Читать книгу The Complete English Wing Shot онлайн

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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.