Make a rule for yourself before you go into the woods, and keep it as the first of sylvan commandments: Never, under any pretence whatever, pull your trigger until you know not only _what_ you are shooting at, but also _at what part of_ your beast you are shooting. Once in a while the observance of this rule may lose you a beast which you might have crippled, and eventually secured if you had taken a snap shot at the grey thing which you saw moving in the bushes. But, on the other hand, instead of killing a bear or a buck, it is much more likely that your snap shot will wound some poor devil of a hind, who will sneak away to die in anguish somewhere in the thick covert where none but the jackal will benefit by her death; or else you may do as I once actually did--hit a bear in the seat of his dignity, thereby arousing his very righteous indignation in a way that is dangerous to the offending party; or, worse still, you may (as I _nearly_ did) fire upon your own gillie or friend, whose moccasined footfall is very like a bear’s tread, and whose sin in wandering across your beat would be too severely punished by death. In all seriousness, it has always seemed to me that any man who, whilst out shooting, kills another in mistake for game deserves to be tried for his life, unless he be a very young beginner--and young beginners should hunt by themselves. There is no excuse for shooting a man. If the shooter could not tell that that at which he fired was a human being, much less could he tell at what part of his beast he was shooting, and a random shot ‘into the brown’ of a beast is unsafe, unsportsmanlike, and brutally cruel. Finally, do not be tempted to use complicated sights in still hunting. When you have followed deer under pines heavy with snow, through sal-lal bush which looks like deep billows of the same, only to find, the first time, that your Lyman sight is down, and the second time that though erect the peephole is full of ice, you will recognise the merits of a Paradox with the simplest sights for wood shooting in any weather as thoroughly as the writer does, and whilst admitting the merits of the Lyman sight for long-range shooting in the open, eschew all but such simple sights in timber.