct, where 
my readers are concerned, as falconry and hawking. 
Enormous numbers of wild-fowl are yearly captured by 
natives, and it may be as well to say once for all, something 
about their 7zodz operand. 
I have only seen fowl captured in India, in any numbers, in 
three* ways :—First by hand. Here the fowler enters the water 
* There are two other methods of capturing Wild Fowl, said to be most successful, 
but which have never succeeded with me. The first is to have a strong but thin 
cord stretched tightly eight or ten inches above the water, being tied, every ten yards 
or so, to poles firmly set in the mud below, with their heads projecting, only the 
