If it is wanted merely
for military service, nothing better than the Enfield can be procured;
but if the purchaser proposes to study the niceties of practice, and to
enter into it with a keen zest, he will need a very different style of
gun. A calibre large enough for a round ball of fifty to the pound, or
an elongated shot of about half an ounce, is sufficient for six hundred
yards; and a gun of that calibre, with a thirty-inch barrel, and a
weight of about ten pounds, is better suited to the general wants of
purchasers than any other size. In this part of the country it is by no
means easy to find a place where shooting can be safely practised even
at so long a range as five hundred yards,--which is sixty yards more
than a quarter of a mile. It is always necessary to have an attendant
at the target to point out the shots, and even then the shooter needs
a telescope to distinguish them. For ordinary purposes, therefore, the
calibre I have indicated is all-sufficient; but if a gun is wanted for
shooting up to one thousand yards, the shot should be a full ounce
weight.
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