ief prize, he had a special present. But the
great prizes were for the marksmen who, at the end of the shooting,
scored the greatest number of shots in the circles. All who could not
obtain a prize within the prescribed number of shots, had the right,
before the end of the meeting, to contend among themselves for smaller
prizes. All the prizes of the festival, were settled by the givers of
the feast, and they were reckoned in the programme collectively with
their worth in silver. Every shooter at the beginning of the festival
before his name was inscribed, had to make a deposit of money; this
deposit was not insignificant, and became higher in proportion to the
pretensions of the festival. Whilst at a former period two gulden had
been deposited, it rose to six and eight Imperial gulden in the last
fifty years of the prize shootings; indeed they deposited as much as
twelve Imperial thalers at the cross-bow shooting given by the elector
Johann Georg at Dresden in 1614, which, according to the value of
silver and corn, would answer to about thirty thalers of our money. But
undoubtedly all prize shootings were not so aristocratic. A portion
often of the deposits at these festivals was voluntary. The obligatory
deposits were turned into secondary prizes, and these were distributed
in small sums among as many of the shooters as possible. With the
voluntary deposits, small articles of plate were frequently bought for
an after-shooting. Sometimes also the giver of the feast spent
something for this; in that case these deposits of the shooters were
employed as small money prizes for the after-shooting.

With all the prizes at the great shooting feasts large and small
banners were presented, with the colours of the town or country, and
the arms or garlands, painted on them, and often also the value of the
prize. To bear away such a banner was a great honour. The strangers
took them proudly to their homes, and delivered them to the council of
their city, or to their shooting brotherhood, who had paid the costs of
their journey. Very modest at first were the prizes of the victors:
they were long designated as "ventures:" a romantic charm still
attached to the foreign word, which originated in the jargon of the old
tournaments. A fine ram was the first prize at Munich about 1400, and
at Kelheim in 1404. Soon afterwards an ox, a horse, or a bull, and the
animals often covered with a valuable cloth: thus, in 1433, at
Nueremberg, a hor