As a fisherman Mr. Punch is in the best of his humours. He makes merry over the weaknesses of those who follow the craft of Old Izaak, always with the slyest of genial manners. The angler's habit of exaggerating the size of his catch—his patience or his impatience when the fish won't bite—the conscious or unconscious ridicule he has to endure from onlookers when he is unsuccessful—the proverbial thirst that attacks the fisherman, whether he catches anything or not—Mr. Punch has a keen eye for all such incidentals and presents them so jovially that nobody laughs over them more heartily than his victims themselves do.

Leech, Charles Keene, Phil May, Du Maurier, Raven-Hill, Bernard Partridge, G. D. Armour—most of the best-known Punch artists, old and new, have revelled in the humours of both fishing and shooting.

He gets as much laughter out of those who handle the gun. The infinite variety of jokes he cracks about the bad shot, the man who can't hit the birds, or is always hitting the dogs or his companion guns, is amazing. He does not spare the lady shooter, and jests of the peril in which the rest of the field are placed when she is out after the birds or rabbits; and he gets a good deal of fun out of the Frenchman's alien notion of sport.