Why do you suppose some men always seem to get more shots than others; why do the birds always rise better to them than to you? Pure luck you think, and they perhaps don’t deny it. Don’t believe it. The true sportsman knows by instinct what tussock of grass will hold a rabbit as he goes by it, and if a rabbit is there he won’t let it lie whilst he passes. You won’t see _him_ swing round, saving himself a bit and leaving the likeliest corner in a big field unbeaten. The birds would have sneaked down into the ditch and stopped there whilst you wheeled by thirty or forty paces off, but our friend puts them up; and if when those rabbits at the covert-side were bolting just out of range between you and him, you think he dropped his white pocket-handkerchief on the drive by mistake, you don’t know your man. That handkerchief just turned them enough to bring them close by him, and he had awful luck you know, and fired six shots to your one. That is the way in big game shooting too. Partly from experience, and partly by instinct, some men know where to look for a beast, and know the ways of it when found. Study then the habits of beasts generally to begin with, and then those of the particular beast you are going to hunt. Learn what it feeds on at different seasons of the year, and where its food is to be found; learn at what time of day it feeds, and at what time it lies down. Most animals feed early and late, just at dawn and just at the edge of night, sleeping when the sun warms them, using what Nature sends them instead of supplying the place of the sun with a blanket as we do. Many beasts are almost entirely nocturnal in their feeding hours, and these not only such as one would naturally expect to prowl by night--tigers, lions and suchlike--but ibex and mountain beasts which feed on nothing worse than grass. Just at and before dawn most beasts are up and feeding, probably because that is the coldest time in the twenty-four hours; the beasts become chilled and restless, and Nature warns them that food and motion are the best cures for the evils they are suffering from.