Letters to young shooters (Second series) on the production, preservation, and killing of game with directions in shooting woodpigeons and breaking in retrievers

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LSTTER

I. BBMARK8 ON MODERN GAME SHOOTINQ FROM A PRACTICAL POINT OP VIEW

Letter I Bemabks On Modern Game Shooting From A Practical Point Of View

The critics who so fiercely denounce modern shooting are either * Parlour Sportsmen,' whose ideas of game and the use of guns are derived from the grotesque accounts that appear in papers hostile to the classes, or else they are viciously inclined scribblers, who, to carry favour with the masses, incorrectly style themselves * Shooters of the Old School,' and who, to give spice to their writings, flavour them with such words and phrases as, Butchery! Slaughter! Poor innocent birds ! Tame as chickens ! All driven helpless into a heap. Feather-bed sportsmen ! Mere executioners ! &c.

Sometimes these critics gravely inform their readers that it is not, in ih^'f' opinion, sport worthy of English gentlemen to idle down to the end of a covert, and find ready at hand such accessories as a small table with a bottle of champagne on it, a box of cigars, an armchair, the Times newspaper, a carriage n B

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^fcmubrella ( \^%\ ^uns, and a couple of loaders, with several liundred "cartridges !

;: VjHiCseiojislJLUgbts'aisually conclude in this manner: * A good walk with a brace of steady pointers or well-broken setters, and a hard-earned bag, gives u% far more pleasure than would the killing of a hecatomb [a famous word that, sometimes varied with * holocaust'] of poor frightened birds huddled up in a comer without a chance of escape.'

In what part of our islands the so-called * Shooter of the Old School ' has seen all the startling attributes of the shooting field he so vividly describes he has never yet told us, and, I expect, never will ! Nor does he enlighten us how and where we can, on an estate farmed on modern principles, use our pointers and setters with success — though as regards the zvalkiTig part of the performance he may not be far wrong.

The real ' Shooter of the Old School ' (not the sham hero of that name) is quite sensible enough to fall in with the changed conditions of his favourite sport, as necessitated by the bare, shelterless fields and wilder game of the present day.

In the ever-recurring discussions relative to the custom of driving game, its opponents always fall headlong into the same error. They one and all fancy this system merely consists in methodically sweeping the birds, by the aid of an army of beaters,

I. Remarks on Modern Game Shooting 3

off a parish or two towards a line of guns, and that here begins and ends all connected therewith.

They never seem to realise that, to drive game properly, good generalship is required, and many details of management have to be considered — such, for example, as the direction and force of the wind, the nature of the ground, the home and usual flight of the birds, the position of the boundaries, the description of cover available, and so forth.

It is, in fact, just as interesting and amusing to watch or partake in a cleverly contrived * drive ' for partridges, grouse, or pheasants, as it is to plod up and down the country at the tails of pointers and setters.

As regards the act of shooting, the great advantage of driving birds to the gun is that the game is much less frequently wounded than when it is walked up.

A driven bird is generally killed on the spot, or clean missed ; for if struck at all it is hit in the head and neck, and then down it falls. On the other hand, a bird rising before a shooter, though it may not be killed, is rarely missed altogether, as it offers ample time for aiming, and presents an easy mark for aligning the gun.

In the matter of skill with the gun, especially in regard to pheasants, there is no comparison between

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' driving ' and * walking up.' To drop birds dead as they are driven towards you at sixty miles an hour, perhaps high over lofty trees, is certainly a difficult feat, but a fascinating one to accomplish.

There is little satisfaction, however, in killing the very same birds as they flutter up when you are walking through a covert or a field. There is more downright sport in tumbling from the sky one high fast-flying pheasant (though you fait at five others) that careers along down wind at express speed, and sails defiantly over your head as if nothing on earth could interfere with him, than there is in slaying a score in succession, without a miss, that fly slowly away as they rise in front of your toes or your dog's nose as you march forward. With the first method the game has fair play and a chance of escape ; with the second it has none to speak of.

Though grouse and pewtridges do not often afford such grand shots as high rocketing pheasants, still, when driven to the gun they offer, as a rule, far more sporting and difficult chances than they do when walked up, or when shot over dogs.*

A material benefit conferred by the system of * driving ' is that, in the case of grouse and partridges,

* Should ^ouse or partridges lie well to pointers or setters, a child could almost shoot them ; it is the simplest aiming in the world. If grouse or partridges do not lie to dogs, but spring wild, then as many birds are likely to be wounded as killed ; and it would be more

I. Remarks on Modern Game Shooting 5

it increases the stock of game. Why ? Because the wary old birds rise first on the approach of the drivers, reach the gun first, and are killed first.

In whatever form you do it, whether by * driving ' or ' walking up,' you will certainly increase your head of game by killing oflf the old birds, and especially the old cocks.

Now, when walking up grouse or partridges, or when shooting over dogs, should the game chance to lie close, it often occurs that the old birds run forward and escape, and the brood of the year is killed to a bird — which is not what is required if it is wished to increase or maintain the stock, on that particular ground.

It is worth notice that * driven ' game is seldom spoilt, as the head and neck of the bird is the portion of the body that encounters the charge of shot ; but

bamane and satisfactory to drive them to the guns — when it is usually a matter of a ' clean kill ' or a * clean miss ' at a killing range, and not at a crippling one. As far as skill in shooting is concerned, there is no comparison between killing grouse over dogs and walking them up without dogs. In the former case you stalk up ejecting your birds, and almost imitating, in the manner of raising your feet, the stealthy tread of your pointers, who, as they glance round, seem to say, * full cock, ready, fire.' In the latter case you never know when a bird may rise— which event, by the way, usually occurs just as you rest your arms by pitching your gun to the slope on the shoulder. Should a brace of old birds whirr up just then, at thirty yards' distance, and they chance to be the grouse of North Wales, with perhaps a gale of wind behind their tails to speed their flight, and you happen to be panting up a high hill, it will do you some credit if you drop them neatly right and left.

in the case of birds killed as they rise in front of a shooter, it frequently happens that they are damaged for the table, from the fact of their sterns or sides being next the gun, and the plastering of shot they are likely to receive in those parts — particularly in the case of a shooter who is a quick shot, and uses choked barrels.

There is no doubt that, were it not for the sociable custom of driving game, it would be impossible for a host nowadays to return the hospitalities of his friends ; for in a month's sport over dogs he could not entertain the number of fellow shooters that a couple of parties for driving would admit of — not to speak of the damage that a month's constant harassing would entail on his preserves, as well as the inability to visit his friends which such a ' stay at home * course would entail !

Facilities of travelling enable lovers of the gun to assemble at a country house during the game season with great ease and at short notice, and the practice of * driving ' finds amusement for all, when shooting over dogs, however pleasing to the one or two sportsmen BO inclined, could not be arranged to afford general occupation unless dogs and acres in numbers unlimited, and, rarer still, a suitable country of boundless extent, existed !

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It always excites my curiosity to learn how * An Indignant Shooter' — the man who writes that he loves a walk with his dogs, and abhors the bloodthirsty fashion of driving birds to a corner and then ' butchering them ' — recommends Pheasants to be killed even with the aid of the best dogs in the world ! Take, for instance, the ordinary Norfolk or Suffolk covert, bare of undergrowth, densely planted with dark firs, and scarce space between them to swing a cat, then imagine two or three hundred pheasants (or but a score 'twould be just the same) ready to run out at one end of the wood directly a man treads on a rotten stick at the other.

Just try (* Indignant Shooter ' says it is real sport) a team of spaniels in any such modern wood, well stocked with pheasants, and see how many of the birds you will kill, how many you will drive clean over your boundaries to be bagged by other people, and how many friends you can give shots to without placing them forward at the much-abused 'hot corner ! '

Shooting pheasants over dogs is a * sport ' — if such it can be termed — that can only be carried on where the birds are stragglers, and have wandered into the hedgerows and fields from their proper home.

I fear, however, the shooter whose habit it is to seek pheasants in this style, and who fills their tail ends with shot at the closest range, so long as he

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pockets them, is oftener than not the ^ pothunter/ who seeks that he may devour, and pounces on every bird he can find outside some neighbouring covert of which he has not the entree ! Few owners of preserves would hustle and bustle their pheasants about with pointers or spaniels for the poor and solitary amusement of killing the birds as they rose at their feet ; they would rather drive them back to the woods they belong to, with a view to their eventuaUy showing sport of a more worthy description !

Imagine, again, the uselessness of setting forth with a brace of pointers on the average English estate to shoot Fabtridges. Call to mind the bare level fields, the thin hedges, the short grass, the closeshaven stubbles, the mathematically drilled and carefully cleaned turnip fields.

When we can work dogs, it is possible for the first week of September, to kill birds with their assistance, if good cover abounds. But look at our late harvests, the standing corn often a safe refuge for partridges from the gun till near the middle of September.*

* Not in one year in ten are we able, in the north of England, to walk the stubbles and fields for partridges on September 1, though the columns of country newspapers are generally flooded with accounts of partridge shooting on that day. The same * local correspondents * always take it for granted also that *■ Pheasants ' (or longtails as they usually term them) are as a matter of course universally killed on October 1 — when, by the way, the birds are only three-parts grown 1

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Then, when the fields are cleared and quiet, the birds have become so strong and wild that yoa might on most estates, particularly in a grass district, as well endeavour to shoot them off the back of an elephant as expect to work pointers successfully.

Before the days of scientific drainage, of reaping and mowing machines, and drill-sown root crops, the stubbles, meadows, and turnips were respectively long, high-tufted, and dense, and cover was abundant for partridges to lie in (and vermin too). Killing the birds was then often murderous work, and very similar to turning them out of traps at ten yards' rise, as far as any skill in actual shooting was concerned ; indeed, this is even now the case in the few places where partridges lie well to pointers, as on the fringes of moors, or in bracken or heaths, and occasionally in high turnips early in the season.

Try setters for Grouse. On most of the Yorkshire, Lancashire, Durham, or Derbyshire moors you may for a few days bring in a fair number of latehatched birds ; but after the first week likely enough all you see of the grouse are the packs as they rise and skim away on the horizop, or else you fall in with occasional old pairs or single birds which spoil your dogs by running for several hundred yards before they finally spring up far out of shot.

Forty years ago pointers and setters were doubtlo Letters to Young Shooters letter

less of great service on even the English moors, for previous to a persistent war against hawks and vermin and the practice of driving, grouse were not half so numerous, and hence could not in those days so readily communicate their alarm to one another on being disturbed by shooters as is now the case.*

The result of so many birds on smooth easily traversed ground is that they, so to say, keep touch of one another, and run together and rise in packs, and, as they career along, gather up into their ranks other birds that would not have risen unless they had been alarmed by the rush of scores of wings above them.

With the introduction of breechloading guns such rapid firing became possible that I have no doubt t)m is one of the reasons why on English moors the grouse, with hereditary instinct, have learnt to dread the sound of a gun, more than they did in the days of muzzle-loaders ; as it is undoubtedly a fact that a few shots on a level moor will now put every bird on the alert that is within reach of the sound of firing.

As the grouse, from the increased popularity of shooting on the moors, and the frequent banging of guns, became year by year wilder and less negotiable to dogs, 'driving' was resorted to, at first by the

* I possess a letter written by one shooter to another in 1835. It runs : * I took a stroll over my moor ground yesterday. I scarce expect much sport, for I counted in a short time no less than a dozen hawks, several of which were falcons, and four great cats basking in the sun on a stone wall.*

I. Remarks on Modern Game Shooting i i

shooters standing behind rocks or in hollows, and ' later on in properly constructed shelters. The grouse at once began to increase in numbers, and are still increasing, as, instead of the young or breeding birds falling an easy prey to the shooter, these escape in a much larger proportion than they did formerly, when shooting over dogs was the general custom.*

Though we are forced to out-manoeuvre the grouse by * driving,' as the only means -ef killing them in places where the ground is flat ajid smooth ajid the birds come to maturity early in the season, we naturally frighten them into extreme wildness by marching a line of men over the moors first in one direction and then in another without cessation for perhaps two or three days at a time. Yet we not seldom hear the absurd question asked, * Why are grouse wilder now on an English moor than they were in the days of our grandfathers ? ' One of the

* As an instance of how groase have multiplied under a systematic destruction of vermin, and since * driving ' came into vogue, it is worth recording that the famous Bluberhouse Moor was let at the beginning of the century by the writer's great-grandfather (Sir Thomas Frankland, of Thirkleby) to fiis neighbour, the Lord Harewood of that day, for ten brace of grouse a year ! Yet on this ground, consisting of under 2,000 acres, Sir Thomas's descendant, Lord Walsingham, has killed on one occasion 400 brace to his own gun in a day ; and on another 500 brace to his own gun in a day. Now, Sir Thomas (the author of * Cautions to Young Sportsmen '), besides being a clever inventor of sporting appliances, was considered the most noted shot and one of the best sportsmen of his day ; and had Bluberhouse in those times been capable of supplying him with sport for his gun, it is most improbable he would have hesitated to enjoy thereon his favourite recreation of shooting.

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most ridiculous statements put forward by the critics who condemn the driving of grouse is that this form of sport entails no exercise. How often have I beard a shooter exclaim, after walking for a long autumn day uphill and downdale from one line of butts to another, * If only the people who write in the papers felt as tired as I do now, we should hear no more nonsense about the laziness and luxury of grouse driving ! * -

Scotland is the place for the shooter who loves his pointers and setters. There the country is made for him. The heather is high and thick, and the covert excellent ; the grouse are late in hatching and tame, and the land is not often flat or smooth, as is usually the case on an English moor. The birds do not habitually rise in packs, as, from the rougher nature of the ground, they cannot so freely run and collect together when disturbed as they can in England, but may be shot over dogs till the middle of September. And very enjoyable sport and healthy exercise shooting them is too, and the wilder and more broken and, I may add, picturesque the country, the prettier and more sporting the shots obtained (always provided the birds are/wH grown).

Yet the enthusiast who successfully kills his grouse over dogs in Scotland will try to persuade us that we can do the same anywhere in England ' if we knew bow,' and expatiates on the superior sport we

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should enjoy if ^e only made the attempt ! I should much like to see him try the experiment for himself!

Notwithstanding all the boasting talk of the real sport to be enjoyed with the aid of dogs, I take it that pointers and setters always ivere and always are used in certain localities, not so much as an accessory to the shooter's pleasure, but simply because in such places the game could not be found and killed without their aid. Dogs for pointing game are now discarded generally in England, not through any lack of true sporting propensity in our generation, but from their presence in the field being a hindrance instead of an assistance in filling the bag.

It is not a question of the superior sport that miglit be enjoyed with pointers for pheasant and partridge shooting, because however superior and fascinating such sport may be, it is one that cannot now be practised with success in England. Anyhow, if we have lost the breed and services of Ponto and Dash, we have gained by the changed conditions of affairs the assistance of our grand retrievers Jet and Sweep ; gallant, and moreover companionable ^ friends in the field. To watch a retriever find a wounded bird, after a long and clever chase, is surely as pleasant a sight to a sportsman as to see a pointer do his work.

'Driving,' where practised, is not a mere matter of fashion or idleness, but has been proved by experience a necessity ; first and foremost, in order to obtain the game which could not otherwise be killed ; and secondly, as a means of showing sport to a number of shooters at one time.

It is no use finding fault with a successful system forced upon us by the improvements of the age we live in, any more than it was of service, as our ancestors did, lamenting the advent of breechloading guns and railway trains, and upholding the advantages of muzzle-loaders and stage coaches.

Just a few lines on what is styled by f elf-elected shooting critics, when they take to moralising, * Excessive game preservation ; ' though a definition of this phrase is impossible, as some people term * excessive ' what others call * moderate,' whilst what is considered * moderate ' by one person would be thought * excessive ' by another.

It is aJl nonsense to maintain that game preservers vie in a silly jealous fashion one with another as to who can kill most birds in a day, and that 'excessive' game preservation is the result. I do not beUeve such an idea enters the head of one owner of a shooting in a thousand.

An estate will not, as a rule, carry more than a certain amount of game, do what you may or spend what you like in the matter of artificial rearing.

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Game cannot be prodaced and kept in nnlimited numbers anywhere, though the owner of an estate may be able to afford the cost of the experiment.

On ninety-nine out of a hundred estates, if the land is over-populated with hares and rabbits the tenants leave, and the rents are sacrificed ; and few people could afford that. Then if you cram your woods too full of pheasants the birds will seek less crowded resorts, and stray away, to be hung up in other folks' larders.

When we read of an unusual number of game being killed, it is nearly always the case that such bags are made on land especially adapted for game to exist on, rather than for fattening stock or growing com ; and why the owner of such property should not avail himself of its peculiar capabilities, and give sport to his friends and himself at the same time, without being dubbed a * poulterer,' I cannot conceive.

It is always against pheasant preserving the ignorant critics splutter their pens with jealous rage. They do not fall foul of the rich man who keeps thirty or forty horses when his neighbour keeps three ; they never sneer at the man whose hothouses are full of priceless orchids that are merely a pleasure to the eye for a short time before they are cast on the rubbish heap. Nor do we hear it termed * excessive ' because a wealthy angler preserves his river to such an extent that he is enabled to catch ten times as many fish in a day as anyone else for twenty miles round.

These shallow-brained sham moralists ignore the fact that the larger the head of game preserved on an estate, the more the £ s. d^ popped into the pockets of the poorer classes in that locality — such, for instance, as keepers, beaters, watchers, warreners, foresters, and even the farmers' wives, who charge you S«. for a sitting hen that is worth Is. 6d, Then there are the corndealers, the gunmakers, powder manufacturers, shot makers, cartridge loaders, and many others, including the 'Excise,' whose profits are vastly increased by there being a plenitude of game to shoot ; and last, not least, there is a host of poor artisans kept constantly employed.

The rough day's sport among hedges and ditches, and the occasional wild pheasant the shooter of ' pen and ink ' sighs for, may be all very well for him ; but what he calls the battue (in ordinary language, a day's covert shooting) is of ten times the service to the tradesmen and workpeople who, on so large a scale, supply its numerous and costly accessories.*

Nor should the benefit conferred by an abundant supply of delicious and wholesome food be overlooked ; for the more game reared and shot, the cheaper can

* The very use of the un-English word battue is good evidence that the scribblers who employ it are ignorant of covert shooting. It is a word never heard among shooters. As well might one expect the inquiry, * Did you go to the foKchase ? ' instead of the usual expression, * Did you go to the meet of the hounds ? *

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it be purchased in the markets, and the more is it enjoyed by those who, before the days of high preserving, could only purchase a pheasant now and then as a luxury, but can now often invest in one as * a dinner,' from the low price at which these birds are constantly sold.

I sent Ihe following preposteramsly absurd account of a day's sport with the gun to a journal that, without wit or wisdom, was roundly abusing the game laws of England, and especially the practice of covert shooting. I did this merely to test whether the editor of the paper in question was in the least degree aequainted with the subject he was so furiously denouncing.

TTJR ignorance was, however, supreme, and no trout ever swallowed a isX worm with greater avidi^ than this critic bolted my very full-blown hoax — a hoax that would have been instantly realised by any schoolboy learning to shoot, but which was gulped down as gospel by this would-be exponent to the public of the gun and the geuoie laws I

( Sir, — As a shooter of no small experience allow me to say how greatly interested I am in your views regarding the butchery of pheasants. If you have never seen a large battue for pheasants allow me to describe one to you. For weeks beforehand the birds are fed in an inclosure surrounded by wire six feet high, and covered in with netting at the top I This is done to cause the game to become tame. Early on the day of the shooting about half the pheasants are caught by keepers with hand -nets, and their wings, or rather one wing of each is slightly clipped ; this prevents them from flying too fast for the shooters. Many of the birds have both wings clipped, so that they may be killed on the ground by the beaters with sticks to make sure of a grand total at the end of the day in case the shooters are bad shots. Now, imagine eight to twelve, or even fifteen, gentlemen, each

II C with three ^ons and three loaders, standing close round the end of a wood with these partially crippled pheasants (encompassed as they are hy men and nets) all huddled together just before the guns ! Of course some of the birds can fly, and these are as often missed as killed — oftener a good deal ; but the wing-clipped ones, as they are driven forward by the keepers in a drove like sheep, are either shot down at six or seven yards' distance as they spring off the ground in their endeavours to fly, or are else shot as they run along the groumd I — a truly sportin°: sight I The head keeper soon appears and says, ** Good sport, I hope, gentlemen," and is told, " Splendid, excellent ; we never saw so many or such flne birds.'* When several woods are shot through in this fashion luncheon takes place. Whilst limcheon (soup, flsh, joints, &c., washed down by champagne, with music at times as a variety) progresses, a very curious scene is enacted just out of sight, and this is the advent of the local auctioneer, who knocks down the game to various dealers at so much a brace according to the bidding I At the close of the day a similar scene occurs, and the auctioneer (who is sometimes given the use of a gun and dog) finally hands a handsome cheque to the lord of the manor for the game he has sold !

' Now the farming tenants, be it remarked, who have reared and supported the game on their farms, have to bid like anyone else ! Perhaps the least pleasant part of the luncheon hour is the paunching of the birds, that always has to be done before a large number are offered at auction, and which is often a disgusting evidence of the slaughter.