some blinds or little huts of twigs
erected near places where the ground was beaten hard and on these
open, beaten spots early in the morning the "birkhahns" waltz,
doing a peculiar backward and forward dance in some way connected
with their marriage ceremonies. There were also on this estate
numbers, at times, of a curious bird found only in Spain,
Roumania, Asia Minor, and these plains of the Mark of Brandenburg,
a large bustard called by the Germans "trappe." These birds were
very shy and hard to approach. Although I had several shots at
them with a rifle at four or five hundred yards I did not succeed
in getting one.

In talking with the Chancellor he almost always opened the
conversation by asking if I had yet killed a "trappe." As a rule
the German uses for shooting deer and roebuck a German Mauser
military rifle, but with the barrel cut down and a sporting stock
with pistol grip added. On this there is a powerful telescope.
Many Germans carry a "ziel-stock," a long walking stick from the
bottom of which a tripod can be protruded and near the top a sort
of handle piece of metal about as big as a little finger. When
the German sportsman has sighted a roebuck he plants his aiming
stick in the ground, rests the rifle on the side projection,
carefully adjusts his telescope, sets the hair trigger on his
rifle and finally touches the trigger.

At the commencement of the war the Duke of Ratibor collected all
these sporting rifles with telescopes and sent them to the front.
These were of the same calibre as the military rifles and took
the military cartridge, so they proved enormously useful for
sniping purposes.

Going one day to a proof establishment to try a gun I opened by
mistake a door which led to a great room where thousands of
German military rifles were being fitted with telescopes. These
telescopes have crossed wires, like those in a surveyor's
instrument, and it is only necessary in aiming to fix the centre
of the crossed wires on the game and pull the trigger. A clever
arrangement enables the wires to be elevated for distant
shooting.

So great is the discipline of the German people that game on
these estates is seldom, if ever, touched by the peasants. There
is no free shooting in Germany. The shooting rights of every inch
of land are in possession of some one and the tens of thousands
of game keepers constantly killing the crows, hawks, foxes and
other birds and animals that destroy eggs and game ma