misses.

There is only one method for any man to acquire even this proximate skill;
and that requires long and patient practice. It is this: he should sight
over his rifle at a wild animal, noting carefully the apparent relative
size of the front sight-bead and the animal's body. He should then pace
the distance between himself and that animal. After he has done this a
hundred times, he will be able to make a pretty close guess by marking how
large the beast shows up through the sights. That is, for that one species
of game! In Central Africa, where in a well-stocked district there are
from twenty to thirty species, the practice becomes more onerous. This
same practice--of pacing the distances--however, has also trained a man's
eye for country. He is able to supplement the front-sight method by the
usual estimate by eye. Most men do not take this trouble. They practise at
target range until they can hit the bull's-eye with fair regularity, miss
with nearly equal regularity in the hunting field, and thenceforth talk
vaguely of "missed him at five hundred yards." It must have been five
hundred. The beast looked very small, there was an awful lot of country
between him and it, and "I wasn't a bit rattled--cool as a cucumber--and I
_know_ I never miss an object of that size at any reasonable range." He
was right: he shot as deliberately as he ever did at the butts. He missed,
not because of the distance, but because he did not know the distance. It
was exactly the range at which he had done the most of his practice--two
hundred yards!

All these considerations have taken several pages to tell. Kingozi weighed
each one of them. Yet so long had been his experience, so habitual had
become his reactions, that his decision was made almost instantly. A
glance at the intervening ground, another through his sights. The top of
the bead covered half a zebra's shoulder. The distance was not far under