WILDFOWL AND WILDFOWLING 
most field-sports, to find his game ; since there it is, in full view, on tide 
or ooze ; but — so to contrive as to bring himself and his gun within 
effective range of a clearly visible quarry. This object he can attain in 
two principal ways, as follows : 
(1) fiy direct approach. This, upon ceaselessly vigilant fowl, assembled 
on their chosen vantage-ground, is only feasible (if at all) by means of a 
fully equipped fowling-punt with stanchion -gun. The attempt by day- 
light, however smart the craft and skilled her crew, will probably fail, 
say eighteen times out of twenty — such is now the excessive wariness 
of all British wildfowl. With geese the failures will be in even greater 
disproportion. And even of the rare successful ventures, not all will be 
exploited to the fullest advantage — perhaps three or four times in half 
a dozen hard -won shots. 
But why these eleventh -hour drawbacks ? The reasons are well and 
bitterly known to craftsmen. The punt may touch the ground forward, 
or graze on half a dozen “ winkles ” aft, and so swing round in a racing 
tide — ^the effort to straighten her involves a deadly risk, and meanwhile 
your gun does not bear. Again, at precisely the critical moment, you 
may “ lose bottom ” in some unseen deep, and need to get out a longer 
setting-pole — a nerve-shaking manoeuvre in the very face of a vigilant 
foe ! There is the ever-present risk of a missfire — grievously frequent 
in the muzzle -loading days ; a distant shot by another gunner; a strag- 
gling curlew or redshank giving alarm. A dozen such mischances might 
be enumerated; but, after all, the fowler’s first anxiety and his chiefest 
skill centre round the handling of a stanchion -gun — that is, the placing 
of its central charge precisely on the right spot and at the right moment. 
This, remember, has to be accomplished while lying prone on a punt’s 
floor at water-level. The shot has often to be taken from a lively boat 
dancing in a sea-way ; at objects none too distinctly seen ; and at a range of 
anything under 100 yards. Half-an-inch error in the elevation of the barrel ; 
an eighth of a second’s miscalculation in “timing the shot,” represents 
the difference between — say two score fowl and triumph ; or total failure 
that vexes one’s very soul ! 
In my humble judgment, all circumstances being considered, the 
highest pheasant that ever flew — and no disparagement to him — is not 
in the same horizon with a really scientific shot at lifting ducks with 
the stanchion-gun. Besides, should you miss your pheasant, there’s 
another, or a dozen, or a score to follow, enabling you to correct errors 
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