Читать книгу The Complete English Wing Shot онлайн

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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.