The size and the weight of guns must depend as much on the
strength and build of a man as a ship's armament does upon her
tonnage; but let no man speak against heavy metal for heavy game,
and let no man decry rifles and uphold smooth-bores (which is
very general), but rather let him say, "I cannot carry a heavy
gun," and "I cannot shoot with a rifle."
There is a vast difference between shooting at a target and
shooting at live game. Many men who are capital shots at
target-practice cannot touch a deer, and cannot even use the
rifle as a rifle at live game, but actually knock the sights out
and use it as a smoothbore. This is not the fault of the weapon;
it is the fault of the man. It is a common saying in Ceylon, and
also in India, that you cannot shoot quick enough with the rifle,
because you cannot get the proper sight in an instant.
Whoever makes use of this argument must certainly be in the habit
of very random shooting with a smoothbore. How can he possibly
get a correct aim with "ball" out of a smoothbore, without
squinting along the barrel and taking the muzzle-sight
accurately? The fact is, that many persons fire so hastily at
game that they take no sight at all, as though they were
snipe-shooting with many hundred grains of shot in the charge.
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