Chapter II: Part 2

“_October 15th, 1906_

“DEAR MR. TEASDALE-BUCKELL,—I have your letter of the 12th inst. With regard to the .500/.450, I think I said 2000 ft.; it should have been about 2100 ft. As a curious confirmation of the above, I may point out that in Kynoch’s book on the ballistics of various rifles, it gives 2150 ft. as the muzzle velocity of a .450 bore rifle with 70 grains cordite and 480 grains bullet, whereas with 70 grains powder and 420 grains bullet it gives the muzzle velocity as 2125 ft.

“The muzzle velocity of a 950 grains bullet from a 10 bore Paradox, nitro powder, is 1500 ft. The bullet is made either of solid hardened lead or steel cored; see the enclosed illustrations of the latter. With regard to the rook and rabbit rifles, the .220 shoots 3 grains powder and 30 grains bullet, and the .250 7 grains powder and 56 grains bullet. Solid bullets for rooks, and hollow-point bullets for rabbits.—Yours faithfully,

“H. W. HOLLAND”

ANCIENT AND MIDDLE AGE SHOOTING

It is difficult to know where to start an account of the early history of shooting. The long-bow was used in deer shooting, as also was the cross-bow, and if we may believe the early artists—and I do not see why we should—deer running before hounds and horses were shot from the saddle with the cross-bow, and the arrow went in behind the neck and out at the throat. The artists of old were obviously as imaginative as Royal Academicians when it came to sport. For instance, nearly every picture of a woodcock or snipe on the wing, including one of J. W. M. Turner’s, puts the beak of the bird sticking out in front, on the principle of “follow your nose”; but every woodcock and snipe treats even Turner with contempt, and hangs its beak in spite of the greatest master of English landscape. Mr. Thorburn makes no such mistake, but even he has made a couple of cock partridges court one another; and it is really very difficult to believe in the accuracy of artists such as the delineators of the Bayeux Tapestry, where five men may be seen applauding Harold’s coronation and with only eight legs between them, most of them clearly disconnected with the men.

When, therefore, we see drawings of the fourteenth and fifteenth century people engaged in smiting down flying birds with an arrow from a cross-bow, we may be permitted to believe that an ideal has been drawn, and that most of those who tried to kill birds in flight in time learnt to prefer the falcon or the net. Even stricken deer that the Middle Ages artists show us shot through the neck from behind must have had totally different habits from their present-day relatives, because it is not the habit of pursued deer to hold up the neck but to carry it horizontally at such times, so that the back-to-throat arrow would be possible only from above.

It is less difficult to believe the writing in the _Master of the Game_ and its French original than to believe the pictures with which the latter was adorned—probably long afterwards, by someone who had not the authority of the author.

Artists were not then sportsmen, but in Assyria they obviously were so. In the British Museum room devoted to that ancient kingdom, in low relief may be seen much that is looked for in vain in the technically superior sculpture of the classic periods of Greece and Rome. That is to say, the actual feelings and characters of the beasts are conveyed in the outlines. The horses were obviously of precisely the same character as the arabs and thoroughbreds of to-day. They are not obstinate brutes, little better than mules, like the ponies of the Parthenon, which all lay back their ears _at_ their masters, but, on the contrary, the Assyrians are generous, high-spirited beasts that fight _with_ their masters, pursue in spirit with them, and fight with ears laid back only when they are face to face with a lion, and going to meet him. The artists saw it all, or they would have blundered in the expression of the horse, which is mostly in his ears, but they never blundered. Surely this was the first shooting recorded, and whether it was done by bow and arrow or by hurling the dart matters nothing. It is the most ancient and the most authentic of all the ancient records of sport. If it were untrue, it would be the most contemptible, because the most flattering art. But it bears internal evidence of its own truth, and that the country of Nimrod produced mighty hunters, for which there is also Biblical evidence; no race or nation of sportsmen has since been able to boast similar sportsmanship. For man and horse to face a charging lion and kill him with a spear, or dart, is to place sportsmanship before human life; and even David, who killed a lion and a bear, did not do that, but merely defended his flocks, probably in the only way open to him. He was a mighty shepherd and a mighty king, but not a “mighty hunter,” and “no sportsman,” as the story of the one ewe lamb proved.

It is a long jump from Nimrod to the hunting in the New Forest, which was obviously as much shooting as hunting, when Rufus was killed by an arrow, meant, or not meant, for a hart. Whether there ever were outlaws named Robin Hood and Little John does not matter, because fiction is always based on fact, or it does not live a day. The fiction or fact of the great shooting of the king’s deer by these outlaws has lived seven hundred years, and it is more easy to believe that there were many generations of such poachers and highwaymen than that there were none at all. The highest office in the land was then one of robbery, and it is a poor king who has not some subjects who will offer him the sincerest form of flattery, namely imitation.

Gunpowder is said to have been invented in China many years before it was re-invented in Europe. We are apt to marvel that no explosive was made use of before, but learning was very much in the hands of the priests at a time when the latter class was especially sincere, and when the people were full of superstition or belief. It may be, then, that the first discoverers of gunpowder for conscience’ sake made no use of what must have appeared to be an invention of the Devil. Such inventors, if there were any, might have been the more disposed to this course because the stuff was clearly as destructive to its users as to an enemy, until the building of guns had progressed for many years.

It is not quite certain in which battle was first employed gunpowder—a fact which indicates that it did not do much for its side. It appears to have been the guns that were weak, not so much the powder, which was probably very much the same when used by Henry VIII. as black powder is to-day.

It is, moreover, not certain that guns were any better at Waterloo than they had been in the time of Elizabeth. The reason for this was the want of good metal. It is a known fact that thickness of metal becomes useless after a certain point is reached, so that iron and brass guns could not be made to take enormous charges of powder and heavy shot without bursting. This might have been done by making them very long and using a slow burning powder, but that way out never seems to have been thought of until recently. The reason modern big guns will take such enormous pressure as the big charges behind heavy shells give, is, first, that they are made of steel, and second, because the tension on the steel internally and externally is equalised by a very clever method. The guns are built up by being bound in wire in a heated state, so that when this wire cools it contracts the internal tube as it contracts itself. This being the case, when an explosion takes place in the finished gun, it has to overcome the wire contraction on the outside of the gun before the internal tube can begin to expand beyond its natural size. That is how a thickness of metal is made serviceable, and prevents a bursting of the internal surface before the external bigger surface is strained. In other words, the pressure is resisted equally all through the thickness of the walls of the barrel. This has entirely revolutionised big gunnery during the last thirty years, and has enabled ships of war to hurl 800 lb. shells through the armour of enemies who are hull down beyond the horizon.

Gunpowder was for centuries used in war before it was much used in sport. The reason for this was that there was no good method of letting off a sporting weapon. To apply a match to a touch-hole obviously took a good deal of time, and besides gave warning to the game, so that, although shooting flying game had been at least an ambition in the days of the cross-bow, shooting the game upon the ground with “hail shot” was practised for many years before anyone attempted to kill flying game with shot guns. It is curious that when this practice was in vogue dogs were taught either to point or to circle their game at their masters’ pleasure. This circling had the effect of indicating the exact position of the crouching covey, and at the same time of preventing the birds running away from the shooter. A dog that would “circle” was held in much more esteem than one that would only point, but one that would do both was far the most highly valued. The shooter had to see the birds on the ground before he could bring his lumbering weapon to bear, and begin to let it off. This probably continued long after the wheel-lock was invented, in 1515 A.D.

The flint and steel method of ignition enabled the shot gun to be used on flying game, but the flint and steel came in somewhere about the year 1600, and shooting flying game did not become general until after 1700 A.D.

Meantime there had been royal prohibitions in this country, as well as in France, against the use of hail-shot, and it can well be understood, at a time when shooting at coveys on the ground was considered no breach of sporting etiquette, that some restraint became necessary. Before the use of the flint and steel, the heavier weapons were employed by using for them a stand to rest the muzzle upon, and this was made necessary, not so much by reason of the weight as by the uncertainty of the precise moment of the explosion, and the expediency of keeping the weapon “trained” on the object until the powder chose to catch fire and explode.

Before the invention of the flint and steel, the value of rifling had been discovered. There is a doubt whether the discovery is due to the late fifteenth or the early sixteenth century, but at any rate it was well known on the Continent about 1540 A.D. There are rifled barrels at Zürich arsenal that have been there since 1544. The most ancient in this country was brought from Hungary in 1848, and bears the date 1547. There has been an idea that the first grooves in weapons were not spiralled but straight, but this does not seem to be correct, as all the most ancient grooved weapons known are spirals of more or less rapid turn. Some of them have a variation of twist within themselves. There have been many straight grooved weapons, but the object of them is lost. It has been suggested that they were used for shot, but they could have had no advantage over smooth bores for that purpose, and no advantage over muskets for ball. Nevertheless, the science of ballistics was not generally understood when they were made, and probably a rifled shot gun would have been attractive, as an advertisement, when it was known that a rifle was accurate with ball, and when the reason of its accuracy was unknown to most people.

Although it was at once recognised that the rifle was far more accurate than the smooth-bore musket, nevertheless three hundred years after the invention of the former it had not come into use for the British Army, and this in spite of the work done with it by the American sharp-shooters in the War of Independence. Even long after Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington was against arming the soldiers with the rifle, and yet he, and every authority, knew of its infinite superiority as a weapon of precision. The reason for this was very easy to understand. The muzzle-loading rifle was no more accurate than the smooth bore unless its ball fitted close and took the grooving. In order that it should do this it had to be forced down the muzzle by means of a stiff ramrod and a wooden mallet. This operation took too much time for war purposes, and it was generally considered that a musket could be used five times for once of the rifle. This was the disadvantage that did not really totally disappear until modern breech-loading was invented, although many attempts were made to get over the difficulty in various ways. One of the principal of these was the screwing of the trigger guard into the barrel, in a hole big enough to take the proper ball for the bore; then the barrel was charged from the muzzle, and loaded with the bullet afterwards from the hole in the breech. This was a clumsy makeshift, which cut away nearly half the barrel at that point, and this the metal of the day was ill able to stand. The other plan was the adoption of the principle of the expanding bullet. The best form of this bullet was that one with a hollowing out behind. This hollow, of course, admitted either the powder or the powder-gas, which expanded the rear portion of the bullet, and forced it into the grooves at the same time as it also forced it forward.

It is extraordinary to consider that the rifle had existed for three centuries and a half before this plan became effective, and made the rifle a much superior weapon to the musket. If any country had discovered it at the time of Marlborough or Wellington, it would have made that country master of Europe, just as the first use of the breech-loader as a military arm made Prussia and her needle gun invincible, until other nations also armed themselves with the breech-loader.

It has often been said that “vile saltpetre” was the deathblow to chivalry. That was not so; the long-bow and the cross-bow had before this made Jack as good as his master, and as a matter of fact the bow was much more highly valued up to the reign of Elizabeth than the gun was.

Nevertheless, one French writer attributes the loss of the battle of Crecy to the English use of guns, and he goes on to show that, although the French had used cannon in the sieges of castles, they would not employ them against men. The fact that gunpowder was known in Europe long before Crecy, and is _said_ to have been used by the followers of Mahomet, and by the defenders of India against Alexander the Great, goes to support the French author’s views, that chivalry forbade the use of such a method of warfare.

This is no unsupported view, for Pope Innocent III. forbade the use even of the cross-bow against Christian enemies, but permitted it against Infidels. It was even said that Richard I. was killed by a shot from a cross-bow because he had disregarded the Pope’s Bull in the use of the weapon. This common belief well indicates the superstition, or religion, of the people, and is ample to account for the very slow growth of the use of gunpowder up to the time of Agincourt, which was obviously won, like the Black Prince’s victories over France, by the English long-bow; and, in the winning, destroyed the dying embers of the spirit of chivalry. That gunpowder did not do this may be gathered from the fact that Sir John Smyth, a general of Elizabeth’s army, declared he would take 10,000 bowmen against 20,000 armed with the match-lock of that period.

More than this, a match was made at Pacton Green, in Cumberland, as lately as 1792 with the bow against the gun, probably the Brown Bess, to test the two for warlike purposes at 100 yards range, and the bow won easily.

General military opinion had then gone against the bow, but obviously there was not much in it, for the rifle was only supplied to the rifle brigade, and not to the general army.

The latter was first armed with the rifle at the time of the Crimea, when the Minie rifle was adopted. A well-tempered sharp arrow could cut through armour as well as the slow bullets from hand guns, but armour remained of some use against both, and it only disappeared as big guns came into general use in the field, which was long after they had been used in and against Norman castles and town walls.

Perhaps, with the exception of the Assyrians and the ancient Egyptians, the most ancient warriors were a boasting, cowardly lot, like the leading gentlemen of Homer, and the still more cowardly understudies who stood still to watch while their chiefs were engaged in combat. Even Goliath advanced to single combat, and his side never fought at all when David’s shooting instrument went true. It is not, however, on record that Goliath had a shooting instrument, and it may fairly be urged that this early knight intended to bar shooting, and was a true forerunner of the knights of the Middle Ages, who also attempted to bar shooting by the aid of Pope Innocent III. Passing over those ancient Greek and Israelitish times to the classic period of Greece and Rome, when battles were fought by the whole of the armies engaging, we find that then shooting in any form had very little to do with results. That is to say, the bow and arrow, which became so deadly in the Plantagenet and Lancastrian wars in France, were not relied upon. The reason seems to have been that the classic Greek soldier with armour and target was pretty secure against the arrow, but the knight’s horse in the Middle Ages was not, and could not be made so. Incidentally, therefore, it is fair to assume that war had again degenerated, by means of chivalry, to the single combat championship stage, and that the first side to make the whole army fight won the day, as the British archers won it for the Black Prince, much to the disgust, as well as the defeat, of the French knights.

Until 1515, or thereabouts, when the wheel-lock was invented, the gun could only be used with a match-lock of kinds, and the circling pointer was very much in demand to indicate the exact position of the covey. The sportsman trained his hail-shot loaded gun on the spot and let it off. This form of sport became possible almost as soon as gunpowder was invented, but there is no record of it until much later, when it had become so destructive to game as to be forbidden by edict. Then the flint and steel lock was introduced, so that no sooner had the circling dog come to perfection than he found his business gone, for he was not wanted for the shooter of flying game, at a time when the latter sat well enough not only for the bad marksman, but also for the net as well.

There is a picture of a deer drive, dated 1644, in De Espinar’s book, where the sportsman has a heavy gun in a movable rest, but what kind of boring and ignition were employed is not to be discovered. It is possible, however, that both rifling and the flint and steel were employed, for they must have been very tame deer that would have remained in one position long enough, in a drive, to have been done to death by means of any device for quickening up the match-lock. Indeed, the long-bow would have been much the more deadly shooting instrument.

In modern times the long-bow has become a toy, but, even as such, shows itself capable of more accuracy than the musket had. That flying shots were not impossible with either the long-bow or cross-bow has often been proved, and there is one well-known instance where a swallow on the wing was pierced by an arrow, and remained upon it about half-way down the shaft. But when the arrow was a weapon of war the minimum distance for practice for a man was 220 yards, and the flight of an arrow then was very far beyond the powers of the toy bow now used in the pretty game of archery.

The author has practised with both cross-bow and long-bow. As a boy he has had many a shot at a flying pheasant with the former, and although he never hit one, that was probably only because the art of building cross-bows died with those who had need of them.

It is known as a matter of fact that gun metal was very poor stuff when the early cannons were made, and it can be gathered that powder was not of the best, as the proportions by weight of shot to powder were for the biggest cannon as two of shot is to one of powder, and for the smallest bores as ½ lb. of shot is to ¾ lb. of powder, and to shoot this 8 oz. of shot the weight of gun required was 300 lbs., and the bore 1 inch, or about five times as much weight as we should require now for that weight of shot, for which we should not use ¾ lb. of powder, but a couple of ounces would be ample. The only proportions of powder and shot at all like these that have been used in modern days are in some of the gun-proving charges and loads, where there was a good deal of windage between the ball and the walls of the barrel, and this is a fault in economy that the Middle Age gunners were compelled to adopt, and it probably accounts to some extent for their amazing charges of powder for the weights of shot employed, so that the powder was probably a good deal better than these proportions suggest, and the metal of the guns a good deal worse.

ON THE CHOICE OF SHOT GUNS

The first thing for the novice to do is to get advice. The difficulty will not be in the getting but in the selection afterwards. The majority of experienced shooters will not bother the novice with their views, but will advise him to go to the best gun-maker he can afford to employ and take his advice; but this amounts also to taking his guns, and it may be that a novice can do much better than that. The majority of shooters when they know what they want can possibly afford best guns from best makers, and perhaps have enough sport to justify the 180 guineas that a pair will cost. But all shooters at the beginning cannot afford to find out their requirements upon anything of the sort; this is proved by the much greater number of second and third grade than of best guns made and sold every year.

Besides, the majority of gun-shops are stocked heavily with second-hand and second-quality guns, that can be bought from £15 to £25 each, and the most difficult second-hand guns to find in London are those of the best makers, who only turn out one quality, namely the best, which are worth more.

It would be an invidious selection to name the best gun-makers, and impossible besides, for their products are the offspring of the brain, eye, and hand of the cleverest workmen,—sometimes, but rarely, their nominal makers,—and these craftsmen are human: they change, and even die. That is the reason that the best guns of one season do not always come from the same shops as the best of another. But not one amateur expert in a hundred, and not one shooter in ten thousand, will be able to detect the difference by external examination. It is there, and is important; and some day the gun that has not passed a master in the prime of critical observation will have an accident and break down, just at the wrong moment probably; whereas the best work of a best gun-maker will wear out its barrels, and then another pair, before anything goes wrong with its works, and before its splendid fitting and superior metal allow the barrels and the action to suggest divorce proceedings, by gaping in each other’s presence.

But if one cannot name the best makers and continue to live, it is possible to get over the difficulty by suggesting that most gun-makers have price lists of second-hand guns in their possession, and from these lists the status of the various gun-makers in the country can be gathered. But even this is not quite a reliable method, for those makers who turn out second and third quality guns may be represented by their best, or their worst, in these lists, whereas the men who have only one sort can only be represented by the best.

Then, again, the fashion changes, and guns which a few years ago were best and latest fashion are soon out-dated, and then they rank in price with second or third quality guns that are made in the latest fashion. Thus a hammerless gun is not now fashionable; it must be hammerless ejector, and for choice with a single trigger. Then hammer guns of the best make can be bought for a sixth of their original cost, just as muzzle-loaders are totally unsaleable except in the Colonies.

Instead, therefore, of giving 180 guineas for a pair of hammerless ejectors by a best maker, the novice may for about a third of the sum procure a pair in every way as good by the same maker, if he foregoes the ejector part of the latest fashion. But, in order to make sure of fair treatment, dealing only with the most reputable establishments is advised, because it has been known that the less particular traders have themselves altered an old-fashioned gun into an ejector, and sold it as the gun of a first-rate maker, whereas it would have been more properly described as their own work. However, there is always a check on this kind of thing, because every gun is numbered by those makers whose weapons are worth having, and a letter to the maker, giving the number and description of the gun, will probably be the cause of detection of any fraud of this kind.

In order satisfactorily to buy second-hand guns, a shooter should know exactly what bend, length of stock, and cast on or off he takes, and should also be able to measure these dimensions for himself; for it is not wise to have a second-hand gun altered to fit, not even if it is done by its own maker.

The best way is not to throw up a gun in the shop and buy it by the feel. There it may feel to fit when it does not do so; and it is possible to discard as ill-fitting the very gun that is exactly right. It is only out of doors at moving objects that most people handle a gun as they do at game. Consequently it is cheap in the end to go to a shooting school and be measured for a gun. There the beginner will be tested in every way and for every class of shot and angle of aim. It is not intended to suggest that shooting schools do not make mistakes, for they do. But the wise man will not be satisfied until he has been able to handle the try gun in a satisfactory manner when bent to his proposed measure. That is to say, the schoolmaster and the pupil have got to agree before either are likely to be right, and if the pupil cannot agree with one master he can try another.

The author knows one fine performer who placed himself in the hands of two experts in close succession. The stock measurement of one was cast-on, and a good deal of it; that of the other was cast-off, and also much of it. He had guns built to each. Naturally one might say they were both wrong, but as a matter of extraordinary fact they were both right; for this fine shooter performs equally well with both guns, and would probably do so with any other weapon. Of course he is the exception, and it would be unwise for others to attempt to shoot alternately with two guns as different as these are, because the practice with one would be unlearning for the other.

The object of taking much trouble to get a true measure, in writing, is that the testing of many guns, by putting them to the shoulder, alters a shooter’s method of doing this; and although the change may be only slight and temporary, it is enough to prevent an accurate selection in a gun-shop. The written measure reduces the number of guns to be tried, or handled, by 90 per cent., which greatly assists the process of selection, not only in the way named above, but by allowing more time for a thorough trial of each.

If a young shooter is going to shoot in parties, and not by himself, the bore of his gun is practically settled for him. It must be 12 bore, because otherwise he can be no help to other shooters in the lending of cartridges, nor they to him. This is very important, and becomes more so in exact degree as bags increase. The ammunition cart cannot be everywhere at once, and the work to be done by a host’s servants should never be unnecessarily added to when they are most busy.

On the other hand, it is quite permissible to take a 20 bore on to the moors to shoot over dogs in early August. Some people think that a 20 bore shoots closer than a 12 gauge, but that is a mistake. It spreads its shot quite as much as the larger bore, but it has fewer shot, and consequently the pattern is thinner. Few people have either kind bored to shoot as closely as possible, but when each is so bored the 12 gauge will always be the more powerful, unless heavy 20 bores are built to shoot 12 gauge loads.

This does not imply that a shooter will always get the most out of a 12 bore.

Lightness of weight assists walking, and also quickness in shooting, so that it is possible in some hands for the worst gun to do the most work. It is the fashion to use a pretty heavy gun for driving; the greater the head of game there is, the more certainly does one require a gun to kick but little; and there is no cure for kick except weight. For shooting over dogs the weight is generally a greater objection than recoil, because the number of shots fired will not be likely to be so many as to make a heavy recoil unbearable by too frequent repetition. Still, for the sake of a slight difference of weight, it is not usually necessary to have different guns for driving and for shooting over dogs. There is a mistaken idea that only a heavy gun will shoot a heavy charge well, but this is not so. Some years ago there were a good many 4¾ lb. 12 gauge guns built to shoot full 12 bore charges. Some of them shot as well as 7 lb. guns, but there are good and bad of all weights and gauges.

It is by no means urged that a 12 bore for walking up partridges and shooting grouse over dogs should be as light as those “feather-weights” were, because recoil was unpleasant from them, even if only a few shots were fired. The contention is merely that a light 12 bore will kill as well as a heavy one, provided it carries the same charge and load, and its barrels are as long as the heavy gun’s tubes. The only possible difference will be caused by the greater jump of the light gun, and this jump may in _some_ light weapons uncentre the pattern. That is not a subject to speculate about, but is one for trial.

But it is not only light guns that sometimes do not shoot true. No double rifles can by measurement ever be put together so that both barrels shoot to the same place. This is accomplished by trial and regulating. It is done by wedging the muzzles farther apart or bringing them nearer together as the case may require. In the making of shot guns measurement is supposed to be enough; but a large percentage of guns do not centre their loads on the spot aimed at, and the two barrels frequently shoot to a different centre. Possibly choke bores are most liable to this fault; at any rate, they are much more easily detected, because their patterns are smaller than those of cylinders, and a variation from centre is more easily noticed.

When this inaccuracy occurs, people may say that the shooter is in fault and not the gun. Gunners are satisfied with such statements, although they would reject a rifle that shot with a quarter of the inaccuracy.

A gun-maker’s business is to show true shooting, and to keep a gun tester to do this work, and to show that all guns sold shoot true and well, and that all rifles can make small groups. Naturally the young shooter will believe himself to be in fault when he sees these men make central shots time after time with a gun or rifle that will not do it in novice hands. But some of these experts discover at the first shot where a barrel throws, and make the necessary allowance for it in each succeeding shot.

In order to be able to do this, a man must have wonderful confidence in himself; but some experts are well able to shoot one shot only from each barrel of a rifle, and then regulate it with no more evidence. Others are obliged to make a group with each barrel in order to negative their own faults of aim, or “let off.” That will possibly be the young shooter’s form; and if it is unfortunately so, all the same he is the man who is going to use the weapon, not the gun-maker’s expert, and consequently his own test is the best for him, _no matter how blundering it may be_.

There is no wisdom in being satisfied or put off with anything less than perfect central shots of the shot gun. The relative position of the shot centre in regard to a small bull’s eye is not easy to put into figures, but it can be grasped by the mind at a glance. The author has seen some close-shooting shot guns that only put the edge of the 30 inch circle of shot on to the bull’s eye. This represents an inaccuracy of 15 inches, and is very bad indeed, but 3 inches of inaccuracy is more than equally bad, because it ought not to exist; it is the worse because it is so difficult to find out. At the best there is only a 15 inch limit of inaccuracy of aim in a 30 inch pattern at going-away game. That is small enough for most people who shoot swerving partridges, twisting snipe, and rising grouse. Three inches of inaccuracy of gun reduces the man’s limit of inaccuracy to 12 inches. Is it enough? The author believes that most guns are out double as much as this 3 inches at 40 yards, and that the reason is that they are not usually treated to the same process of regulation spoken of for double rifles.

Were it not that the shot strings out into a long column with as much as 30 feet between the first and the last pellet at 40 to 50 yards range, it would be barely possible to kill at all when the pace of the game makes great allowances in front necessary.

This may be said: that 3 inches of inaccuracy is not much when many feet have to be judged, and that is perfectly true, and if the gun’s 3 inches of inaccuracy were always in the same direction as the game is going—that is, 3 inches too forward or too backward—there would be nothing in it to trouble about; but it is just as likely to be an error at right angles with the line of flight of the game, and then it does matter very much indeed. Even if a miss does not result, but if the aim is true, the game will then be made to fly through the thin part of the circumference of the shot column. For instance, if game is coming directly over the shooter, and a gun inaccuracy of 3 inches makes him shoot to right or left of the line of flight, that error is increased by his own inaccuracy or the “curl” of the game, which together may easily accomplish the other 12 inches, and then the game would be outside of the column of shot of a choke bore at 40 yards. A full choke has not a killing circle for straight going-away game of more than 26 or 28 inch diameter at that distance. On the contrary, a true cylinder has a killing circle of 40 inches.

This appears at first glance to be a very great advantage to the cylinder user, but in practice there is not much in it, provided the choke bore shoots truly to centre. If it does not, it is absolutely worthless, whereas the cylinder, with an equal fault, is a bad gun but not worthless. The reason of this is that the cylinder spreads more than the choke. The “full choke” always clusters its shot in the centre, and although the aim of gun-makers may be to get an even pattern, it cannot be done with a full choke gun, and would not suit everybody if it were done.

The author is inclined to think that a cylinder, or modified choke bore, is better than a full choke for any distance or purpose for which a full choke bore, with an even distribution of pellets, is better than another with a central clustering of pattern. Possibly pigeon shooting is an exception; because there is no use in killing outside the boundary, so that very long shots are not much wanted, and quick, hard shooting and an even, large pattern are required. But with game, accuracy of aim is preferable to extreme quickness, if either has to be sacrificed to any great extent. You go out to shoot to please yourself, and nothing will accomplish that pleasure so certainly as constantly killing game at distances that other people cannot reach. Tall pheasants and high wild duck try a gun as well as a gunner, and if the latter can keep in the line of flight he can shoot at some angles and at slow birds twice as strong with a choke as with a cylinder, but the timing of the shot is not as easy for one as for the other.

The shot spreads laterally nearly half as much again for the cylinder, but if you can keep your gun in the direction of the line of flight, that extra lateral spread will only help you for fast birds crossing at right angles. This is the least difficult thing to be done in killing driven game. The most difficult is accurately timing the shot, and here the gunner has the advantage of the longitudinal spread of the shot; in other words, a column of pellets some 30 feet long, at 40 or 50 yards, is sent in front of the game, which has to fly through the column as the latter passes the line of flight. The cylinder has slightly the longer column, and the column is slightly thicker through.

Correct timing implies that no part of the column of shot passes the bird before his head is in it, or after his legs are out of it. But this absolute accuracy of measuring the allowance in front, as well as timing the “let off,” must be very unusual.

It may be said that it is not easy to keep the gun in the direction of the line of flight, but the author cannot agree to that, except when the game swerves after the “let off.” If it does that, a spread of shot the size of a barn door would probably miss it, and the one-third bigger lateral spread of the cylinder than of the choke bore will not assist once in a hundred times.

These views, although not perhaps expressed, are largely acted upon in practice. Soon after choke-bore guns came in they became very unfashionable for game shooting, and the author was himself dreadfully unfortunate, for his form dropped 50 per cent. But the reason was that his first choke bores were not central shooters, and it was then very difficult to get guns of that boring that were true. That it was no fault of choke bores as such, the author proved by having his guns rebored, and although they afterwards shot even closer than before, they killed in the new condition.

One fault which is very bad in choke bores, and counts against shooting straight-going and straight-coming game well, far more than with cylinders, is that of patches without any shot in them in the outer edge of the circle. What is meant here is not a misdirection of the load but an erratic spread of it. In a close-shooting weapon this fault is almost as bad as a misdirection, but differs in this, that the patch varies its position with each shot. These patches sometimes extend from the outer edge to very nearly the centre of the pattern, and consistent shooting when they occur is impossible. They are not chance happenings, and can be obviated by good boring and good loading. The author thinks they most often occur when the shot can be shaken in the cartridge, and it may be that a size of pellets which do not lie evenly on the outer circle on the wad assist in deforming the pattern.

But theory is of no use, and it is the gun-maker’s business to sell a gun that he can show has none of these faults. Whether he overcomes them by a change in size of shot, quantity of them, or in an alteration of brand of powder, matters nothing to the shooter, and is not his affair. Enough has been said when the gun-buyer is placed in a position that it took the author many years to arrive at in regard to the choke bore, namely, that everything on the plate that is bad is not the fault of the shooter, but of the gun-maker.

There is another advantage of the choke bore. It shoots No. 5 shot at 50 yards as hard as No. 6 is shot by a cylinder at 40 yards, and the pattern will be quite equal at 50 yards with the large shot to that of the cylinder’s small shot at 40 yards.

This is very important in shooting at straight coming or going grouse. The farther off the first bird can be taken, the more certainly will the others be killed. No. 6 shot has enormous energy when the speed of a quick advancing bird is added to the speed of the shot. If it gets in the bird, it will go a long way through him; but when grouse are coming low, and dead straight to the gun, they glance the small shot like a shower of hail upon a duck’s back. Consequently more heavy shot will get in, although fewer will hit.

The kind of gun to be bought can hardly be determined until the shooter has settled what size of pellets he wants to use at various game. Messrs. Kynoch sell more than twice as many No. 5 shot as any other size. No. 6 comes next, and Nos. 7 and 5½ are nowhere.

With a cylinder gun only placing 100 pellets of No. 6 shot in the 30 inch circle at 40 yards, one could not expect great work from No. 5 pellets on birds as small as partridges walked up. The pattern would be too open at 40 yards, and the penetration unnecessarily high at 25 yards.

Some, at least, of No. 6 shot has penetration for a slow partridge flying dead away at 40 yards. With a very quick driven bird shot at behind, it has not more than enough penetration beyond 30 yards. The pace of the retreating game reduces the energy of the impact, but there is very little glancing off the feathers when they are struck from behind. The author is inclined to say that in shooting coming game all glancing is away from the game, and from behind all glancing from feathers is into the bird. He has himself heard the clatter of the shot on a straight-coming duck at about 30 yards when no damage whatever was done. At a low skimming partridge coming straight for an open gateway in which the writer was standing, he has shot, as at a sitting mark, for there was neither swerve nor rise or fall; he has seen the earth kick up all round the bird at about 25 yards, and has not been any nearer bagging the game. Surely nothing but glancing shot can account for such escapes.

WARTER PRIORY. LORD SAVILE SHOOTING
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┌──────┬─────┬──────┬───────────┬──────────┬──────┬────────┬────────┬──────┐ │1906. │ No. │ Name │Partridges.│Pheasants.│Hares.│Rabbits.│Various.│Total.│ │ │ of │ of │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Guns.│Beat. │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ├──────┼─────┼──────┼───────────┼──────────┼──────┼────────┼────────┼──────┤ │Dec. 4│ 8 │Blanch│ 91│ 657│ 574│ 139│ 2│ 1,463│ │ │ │Whin │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Dec. 5│ 9 │Gold’n│ 15│ 3,824│ 526│ 92│ 3│ 4,460│ │ │ │Vall’y│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Dec. 6│ 9 │High │ 11│ 3,037│ 182│ 42│ 2│ 3,274│ │ │ │Cliff │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ├──────┼─────┼──────┼───────────┼──────────┼──────┼────────┼────────┼──────┤ │ │ │ │ 117│ 7,518│ 1,282│ 273│ 7│ 9,197│ └──────┴─────┴──────┴───────────┴──────────┴──────┴────────┴────────┴──────┘

A bird partly crossing can be killed farther away, but a partridge coming dead on, in spite of the increase of impact caused by its speed, is far out for a cylinder and No. 6 shot at 30 yards, but with a choke bore and No. 5 shot it is well within range at 40 yards. Then a fast going-away driven bird is 10 yards nearer than it looks if you have No. 5 pellets in the gun, and a good deal farther off than it looks if you have No. 6.

So far only the actual bringing down of game has been considered, but there is the question of ethics too. With all shot there is some distance at which a body shot ceases to be effective, and when killing must depend on hitting a vital exposed part, or the wing. As the body is more than twice as big as these exposed vitals, namely the head and neck, it follows that the body will be hit twice as often as these vital parts. Beyond the distance at which body shots will kill, it follows that the shooter wounds twice for every head he bags. Consequently there is a wounding distance for each kind of shot pellet for straight going and coming game.

This wounding distance, for No. 6 shot, the author would be inclined to place at all ranges beyond 30 yards and up to 100 yards; for No. 5 shot, all distances beyond 40 yards and up to 120 yards. But as most people do not shoot at game beyond 50 yards, for practical purposes the wounding distance is from 30 to 50 yards with No. 6, and from 40 to 50 yards with No. 5 shot. Full-feathered partridges are the birds alluded to. August grouse can be killed farther away with much more certainty.

In all the public London trials of guns the patterns of cylinders have not averaged as high as 100 pellets of No. 6 in the 30 inch circle at 40 yards range. With 1¼ oz. of No. 6, of 270 pellets to the ounce, about 250 pellets in the same circle have been frequently obtained at the same 40 yards range from choke bores. But the majority of guns sold as cylinders now will put as many as 120 pellets in the circle, and the author has seen one of Holland’s put 160 pellets in that circle. In this gun there was no noticeable choke bore when a barrel gauge was used at all distances within 8 inches of the muzzle. The author did not attempt further to learn how this barrel was bored, and it would not be fair to expose it if he knew, which is not the case. But now that the principle of boring is well understood, there appear to be several methods by which a similar result would be possible. The barrels are known to stretch very considerably under the pressure of the powder-gas, and consequently any treatment of the barrels at the muzzles that would prevent them stretching with the rest of the barrel would act, more or less, like a modified choke. This might be done perhaps by an external thickening of the barrel, or by a hardening of the metal just at the right spot.

However, to prefer a cylinder that gives a high pattern to a modified choke bore that does the same, is only a fad. The former is difficult to obtain, and the latter is everywhere; and it is not the modified choke that so often is made to shoot untrue to centre, but the full choke.

The disadvantage of the choke-bore pattern is that it may plaster the game at distances nearer than the cylinder does. To compare the two patterns made at 20 yards, it is difficult to believe that the choke is almost as free from plastering as the cylinder. As a matter of fact there are several reasons for the well-known surprise that it does not often plaster feathered game.

The birds are not often coming straight at the gun nor going quite straight away from it, and any tendency to cross the line of aim is equivalent to allowing the game some benefit for any slight inaccuracy of timing the shot, and any wrong allowance in front. For instance, perhaps 5 inches too much allowance in front, with otherwise correct timing, at 20 yards, might very well allow half the shot column to go past a slow bird before he flew into the remainder of the shot column, which would be equivalent to shooting at a motionless bird with only half the pattern.

On the other hand, a very fast bird may fly right through the shot column before more than half of it has passed his line of flight. When the bird is caught by the centre of the head of the column at 20 yards range, he has but 10 inches to fly to get out of the line of flight of the shot from a full choke bore. The last pellets in the load will not be travelling more than 700 feet per second, and fast game is often going at 100 feet per second and more, although newly started game in still air may not often exceed 60 feet per second. But probably the real reason why good shots especially do not plaster their game at near distances is that they always shoot well in front, with a view to hitting only in the head and neck. At short range the slowest pellets are quite equal to killing whenever they hit straight for a vital part, exposed or otherwise. A shot aimed well forward with the intention of almost missing, by premature arrival of the pellets on the line of the bird’s flight, is almost sure to result in the cleanest kind of kill, brought about by two or three shot pellets in the head and neck and none anywhere else.