62 
HIGH PHEASANTS : 
be the explanation, as I have many times seen a bird quite 
6 yds. behind the leading one that I shot, crumpled up and 
shot all over with apparently as many pellets, judging from 
the number of feathers that flew off it, as the one that 
dropped in front of it at almost , though not quite, the same 
instant. 
On such occasions there seems little doubt that the leading 
bird is knocked down by the first or strongest part of the 
column of shot, and that the following bird is killed by flying 
into the slower half of the column that comes up later into the 
position the first bird occupied when it was killed. 
It will be realised that both birds are really killed when in 
the same position, though one after the other at a fractional 
interval of time. As the leading bird naturally falls forward 
on being shot, if crossing with a fresh wind, the space in the 
air between it, as it drops, and the second bird, is, to all 
appearance, the same as when the one bird was following the 
other previous to the gun being fired. 
Again, many shooters can remember that after missing 
the first bird of several crossing at a long range, they have 
seen another fall that was coming up some yards behind it. 
It does not at all follow that the shooter aimed so very much 
behind the first bird as to kill the second with the front pellets 
of his shot-charge, as he more likely struck it with the last 
or slowest pellets. 
I merely describe here what I have often witnessed ; 
though theorists may argue that after a leading bird has been 
killed, the entire column of pellets will have passed the line 
of flight of a bird following at some yards distance, before 
the latter could have a chance of flying into any part of 
the column. In this case, as in various others I could name 
