The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1884-02-07
Shooting Parties.

On one occasion q noble lord, q dis
tinguished cavalry officer. and an awful
martinez, had large shooting party.
when, in spite of endless loudly-given
orders, marchings and countermarch-
ings of heaters, everything seemed to
go wrong. pheasants included. So at
the end of covert in which little had
been found, and that little not properly
drought to the gun" the head keeper
was summoned, and, all Respondent in
green and gold as he was, advanced
with abject mein. faltering some trem-
bling excuses to his now almost rabid
master, who, cutting these sternly short,
asked: "Shall we find more in the next
cOvert?h 81 hope so, my Lord. "
Hope, sir!' roared the peer, with ter
rife emphasis on the verb. "Do you
think give you G160 year to hopeP
Now 90 and beat that wood this way,
and I'll pest the guns" "Your lord
ship means this wood?n sa d the terri
fled functionary, pointing to another.
mo | don't but, my Lord" ex-
postulated the man, now more alarmed
than ever. Not word, sir; obey or
ders" Irresolute and evidently much
off with his army, and beat the wood. in
which there was absolutely nothing.
Terrible then to see was the wra h of
the baflled soldier, till the miserable
keeper, seeing he was about to be dis
missed on the spot. cried out in heart
rend.ng accents: 1T S not your wood.
my Lord. 1t belongs TO Lord W." (his
neighbor), land he shot it last Friday
All the keepers and heaters knew this,
yet not one had dared to gainsay
Achilles in his ire. Another host who COM
bined a highly religious temperament
with an uncomfortable temper, on some
thing going wrong with the beat. burst
into paroXysms of fury with his
kesper, to whom he used most I'M
parliamentary language. a minute
or two aftcrward, having cooled
down ain, he called the man up to
him and asked in subdued and penitent
accents: What did l call you just
now, Smith," "Well, SIR Smith re-
piled, not without tone of pardonable
soreness, ''vou called me an Internal
foolw did /, Smith, did l. really?
I'm very sorry. Oh. to think that one
Christian man should use such language
as that to another! Heaven forgive
me- But" he shouted in stentorian
tones, as his rage suddenly returned,
at Gods truth all the same" Such
incidents don't improve a days sport.
and happily they are rare. Let me
conclude by giving a word of advice to
all neophytes in shooting. Shooting is
cruel; so are many other things in this
world. Don't make it more cruel than
necessary. Shoot humanely. How?
First of all learn to shoot. Practice at
projected plates, bottles, glass balls,
turnips or any inanimate thing that
moves, before you shoot at living crea-
lures. And then, implore you, shoot
before, not at, the latter, unless sitting.
Never mind if YOU miss, don t wound.
BY shooting before the object (and you
will soon learn how much or how little
before it you ought to aim) you will,
when you hit. it, kill it dead. and so
spare suffering to the animal and your
own feelings, if you have any. Don't
shoot very long shots at any game, and
never. pray never, at hares going
straight away from you, unless very
close to you, and you can aim at the
back of their heads. Broadside, if you
shoot we'll before them, you can kill
them dead good way off, but going
straight away you are certain only to
wound them. A monster whom l
asked why he shot at hare eighty or
100 yards off, seeing there was no posi-
bility of killing it, replied: ooh, /
don't know that. A chance pellet might
enter the eye and so penetrate the brain
and cause DEATH (this was his ghastly
idea of humor); "bes:des, | wanted to
try these new guns!' Avoid, humane
reader, any such cold-blooded expert
ments, and when there is much doubt,
give the poor animal the benefit of it,
and forbear to press the torture dealing
trigger. Nineteenth Century.