IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 
53 
it is said, have no effect when they strike the body of the bird, 
but only when they penetrate to a vital place. 
If a high pheasant is hit in the head, neck, or heart, by one 
pellet of No. 4, then down it comes, just as it would if hit in 
the same way by a pellet of No. 7 ; but judging from the many 
birds I have examined which were struck in the body by 
several pellets of No. 4, no one need imagine that a bird so 
hit with this size is sure to be killed, either by shock or 
penetration, as this is very far from being the case. 
My experience, especially with wild-ducks, is, that two or three 
pellets of No. 4, unless they hit a vital part, will seldom penetrate 
the flesh and muscles of the body so deeply as to cause immediate 
collapse. I have recovered ducks days after they were wounded 
with No. 4 shot, very much alive and with several pellets in 
the body. When afloat with a punt-gun, I have often knocked 
over, though not winged, geese with B.B. shot, which I have 
afterwards found in their breasts and sides, and sometimes 
retrieved the birds two or three days later, and had a hard 
pull in a boat, and several shots with a shoulder-gun, before 
I could do so. A smaller size of shot would have probably 
killed these birds at the time they were fired at, through some 
of the then more numerous pellets striking them in the head and 
neck. As I have previously pointed out, the velocity of 
small and large shot, as used on game, shows only a slight 
difference. From its larger surface a No. 4 pellet meets 
more resistance from the plumage of a bird, and often, 
as I have constantly seen happen, only penetrates a short 
distance, through driving the feathers in front of it into the 
wound it causes ; when a pellet of less diameter might have 
passed through the feathers into the flesh, and possibly 
reached a vital place. As an analogy : if we take two bradawls 
