“Be to others kind and true,
As you’d have others be to you,”
will make no mistake in shooting form, and will certainly never allow
his gun to rake the flanks of his neighbours as he swings his body in
walking in line, nor will he allow a gun at any instant, loaded or
unloaded, in loading or unloading, to point at anybody for a fraction of
a second. Besides which, he will rather let off a dozen woodcocks,
unshot at, than run the risk of putting out beaters’ eyes, or of being
told that, “although that gun seems so harmless on the game, it has
probably got some shot in it.” Besides this, a shooter is responsible
for the care, and also the appearance of care, of his loader, and the
two things are not quite the same; for although care implies that
shooters’ bodies are safe, it does not always refrain from attacking
their nerves. For instance, when empty guns are jerked about, aligning
everybody in turn, it is quite safe for the bodies, but very bad for the
nerves of those who do not know the guns are unloaded.
Drawing for places is the best plan of posting guns. The author has
found any other way, such as trying to give the best places to the
honoured guest, very unsatisfactory. You never can give the best places
to some people, for they do not know how to stand still. The writer has
sometimes had the best shooting himself when he has taken the worst
place, simply because the “honoured guests” were acting as “flankers,”
and sending the game elsewhere that should have gone to them. To show
yourself as little as you like, but to move not at all, is obviously a
part of good shooting form.
It is hardly necessary to say that it is not the best of form to tell a
fellow-guest that the management of the beat is “rotten,” and then to
make some remark that your host translates into flattery. The
fellow-guest may have taken your criticism as a useful hint to the host
already, with your own “great authority” attached to it.
Somewhere the author has heard that His Majesty has expressed his
opinion that a pheasant shared is a good deal worse than a pheasant
missed; and in the head keeper’s room at Sandringham hang some verses
which therefore obviously have the King’s approval, the more surely
because they hang there in spite of their greater precept than polish.
They appear to round off a chapter on form in shooting with a Royal
behest. Part of them read—
“Never, never let your gun
Pointed be at anyone:
That it may unloaded be,
Matters not the least to me.
You may kill or you may miss,
But at all times think of this:
All the pheasants ever bred
Won’t repay for one man dead.”