Shooting sports

“ You can easily test the amount of choke in a 12-gauge gun. A new ten-cent piece will just go inside the end of the barrel of a full cylinder gun and just fail to go into one that has been slightly choked.
While it is impossible to give any written directions for shooting that are as valuable as actual practice, the important thing for a beginner is to get his form right at first, just as in golf or horseback riding, and then to make up his mind that every shot has got to count. ”

“ Every sportsman that has been much accustomed to snipe-shooting, will allow, that a jack-snipe will suffer himself to be fired at twenty times in the same field, and will pitch each time so close to the shooter, that he frequently conceives that he has wounded him. ”

“ If, then, we are compelled to say of any sport that it is cruel, we are compelled also to admit that such sport is morally unjustifiable. Now, sport, according to the general acceptation of that [3] term, is of two kinds. There are, first, sports such as cricket, football, golf, rowing, and many others, which do not involve the taking of animal life; and, secondly, there are the sports of hunting, coursing, and shooting, in all their various branches, which are frequently denoted by the compendious term of “blood-sports” ”

“ To become a sportsman, the first thing to acquire—provided nature has kindly furnished the proper groundwork of heart and body, without which little can be done—is the art of shooting. A few, very few men become, through fortuitous circumstances of nature and practice, splendid shots; many shoot well, and some cannot shoot at all. The author of this work has handled a gun from his twelfth year, and been out with thousands of sportsmen, but he never yet saw a dead shot—one who can kill every time. ”

“ OR BREECH-LOADING SHOT GUN.
Sporting in France has never been brought to the same state of perfection as in this country. Grouse-shooting on our wild romantic hills is a very different sport from quail, partridge, or rabbit shooting in the vales and on the hills of the Continent. Wild game requires great energy and perseverance on the part of the sportsman, courage and strength on the part of the dog, and last, though not least, great capacity on the part of the gun. ”

“ This feeling of a combination of wild country with the presence of the game itself, to form a real sport, is most keenly manifested when we turn our attention to the rifle. This noble weapon is thrown away in an enclosed country. The smooth-bore may and does afford delightful sport upon our cultivated fields; but even that pleasure is doubled when those enclosures no longer intervene, and the wide-spreading moors and morasses of Scotland give an idea of freedom and undisturbed nature. Who can compare grouse with partridge shooting? ”

“ I must tell my readers that from earliest boyhood I had a passionate love for shooting; and, through the kindness of my commanding officer while at Monte Video, I was allowed constantly to indulge in sport.
On one occasion my captain, who was a keen sportsman, took me with him out shooting. We had a famous day's sport, filled our game bags with partridges, ducks, and snipe, and were returning home on horseback when a solitary horseman, a nasty-looking fellow, armed to the teeth, rode up to us. As I knew a little Spanish we began to talk about shooting, &c. ”

“ When three men had thus fired, signals were made by drum, flag, and bugle, and the firing ceased. The marker then came out and pointed to the bullet-mark on each target, and having patched up the holes he returned within his mantelet, and the firing was resumed. This very safe and simple method of ball practice is much better than that used in our military shooting. ”

“ And as between the experts, target shooting is still the bigger sport. The knowledge and judgment required to meet the varying conditions, the steadiness demanded, the fact that the rifleman 120 is preparing himself to meet his country’s greatest emergencies—these put golf (and you know I have loved the game) into the lower place.
I put on my greatcoat again, took the nap that longed to be taken, and then, refreshed and more confident, went to my next turn. ”

“ As in all cover-shooting, there is some danger in this sport, especially when the party is a large one; and at a season before the leaves have fallen from the trees. Each sportsman pursues his own course, without thinking of others; and, as the birds may be either upon the ground, the wing, or perched upon the lowermost branches, guns are not always pointed to the sky. With shot flying about, and now and then the bullet of a rifle, one might be excused for feeling a little nervous. ”

“ The rifle is our national weapon of to-day, but unhappily neither law nor custom enjoins that the manhood of our country should learn its use. Cricket and football are our national pastimes; why should we not make rifle-shooting another?
Rifle-shooting is a sport—a game attractive enough in itself; and every marksman should bear in mind that in learning how to shoot he is fitting himself as a member of a great empire to take up arms for the defense of his country. ”

“ Can this be called sport? It is nothing more than pot-hunting, wholesale butchery. Give me my brace of pointers and setters, and let me shoot my game to points; there is some pleasure in that. What can be a more beautiful sight to the shooting man than to see a brace of well-bred dogs, ranging and quartering their ground like clockwork, backing and standing like rocks, steady before and behind, and dropping to fur and wing, as if they were shot? Working to hand, and obeying your slightest word—beautiful, intelligent creatures—there is some pleasure in shooting over such animals as these. ”

“ Their drill at the guns becomes the preparation for the great sport of target practice, which beats any big-game shooting when guns compete with guns, with battle practice greater sport than target practice. ”

“ Nor from the shooting standpoint did we lack for sport. We had to shoot for our men, and we occasionally needed meat ourselves. It was always interesting, when such necessities arose, to stalk the shy buck and do long-range rifle practice. ”

“ But when gun-makers add to their business by means of books upon sport and by “shooting schools,” they are turning the tables on us. To that I have no objection. But when it is asserted that shooting schools teach more than the sport itself, as has lately been done, then I think it is time to protest that even if they could teach shooting at game as well as game teaches it (which is absurd) , that even then they cannot teach sportsmanship, of which woodcraft is one part and the spirit of sport and fellowship another. ”

“ In narrating long shots that I have made, I recount them as bright moments in the hours of sport; they are the exceptions and not the rule. I consider a man a first-rate shot who can ALWAYS bag his deer standing at eighty yards, or running at fifty. HITTING and BAGGING are widely different. If a man can always bag at the distance that I have named he will constantly hit, and frequently bag, at extraordinary ranges, as there is no doubt of his shooting, and, when he misses, the ball has whizzed somewhere very close to the object; the chances are, therefore, in favour of the rifle. ”

“ In order to excel, regular and temperate habits of life must be formed and maintained. It renders the senses more alert and trains them to act in unison and in harmony. But, above all, skill in shooting is a useful accomplishment.
Anyone possessing ordinary health and good sight may, by practice, become a good pistol shot. ”

“ But there is something worse than bad shooting style, there is bad sporting form; and coming down hill often brings it obviously to the man who is walking behind, and sees the leading man’s gun carried on the shoulder, pointing dead at the pit of the follower’s stomach. ”

“ Many a grown man who regards himself as a crack rifle shot would be proud of such a score. Your skill is a credit to you, and also to your principal, your teachers, and to all connected with the manual training school which you attend, and I know them all. [The usual diffident confession of omniscience.]
“‘Practice in rifle shooting is of value in developing not only 234muscles, but nerves.... It is a prime necessity that the volunteer should already know how to shoot.... The graduates from our schools and colleges should be thus trained so as to be good shots with the military rifle. ”

“ I should recommend any gentleman who is going to equip himself as a sportsman to ask himself before he starts the question that occurred to me too late in D.'s case: What kind of shooting am I likely to enjoy? Then, if not wishing to go to more expense than absolutely necessary, let him purchase a gun precisely suited to the game he will meet. As briefly observed before, if the sportsman takes his sport early in the year, and practically in the summer—August is certainly a summer month—he will like a light gun ”

“ When I say shooting I do not mean the kind of sport to which one is accustomed at home, where to trespass a few yards on the grounds of another man will probably result in legal proceedings, where keepers flourish and wax fat on contributions levied on the friends of mine host, where hand-raised game is driven into the jaws of death, and where the sportsman's friend and delight, his dog, is practically banished. ”

“ Now and then one waits with the butt on his hip: one swings his gun anyhow in one hand like an umbrella: a third tosses it over his shoulder with the hammers down and the trigger-guard up, and jerks the muzzle over when the game rises. Except in snap-shooting, when the gun must of necessity be held already half-way to the shoulder, it matters very little which the sportsman does, nor from what position he raises his gun. ”

“ Should any reluctance, or hesitation, be shewn by the injured party, to accept these Bills, he is shewn into a long room, with a target at the end of it, and several pistols lying about, where he is given to understand that these sharpers practice a considerable time of the day in shooting at a mark, and have arrived at such perfection in this exercise, that they can shoot a pistol ball, within an inch of the mark, from the common distance taken by duellists. ”

“ This discussion of the sporting rifle will be concerned, therefore, principally with the hunting aspects, other forms of shooting being considered as good methods of practice, and the development of skill in the use of hunting weapons. ”

“ Herbert answered. "Shooting is a good deal like anything else that's lots of fun; you've got to love it and study it and have good eyes and then practise. And then, too, there's the gun. You've got to have a perfect gun to make A-1 scores and to do any fancy shooting." ”

“ Shooting at driven game on occasions when the day's sport includes elaborate feasts in tents on a store of good things brought in waggons or on the backs of sumpter mules, while the sport itself makes no demand upon the prowess of the so-called sportsman, is but a dismal parody upon the stern hunting life in which the man trusts to his own keen eye, stout thews, and heart of steel for success and safety in the wild warfare waged against wild nature. ”

“ As soon as it thinks it has got a sportsman’s temper well under way, it will scour the country round for all its friends and relations, and assemble them to enjoy together the interesting spectacle of an angry man armed with a rifle that he dare not discharge for fear of alarming something worth firing at. ”

“ Stocks, Loops, Stops, Cases.—In ordinary rifles do not have the stocks made the same shape as in your guns. Most sportsmen miss birds by shooting under them, but with a rifle more game is missed by being shot over. ”

“ The sportsman can easily test this theory for himself by putting any ordinary rifle to his shoulder in a room, aiming first at some object considerably above his head, and then at some point or object upon the floor. ”

“ Deliberate shooting is a game, a sport, and a very good sport, but it is neither practical pistol shooting or the way to learn it.
An outdoor range gives the best practice, as figures can be put up at various distances and shot at in rapid fire, moving and disappearing targets can run in all directions, and come up unexpectedly like at a shotgun shooting school. ”

“ The best we could probably do, on an average, at fifteen to twenty paces, would be to put three to four bullets out of six in a playing-card, which would be good shooting at a man, but Bill can put every ball just where he wants 'em to go. ”

“ His gun, then, must be suited to grouse-shooting, and must be light, because of the heat which often prevails at that time, and renders dragging a heavy gun many miles over the heather—before they pack—a serious drawback to the pleasure of the sport. ”

“ This is good news for sportsmen, as from the nature of the country they can never be exterminated by fair shooting, and will afford sport quite equal, if not superior, to black game shooting in Scotland. ”

“ Shooting schools cannot help a shooter to learn to kill curling pheasants, swerving partridges, wrenching grouse, or zigzagging snipe, but they can teach the quick firing and changing of guns. And to one not in practice it is this quick firing that puts a shooter out of touch with gun and game, much more readily than swerve, wrench, zigzag, or curl. ”

“ The overloading of the piece is the reason of the recoil; respecting sportsmen who are in the habit of overloading with shot, such are properly ridiculed in a treatise published some time since, entitled, ‘Cautions to Young Sportsmen,’ in which we find an advertisement levelled at some persons who were going to a Pigeon Shooting Match at Ballingbear-Warren House. ”