At first glance, a rifle is an extremely simple thing. You pull back the bolt, insert a cartridge, and close the bolt. Then you put the rifle to your shoulder and pull the trigger--and the trick is done. But first impressions are misleading, and the recruit has to be trained in the use of the rifle until he understands that he has been given charge of a very delicate and complex piece of mechanism, of which the parts are so finely adjusted that it will send its bullet accurately for a distance of 2800 yards--considerably over a mile and a half. In order to maintain the accuracy of the instrument the recruit is taught by means of a series of lessons, which seem to him insufferably long and tedious, how to clean, care for, and handle his rifle. An immense amount of time and care is given to the business of teaching him exactly how to press the trigger, for on the method of pressing the quality of the shot depends very largely. The musketry instructor gives individual instruction to each man in this, and the man is made to undergo “snapping practice”--that is, repeatedly pressing the trigger of the empty rifle until he has gained sufficient experience to have some idea of what will happen when the trigger is pressed with a live cartridge in front of the bolt. When the recruit has been well grounded in the theory of using a rifle, he is taken to the rifle range for actual practice with real ammunition. He starts off at the 200 yards’ range with a large target before him, and, in all probability, the first shot that he fires scores a bull’s-eye. He feels at once that he knows a good bit more about the use of a rifle than the man who is instructing him, and at the given word he aims and fires again. This time he is lucky if he scores an outer; more often than not the bullet either strikes the ground half-way up the range, or goes sailing over the back of the butts, and the recruit, with a nasty painful feeling about his shoulder, has an idea that rifle-shooting is a tricky business, after all. The fact was that, with his experience of “snapping,” he had learned to pull the trigger--or rather, to press it--without experiencing the kick of the rifle; that kick, felt with the first real firing, caused an instinctive recoil on his part in firing the second time. Later on he learns to stand the kick, and to mitigate its effects by holding the rifle firmly in to his shoulder, and from that time onward he begins to improve in the art of rifle-shooting and to make consistent practice.