mist which hung over the water, directly after firing. Pope was very angry with himself, but when we had put our French friend to bed and had had a hot breakfast it was just getting light enough to start out again. He came out with me for a daylight cruise, during which we had no less than four shots at Brent geese. The great charm and interest of this kind of sport lie in its extreme uncertainty, for unless the weather is good and the birds hungry and settled to their feed, it is very little use expect¬ ing a really heavy shot.
The best season we had was the hard winter of 1893–4, when, even in Brittany, the sea froze in shallow places, and the water freezing on the bows of the punt made it difficult to keep the elevation of the gun correct. I found that whatever amount of clothes I put on it was impossible to keep warm in the punt when one was lying waiting, but neither of us was the worse for it; and the flocks of mallard and teal, which were frozen out of their usual fresh-water haunts and came to feed on the saltings and doze, were much easier to approach than the widgeon or geese. In that winter Pope killed over 2,000 head in about eight weeks between the first week in December and the middle of February. Once he picked up fifty-four geese after a single shot, losing many more in the dark.
The best shot I ever made was a flying one, a very rare chance when shooting with a punt gun. It happened in this way. We had gone out early in the afternoon and were lying in an open channel among the mud-banks, waiting for the first appearance of the mud as the tide fell. Great flocks of hungry widgeon were settled, or flying all round us; the gun was loaded and we were ready to set up to the first favourable chance. A flock of perhaps 500 widgeon came flying across our bows at perhaps sixty or seventy yards off, and, as they crossed, a great black-backed gull stooped at them and drove them down to within perhaps fifteen feet of the water. Seeing my chance I depressed the stock of the gun with my left hand and pulled the lanyard with my right, just at the right moment, and cut a hole through the thickest part of the flock as they dipped. A cloud of birds fell and we picked up about forty, besides losing a number of winged birds. However, as usual, the majority were retrieved by the fishermen, whose coracles were not far off, and who could follow the cripples over the shallows where we had not enough water to float.
It was very difficult to judge distance when lying down with one’s eyes only just above the gunwale of the punt. Often it seemed that the ducks were much closer than they really were, and the continual noise which is kept up by a flock of widgeon, in the dusk, often sounded quite close, when it was 200 or 300 yards off. The ducks were often swimming away from the punt as fast as we were able to advance when lying down and using the set poles in shallow water. When one had to scull with one hand over the side of the punt, it was frightfully hard work. But Pope had a right arm of iron, and the patience of Job, and would not willingly let me fire unless the chance seemed good enough. Often, just as we were getting up the birds jumped, disturbed by a shot in the neighbourhood, or lifted off the mud by the rising tide; and often at night if there was haze on the water we could not make out the ducks at all, and were obliged to shoot
