We sat round a blazing pine-knot fire in the big hotel’s cozy smoking
room, and every man in the group, except the Banker, had been
hobby-horse riding. Each had enjoyed a glorious day in the outdoors,
pursuing his favorite sport. Each, tired with that delicious, restful
tiredness that comes like a benison at the close of every day of keen
sport, luxuriated in his deep leather chair. The fresh, pine-scented
winds had swept the cobwebs from our brains, and, as the fire snapped
and crackled, the bright flashes of friendly repartee, witty thrust and
ready parry, flew round the circle.
The Collegian and his Father had started it by holding, as golfers
are so very apt to do, a _post mortem_ over their afternoon round.
This led the Editor, who had slipped away from the impatient telephone
and the ever-hungry presses for a couple of weeks’ winter vacation,
to make some caustic comparisons between golf and his favorite
tennis. But casualties on this hard and long-fought battlefield were
tactfully avoided by the Manufacturer, who boldly asserted that both
these good sports paled into utter insignificance before the most
glorious sport of quail-shooting. He proved it too--to his own complete
satisfaction--and then the polo-player championed his hobby, and was
followed very naturally by a hard-riding fox-hunter. Then we had
another round of golf, and so back again to the wide-ranging bird-dogs
and the whirling quail coveys.
[Illustration: SNOW IN THE SANDHILLS]
“I wonder,” put in the Banker, “if you gentlemen have read a poem of
Whitcomb Riley’s called ‘His Favorite Fruit?’ It’s a little dialect
sketch in which some Hoosier farmers, gathered ’round the iron stove
in a little cross-roads grocery, discuss their favorite fruits. Each
one holds out for his own personal choice--the apple, the peach, the
pear, the watermelon--and slanders unmercifully the taste of the last
speaker. But all the time the teller of this story ‘chaws on an’ sez
nawthin’.’ Finally one of the party asks him point blank, ‘Jim, what’s
yourn fav’rite fruit?’ He chaws on fer quite a spell an’ then he sez,
slow an’ solemn-like, ‘Terbaccer,’ an’ you oughter heard ’em roar.”
“You,” continued the Banker, when the laugh had subsided, “have been
each slandering the other’s favorite sport, while I have been ‘chawin’
on an’ saying nawthin’,’ and I wonder who of you will laugh at me and
my favorite sport as at the Hoosier farmer whose favorite fruit was
tobacco.”
“Speaking for myself,” remarked the Editor, “I laugh at no sport except
tiddle-de-winks.”
“How about ping-pong?” asked the Collegian.
“That must have been before your day--did you ever play it?”
“No, thank Heaven, but----”
“Ah, I thought not. If you had, you’d not laugh at it, either,” and the
Editor chuckled to himself reminiscently.
“I came down here to Pinehurst,” continued the Banker, “to get some
good trap-shooting.”
“Huh!”--a short, sarcastic “Huh!”--came from the depths of the chair
where the Manufacturer, after a long day tramping over the Sandhills
behind his brace of pointers, was resting.
“I expected just that from you, Charlie,” laughed the Banker. “Simply
’huh!’ and nothing more can express your wonder and contempt. For the
life of you, you cannot understand why on earth a supposedly sensible
man should come down here into the very heart of one of the best quail
counties in North Carolina to smash clay birds at the trap, can you?”
The Manufacturer shook his head vigorously. “Well,” continued the
Banker again, “I felt just as you do a couple of years ago. I followed
your favorite sport too many years to start slandering it now. I used
to come down here quail-shooting before you were out of school, but I
can tell you that trap-shooting is good sport, too. You are a Doubting
Thomas, but why don’t you try it sometime? It’s not so simple as it
looks.”
Before we broke up an hour later, we had made an appointment to visit
the traps next morning to witness the Banker’s promised conversion of
the Manufacturer into a trap-shooter. None of us will ever forget that
skeptic’s immense surprise when he found the little clay birds so very
“gamey” that he only broke nine out of his first string of twenty-five.
It was a hard jolt to his pride, but he stuck out his jaw, tucked his
gun under his cheek, and tackled another string. He did better later,
and soon he got into the habit of joining the little parties at the
squatty little gun clubhouse in the center of the big open field over
against the great red barns of the model dairy. He came sheepishly at
first, but later with brazen effrontery. In the end, he decided to stay
over a week longer than he had planned, just to enter in the Mid-Winter
Handicap Tournament the last of January.
In no very strict historical sense can the adjective “new” be fairly
applied to trap-shooting, and yet there is a newness in the recent
vogue of the sport. The live, tame pigeon, thrown into the air,
frightened and confused, from a collapsible wooden cage, has long since
been supplanted by a little clay disc, hurled with lightning speed from
a steel spring trap. This was the starting point of the development
of trap-shooting as we know it in America today, and this took place
years ago. It is a harder, more sporty thing to smash a whizzing clay
bird to smithereens than to knock down a frightened tame pigeon,
and it is more humane. This change of targets put a keen zest into
trap-shooting and took out a bitter reproach. But till recently, the
growth of trap-shooting has been slow. In four short years, however,
the number of active trap-shooters has increased fourfold; from about
100,000 to about 425,000. During the same period trap-shooting clubs
have increased from 1,000 to 4,000, and it is estimated that about
500,000,000 clay pigeons are thrown into the air each year at the
shooter’s sharp command, “Pull!” In one short Presidential term,
trap-shooting has sprung forward from a low place among the so-called
minor sports to occupy a position second only to baseball in the number
of its devotees. We are not apt to appreciate what this really means
without the help of the cold figures above.
There is a world of difference in being a “rooter” and in being a
“player,” and the one simple little fact that each trap-shooter is
a player himself, or herself, is just what gives the sport its
strongest grip upon the interest of its followers. That tense moment
of “two out and the bases filled”; the jerky, crashing advance of the
battling human machine carrying a pigskin ball down the field toward
the goal-posts; the rush of the ponies and the hollow click of mallet
against polo ball--all these tighten the muscles and quicken the
heart-beat of any live sportsman, but, as the psychologist says, these
are all external stimuli.
Let the same man--or the same woman, for many women shoot at the traps
nowadays--step up to the score, tuck his gun against his shoulder,
brace himself and draw a deep breath, glance down the long length of
blued barrels, and call “Pull!” Whizz goes the little black disc,
hurtling away at a speed that makes the teal and the mallard seem
lazy laggards. One moment of intensely concentrated effort and keen
enjoyment till the flying saucer is found just above the forward sight;
an almost involuntary squeeze of the trigger finger, the thrilling jump
of the discharge, and puff!--the clay target is knocked into a thousand
bits.
That tremendously concentrated effort of finding the speeding disc--you
must find him quick--he will be quite out of range if you stop to say
quickly--followed by the physical climax of the almost simultaneous
kick of the gun and the shattering of the clay target; these are
secrets of the witching spell that lures the shooter back and back
again to the traps. I must confess to a thoroughly diabolical delight
in knocking the clay birds to powder. I do not do it always--not even
often, but when I do I enjoy the keenest pleasure. Other trap-shooters
confess the same joy. Please, do not say anything about dangerous
destructive tendencies that ought to be rigidly suppressed, or we shall
get into an argument, and then I will have to say a lot of things about
quickness of eye, correlation of senses and muscles, and a great deal
more that has nothing whatever to do with the sport of shooting the
clay birds.
Over and above the inherent fascination of knocking the flying clay
targets into powder, the fact that there is no closed season on
these clay birds and that even a little hand trap in any open field
will furnish good game anywhere, goes far towards making “the sport
alluring” the sport universal. Nor do the changing seasons at all
handicap the trap shooter. The clay birds are always full grown and
they have no nesting-time; they are just as plentiful and just as fair
sport in November as in May. Indeed, when you mount the trap-shooting
hobby-horse, you can make up your mind to settle yourself in the saddle
for a long, long gallop over all sorts of country and in all sorts of
weather.
There seems to be a delicate touch of sarcasm in the fact that the
most important winter trap-shooting tournament should be held within
a stone’s throw of grounds so well stocked with quail that they are
chosen for the running of one of the largest field trials. The pick of
the blooded setters and pointers are tried out for their bird sense
and hunting ability almost within hearing of the guns at the Pinehurst
traps. But the quail-hunter and the trap-shooter are brothers in
arms. Often, like the Manufacturer, converted at the Pinehurst traps
last winter, they are sporting Siamese twins. The traps furnish good
practice to the field shooter and good sport when the closed season
would otherwise keep the gun in its case.
There is a curious connection between these brother sports. How
keenly, at the traps, does one miss the tramping over the open fields,
scrambling up hillsides, fording the streams, hopping over the rail
fences! All the tireless quest of the hunt, that strange, primitive,
impelling force that defies physical fatigue and keeps your high boots
swishing through the coarse, knotted crab grass with a long, eager
stride from daylight to dark! Most of all, you miss the dogs. That
to me is the great loss. But there is continual shooting to take the
place of the joys of the open fields, and there is a cleaner, keener
satisfaction in smashing a target than in knocking down a quail; but
what takes the place of the dogs? Nothing. Every shooter loves to
shoot--if he says he does not, put him down as a hypocrite. No man
lugs six or eight or ten or even twelve pounds of shotgun all day long
just for the fun of carrying firearms. He likes to shoot. He may--and
probably does--thoroughly enjoy the tramp and the pleasure of watching
the dogs work, but if he went hunting for these alone he would not
burden himself with a gun. No, the shooter loves to shoot, and at
the traps he can shoot till his gun barrels get red hot. Only a lame
shoulder and the price of shells need keep him from shooting his head
off, as the saying is. To the man who loves action--quick action and
lots of it--this is a charm that the traps surely, and the live birds
only uncertainly, offer.
But the very kernel of the sport of trap-shooting comes in smashing
those flying discs. However keen the hunting instinct there is always
just the tinge of regret in blotting out the pretty life of little
brown birds. There are times when one feels just a bit ashamed of that
fierce pleasure of a good, clean, quick shot. At the traps one can let
that pleasure run wild. You can grit your teeth and say, “I’m going to
paste you this time,” without qualm of conscience. You can give rein
to the passion for destruction without becoming a brute. To do so in
the field is to degenerate. We hate the “game hog,” not because he is
selfish and cruel, but because he is not a man. We need the strong,
elemental passions, and we are in danger of becoming super-refined
jelly-fishes, incapable of doing wrong because we are incapable of
doing good. It takes more courage to attack a lie than to storm a
trench, more passion for destruction to root out a bad habit than to
raze a city.