From the foregoing rules, which apply mainly to muzzle-loaders, it will be seen how much safer are breech-loaders; with them the entire charge can be withdrawn on entering a house or getting into a wagon, and there is absolutely no danger to fingers or thumb in the process of loading. And in carrying the weapon on long tramps in the woods, where it is frequently removed from boat to shoulder, from shoulder to boat, and from wagon to case, and when it has to be ready at any instant, with the muzzle-loader the only possible precaution is to leave the nipples without caps, which are to be carried in the vest pocket, and must be removed after every vain alarm; while with the breech-loader, the charge itself is not inserted till needed. With these few suggestions, which are applicable not merely to the kinds of sport treated of in this volume, but to every species of shooting, we leave the young sportsman to his own resources and to the knowledge that he will acquire in the field, hoping that he may find something in them that will aid him to kill reasonably often the game he points at, and to avoid the dreadful misfortune of injuring a friend or companion. CHAPTER XI. TRAP-SHOOTING. The amusement of trap-shooting is pursued in the Northern States, on the margins of the western lakes--as some eminent marksmen of Buffalo and Niagara Falls can testify--and on the sea-coast--as some famous matches at Islip would prove. It is not a field sport; it is hardly a sport at all; and a pigeon is not, properly speaking, a game-bird, in spite of the instances quoted. If this work were to be confined strictly to its professed objects, this chapter would have to be excluded; but for the reason that it belongs nowhere else, that an account of this peculiar style of shooting will be useful to many sportsmen, and that no published book contains any information on the subject, the writer has presumed to collate the experience of his friends rather than of himself--for he does not pretend to much skill in this particular art--and to offer it to the sporting public. Trap-shooting, although quite an ungrammatical expression, is perfectly understood as a sporting term, having acquired a conventional meaning; it signifies neither shooting at a trap, which its construction implies, nor shooting out of a trap, but shooting at a bird--generally a pigeon--released from a trap. Although not a highly scientific sport, and somewhat open to the charge of cruelty, it has its devotees; and certainly, amid a crowd of spectators and competitors, to take the palm and carry off the prize is no mean glory. The birds probably suffer as little, cut down with the whistling charge of fine shot while on the wing, and with a chance for life, as though their necks were remorselessly wrung by the poulterer; and in either case they find their way to market and furnish food for the people.