142 
THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY, 
sometimes the gun discharged — avoid every thing likely 
to produce accident. 
On entering tall cover with a companion, you cannot 
be too cautious of shooting each other; many a gentleman 
has to lament the loss of an eye, or some other injury, by 
the carelessness and indiscretion of his friend. If your 
companion is of an impetuous and heedless disposition, the 
sooner you drop his company the better, for you are cer- 
tainly in danger from him, and in shooting in high co- 
ver, you have as many chances of being shot, as the 
bird, and this feeling so occupies your mind, that it unfits 
you to shoot. It is certainly advisable to hunt in compa- 
ny; but only choose one friend, and endeavour to modify 
your actions alike, especially the rate of walking, and then, 
when you are obscured from each other by thickets, there 
is less probability of one getting ahead of the other, and 
thus unconsciously rush into danger. When thus situated, 
and game before you, it is highly important to know each 
other’s distance and direction — a low whistle, or a cough, 
will be heard sufficiently distant for this purpose, and it 
should be immediately responded to by your companion. 
Do not call violently to your dogs, nor talk, as in all pro- 
bability there may be Pheasants near you, and a very 
trifling noise will make them take flight. 
When a bird springs in cover of this kind, you will at 
first, no doubt, experience much difficulty in killing it, 
owing to the many objects which interpose between your 
sight and the game; but if you have founded your shoot- 
ing on my early instructions of sighting, viz. “to fix 
your eyes intensely on the object to be shot at,” these 
various objects will not affect you, and so long as an open- 
ing between the shrubbery presents itself through which 
you can see the game, and this having monopolized your 
attention, that you will find no more difficulty in killing 
your bird here, than in open ground, if your trigger obeys 
its impulse. Let me advise you particularly in this case, 
not to shoot too soon; this you may be induced to do in 
consequence of the apparent great distance of the bird 
from you, but this delusion is only occasioned by the 
multitude of things which, being between you and the 
game, have the tendency of throwing it in the distance, 
and should you have thrown one charge unsuccessfully at 
the bird, do not hesitate to try the second, and you will 
find the result will be more favourable — let the object be 
fairly on the wing, for the longer the angle of aim, the 
easier it will be to cover the bird. 
It is a difficult thing to follow our game successfully in 
thickets or other woodland — the great velocity of the birds 
and density of the shrubbery make it perhaps as meritori- 
ous in destroying much game as any feats connected with 
the sporting world; this is placing art and science against 
nature, and nature, too, in the wildest and most rugged 
sense. There are perhaps no game birds on earth which 
fly with the same amazing rapidity as Partridges, Phea- 
sants, and Grouse, when matured, and yet I have seen 
sportsmen who shot so well that two out of three of all 
the shots they made in ground covered with trees and 
underbrush, were about a fair proportion of what they 
killed. This under any circumstances is not bad shoot- 
ing, but in cases like the above, it is superlatively good. 
It is not often however you can find a man competent to 
this task, and many gentlemen who have earned great 
reputation as first rate shots, on the shooting manors of 
Europe, have cut but odd figures in our forests, after 
American game. 
I advise no young sportsman to relinquish a piece of 
ground from the prospective difficulties he has to encoun- 
ter on it — if you enter the sporting world, you must 
take it rough, as well as even, and if success does not at- 
tend a single shot which you make in ground of the above 
cast, never mind, load and fire away, until you have shot 
all difficulty from before you. Conquer the rough places, 
and all others will be easy enough, and if after you have 
been practising in difficult places from time to time, you 
should now and then kill a bird, you will find the accom- 
plishment of the same object in open ground not half so 
hard as at first. Before you return to your home, or even 
to the tavern, or carriage, discharge your gun of its con- 
tents. Let the many melancholy accidents so often oc- 
curring, be sufficient warning that no loaded gun should 
ever appear, except in the field; — you know not the con- 
sequences of your carelessness, after your gun may pass 
from under your notice; and the most certain method of 
feeling comfortable yourself, and preventing injury to 
others, is to shoot off your gun. Do not attempt to draw 
the load for the sake of saving the shot; the risk is ten 
thousand times greater than the value of the article you 
would secure. Many a man has sacrificed his future comfort 
at the shrine of avarice. I. 
RAIL SHOOTING. 
Of all the seasons for shooting, none are hailed with a 
more hearty welcome by the gunners of the city and 
county .of Philadelphia, than that for shooting Rail. About 
the first of September this campaign opens, and although 
these birds are but little else than skin and bones, yet such 
is the impatience of some shooters, that the war of exter- 
mination is carried on without intermission from that period 
until their final departure from our rivers. They are not 
found in great numbers, however, until toward the latter 
