CHAPTER XLV

THE WEATHER AND SHOOTING

Rain, as far as the actual shooting goes, does no harm to shooting. In fact, if your adversary has to wear gla.s.ses it gives you a great advantage over him as his gla.s.ses get covered with a film of water.

A dull drizzle is often accompanied by a dead calm and better shooting light, than a sunshiny day.

Wind is the great enemy to pistol shooting.

In rifle shooting, in the p.r.o.ne position, the wind not only lends interest to the shooting, but brings out the best shot, the one who can calculate how to aim to compensate for the wind's action on his bullet.

The pistol-shot, on the other hand has to stand against the wind and hold his pistol with one hand and wrestle with the wind which blows his arm about.

It is not a question of calculating how much of the bull's-eye you must aim at to compensate for the force of the wind from the side; but it is a matter of mere physical strength to try and hold the pistol steady whilst being buffeted by the wind.

It is as if you were trying to draw a straight line whilst someone twitches at your sleeve.

No amount of practice will make you able to draw a straight line or shoot a pistol under such circ.u.mstances. It only discourages you and wastes time and ammunition. It gets you into timing and letting off wrong. If in a shooting compet.i.tion there is a wind and you are shooting at deliberate aiming, then wait for lulls between gusts, and snap shoot during the lull.

If you are doing shooting "Au Commandmant," or rapid-firing, you have to take the wind as it comes.

Bringing up with a very stiff arm, rapidly, is the best defence against your arm being blown about.

In England all open air pistol ranges have the firing points unprotected.

From a financial point of view this is a mistake. It is better to spend money on making the range usable in all weathers. Otherwise it is often deserted as n.o.body cares to shoot in a high wind.

From the point of view of health it is not wise to shoot in the rain as there is no walking about to make the blood circulate.

If you keep moving and get into a perspiration and keep so all the time and take a hot bath and a change of clothing directly you get home, rain will not hurt you.

Getting chilled after perspiring, or sitting about having afternoon tea by a hot fire before changing your damp things, does the mischief. Even if there has been no rain it is much better to change your things at once and have afternoon tea afterwards. If you get wet and cannot change your things on the spot it is much better to walk home fast than drive home and feel cold all the way.

I broke through ice in intense frost when wild boar shooting at Couvain, Ardennes Belges, and got my boots full of icy cold water (long boots over the knee). I walked four miles to the lodge and felt all in a glow the whole way, took a hot bath, had dinner in bed, and felt none the worse for it.

The others being dry drove home, but if I had done so, I should most likely have had a dangerous illness.

It is a very great mistake, when overtaken in summer by a thunder shower, to take shelter when you are in a perspiration; you will get chilled for a certainty.

Walk home fast, even if you get wet to the skin in so doing. Keep on walking, or if you are on a horse, keep on trotting and cantering alternately, till you get home.

If your horse is tired after a hard day's hunting and it is a cold wet evening, keep him moving for his own sake as well as your own.

I had ridden fifty miles during the day (a run with stag hounds which had taken me twenty-seven miles from home). The mare was getting leg weary, so I unwisely stopped at an inn, six miles from home, and put her in the stable to give her warm gruel with beer in it.

When I started half an hour later to lead her home she was unable to move.

I had to leave her for the night at the inn and after making her as comfortable as possible and rubbing her legs with brandy I walked home by myself.

If I had taken her straight home without stopping to gruel her she would have reached home all right, and had her gruel there and laid down comfortably.

Keep moving when cold and wet, take a hot bath and change the moment you get home. If you feel at all as if you had a chill, go to bed after the bath, put a hot bottle to your feet, pile the eider-down on top of you, drink dried raspberry tea, go to sleep, and perspire. Dried raspberries, a Russian peasant's remedy, are the best sudorific I know. The raspberries are dried and then used just as if they were tea leaves, and the tea thus made drunk very hot, with sugar to taste.

The leather Swedish waistcoat which I mentioned in my chapter on dress should always be worn if there is the least wind when pistol shooting. It can be worn on the hottest day as it keeps the sun out also and as long as one stands still it does not make one perspire, and wind or rain cannot get through.

A thin mackintosh does not hamper much in pistol shooting.

An umbrella is worse than useless against rain but may be used to keep the sun off. Of course a hat worshipper invariably carries an umbrella.

In rain an umbrella protects only the hat and it drops the water on your shoulders, the worst place you could get wet. People run into others and drip the water onto other people, in fact there ought to be a tax on umbrellas like there is on pistols.

As to snow, I cannot understand any one wanting to hold up an umbrella when it snows. One never sees people do that in a country where snow lies half the year any more than does one see people turn up their collars in really cold countries.

They have their coats fit properly up to the neck, not with lapels turned back exposing the chest.

It always amuses me to see a man with a big fur coat turned far back on the chest so as to show the rabbit skin, dyed to represent sable.

A Russian has his fur "Shuba" double-breasted and b.u.t.toned up right under his chin. His deep collar protects his shoulders, but he does not turn up his collar about his ears at the least zephyr of air.

CHAPTER XLVI

MILITARY AUTOMATIC PISTOLS

It is the military use of pistols which has doomed the revolver.

During the war, England was the only country which still retained the revolver as regulation. Every other country had adopted the automatic pistol in its place.

There are two opinions as to the proper calibre for a military pistol.

England, having to fight savage tribes, had always preferred a large bore pistol with stopping power. Fanatics who do not value their lives can do a lot of mischief, even if wounded fatally, by a small calibre bullet, before they die.

On the Continent a much smaller calibre is deemed sufficient; a .32 or .38 or a 7 millimetre, whereas England and the United States consider .45 or .455 the best size.

In my opinion the United States .45 Regulation Colt Automatic pistol is the best of all army pistols. (See Plates 13 and 14.) The way it was chosen should guarantee this.

It was first chosen because it pa.s.sed all the military tests such as sand, rust, and freedom from jamming under rough usage. Then it was put into the hands of all the best pistol shots in the United States and their reports examined. It has, therefore, not only pa.s.sed military but expert shooters' tests, and alterations were made in accordance with their reports.

It may seem a great presumption on my part therefore to suggest an improvement, but I have been a big-game shot all my life and used ivory front sights, and I think a black front sight is a mistake.

I am sure a white or silver front sight is the only practical one.

This morning I went out before daylight after deer. It was very misty and I saw a stag eighty yards off, hardly distinguishable in the mist and darkness. My white front sight shone like a star on his shoulder when I took aim and I had no difficulty in taking the shot.

A black front sight would have been so indistinct that I should have missed or rather not fired at all, as I do not like making a mess of a shot and letting an animal go off wounded.