most trusty allies, for its food consists chiefly of voles, mice, and
rats. As for the hedgehog, deadly enemy of slugs and snails and insects
though it be, the fact that it will suck eggs if it gets the chance
suffices to make its corpse a welcome addition to the gamekeeper’s
museum--that collection of the rotting bodies of birds and small
mammals nailed or hung on to a tree or fence, with which all who have
rambled much in the woods and fields of our country-side must be
familiar. What a motley company may often be seen thus strung up on one
of these gibbets in some upland hedgerow or woodland glade: a selection
of stoats, weasels, moles, hedgehogs, crows, jackdaws, magpies, jays,
owls, sparrow-hawks, kestrels, merlins, and so forth, according to
the locality. The writer has actually seen--and it is not an isolated
instance--that delightful bird, the green woodpecker, occupying a
place among these trophies of the keeper’s prowess; and with regard to
another victim, the harmless nightjar (Wordsworth’s “buzzing dor-hawk,
twirling his watchman’s rattle about”), whose strange, churning note
is so pleasant a feature of an evening ramble in woody or heathy
districts, one keeper told Mr. Hudson: “I don’t believe a word about
their swallowing pheasants’ eggs, though many keepers think they do.
I shoot them, it’s true, but only for pleasure.”[15] The kestrel
again--the expressively named “windhover,” which hangs aloft poised so
gracefully against the wind--
“As if let down from heaven there
By a viewless silken thread”--
a little hawk which preys almost exclusively on voles, mice, insects,
etc., is a valuable friend to the farmer, and certainly no enemy to
the gamekeeper. Yet large numbers are destroyed by the latter; for as
Charles St. John, himself an ardent sportsman, wrote in his well-known
“Wild Sports of the Highlands”:[16] “It is impossible to persuade a
keeper that any bird called a hawk can be harmless; much less … that a
hawk can be useful.” And much the same still applies, it is shameful to
relate, to other extremely useful species, such as the barn-owl--which
farmers ought to encourage--and the tawny-owl, etc. Worse than this:
incredible as it may sound, there are several well-authenticated cases
of _nightingales_ having been destroyed by keepers because their
singing kept the pheasants awake at night! And Mr. Hudson, among
other instances, records a case where a whole heronry was blotted
out, the birds being shot on their nests after breeding had begun,
because their cries disturbed the pheasants; and yet another, where
a whole tract of woodland estate was denuded of doves, woodpeckers,
nuthatches, blackbirds, missel and song thrushes, chaffinches, and many
other smaller birds, all of which were shot, any nests found being
also destroyed. The keeper said he was not going to have the place
swarming with birds that were no good for anything, and were always
eating the pheasants’ food.[17] Though these, of course, are extreme
cases, they are notable as showing to what lengths this folly may be
carried--what monstrous sacrifices are made to the insatiable Moloch of
game-preserving.
Besides such striking birds as the brilliant, eager jay, the elvish
magpie, the crows, the fierce sparrow-hawk, and the bold little merlin,
which are still, relatively speaking, common, and the various beautiful
birds of prey--the kite, the harriers, the peregrine falcon, and many
others now almost exterminated--the British craze for game-preserving
has led to the bitter persecution of two especially fine species,
both of which have been almost extirpated in Southern England, at any
rate--the raven and the absolutely innocent buzzard. The former, round
which centres so much of myth, legend, and story, is now seldom met
with, save in a few secluded mountainous districts, though less than
forty years ago the head-keeper of Exmoor Forest was able to record the
destruction of fifty-two of these grand birds in a single year;[18]
while the Common Buzzard, which in virtue of its voice, appearance,
large size, and grandeur of flight, is about the nearest approach to
the eagle still left to us, is now, alas! exceedingly uncommon. Not
long ago, while wandering near Dartmoor, I was fortunate enough to
watch six buzzards floating high in the air together, circling round
above one another in great spirals, and uttering from time to time
their wild plaintive cry: an extremely rare sight in England to-day,
and one the beauty and impressiveness of which I shall not soon
forget. Any true nature-lover who has watched these splendid soaring
birds on the wing will readily understand what an irreparable loss
the gamekeeper’s ban on them is inflicting on our landscape, more
especially in these days when, in spite of the trammels of modern
civilisation, an ever-increasing number of people are learning to
appreciate the joy of a more direct communion with wild nature, and,
incidentally, are discovering the truth of the poet’s words:
“… that such beauty varying in the light
Of living Nature, cannot be portrayed
By words, nor by the pencil’s silent skill;
But is the property of him alone
Who hath beheld it, noted it with care,
And in his mind recorded it with love.”
THE KILLING MANIA.
Next to the gamekeeper, who, after all, is but the instrument of
the game-shooter, and the “collector” (whose crimes in respect of
our rarer avifauna would fill a volume), the worst sinners are those
gun-sportsmen whose amusement is the wanton destruction of wild life,
without even the flimsy pretext that their victims are eatable. Nothing
comes amiss to them--from seals,[19] and rare birds like the osprey and
the great northern diver, to seagulls, shore-birds, and waders, and
even poor little pipits and thrushes. These are the folk of whom Sir
Harry Johnston has truly observed that “they are often not nearly so
interesting, physically and mentally, as the creatures they destroy.”
They are dingy-souled Philistines, to whom a dead bird in the hand
is worth more than many living birds in the bush. Some even profess
themselves bird-lovers.[20] A West Country farmer’s wife once observed
to me: “My husband is a great lover of birds; he’s got several cases
full of stuffed ones that he shot himself.” This is as though one
should prefer an ancient Egyptian mummy to the chance of watching and
studying a living breathing being of that race. Little wonder if, when
thinking of this senseless and careless and callous destruction of
so much feathered loveliness, we should feel inclined to echo Robert
Burns’s angry words:
“Inhuman man, curse on thy barb’rous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye.”
Moreover, the “deep-rooted instinct,” about which we hear so much,
can easily be diverted to a far finer, more beautiful, and more useful
pleasure than the absurd, antiquated, and useless one of _killing_ for
sport. I can speak from my own personal experience in saying that the
actual thrill and joy of tracking and watching wild creatures for study
and observation is far superior to that which is derived from tracking
and watching them for slaughter. In other words, hunting animals to see
how they _live_ is finer sport than hunting them to see how they _die_.
It seems, therefore, that the real issue is between Natural History
as opposed to _Unnatural_ History. On the one hand, grouse, pheasants
(“semi-domesticated exotics”), and partridges (very likely imported),
reared at immense cost for slaughter: on the other, all these
infinitely more varied and natural and gracious creatures--the true
sylphs and elves of our woodlands--whose glad, free beauty so thrilled
Meredith, and drew from him that impassioned cry:
“For joy in the beating of wings on high,
…
My soul shoots into the breast of a bird,
As it will for sheer love till the last long sigh.”
And all this wild, winged life possesses a twofold beauty: for it is
beautiful both in itself, and--as poetry all down the ages has borne
witness--in its influence on the mind of man.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] “British Mammals,” 1903.
[11] I can speak from a fairly extensive acquaintance with keepers in
various districts; and (to quote impartial opinion) a pheasant-shooting
friend lately observed to me, while discussing the absurd destruction
of kestrels: “The English gamekeeper is a fool: there’s nothing to be
said for him.” And Mr. J. G. Millais, another sportsman, in his great
work on “British Mammals,” remarks that “gamekeepers are often among
the most unobservant of men” (vol. ii., 1905). _Cf._ also, _e.g._,
Seebohm’s “British Birds” (Falconidæ, _passim_).
[12] W. H. Hudson, “The Land’s End,” 1908.
[13] See, _e.g._, Sir A. Pease, “The Badger,” 1896.
[14] Similarly, one of the reasons often given for otter-hunting is
that otters eat trout and salmon, and so lessen the angler’s chance of
killing more of them.
[15] “Adventures among Birds,” 1912.
[16] Ninth edition, 1907.
[17] “Adventures among Birds,” 1912.
[18] W. H. Hudson, “Birds and Man,” 1901.
[19] Here is one instance selected from many. “During a yachting cruise
in the summer of 1902, the suite accompanying ‘very distinguished
persons’ gleefully took advantage of their proximity to little
frequented Scotch islands, to shoot and leave, to kill uselessly
without excuse, quite a large number of the seals which still remain in
Scottish waters” (Sir H. H. Johnston, _op. cit._).
[20] Perhaps from similar causes to those which lead Sir Alfred Pease,
in defending his hunting habits, to inform us, “I hunt, paradoxical as
it seems, because I love the animals” (see “The Badger,” 1896).
THE CALLOUSNESS OF FOX-HUNTING[21]
BY H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON
Undoubtedly we are a complacent and unimaginative nation, which defects
probably explain and excuse certain indictments brought against us by
foreigners.
Complacency and practicality may have raised us commercially and
politically, but they do not breed the finer graces, and they are apt
to misrepresent us. No one, for example, would say that the English or
British race was callous or cruel in comparison with other races. On
the contrary, its reputation for kind-heartedness stands higher than
that of its compeers and rivals. Yet this same race is engaged to-day
in the practice and pursuit of the most brutal sport conceivable.
Of bull-baiting, of cock-fighting, of various barbarous pastimes of
our fathers we know nothing now save by hearsay; but it is safe to say
that whereas bull-baiting and cock-mains have long been prohibited by
law, the most cruel sport remains unpenalised and undiscouraged; nay,
even protected by the law. I can only attribute the continued existence
of fox-hunting to that lack of imagination to which I have referred.
It is necessary for one making a desperate protest of this kind
against an inhuman sport to dissociate himself at the outset from
sentimentalism and the sentimentalist. Death is inevitable. We must
look facts in the face. The law of life is Death, and Nature has
ordained that the strong should prey on the weak throughout her serried
ranks of organic life. The sentimentalist will shriek in vain against
the destruction of animal life, simply because he is shrieking against
an ultimate law of Nature. Nature destroys ruthlessly, and so does
man, who is part of Nature. But what civilisation may and must demand,
what humanitarianism should and does demand, is that this inevitable
accomplishment of death should happen with the least possible pain.
Death, in short, is necessary, but torture is not. And fox-hunting
is framed to produce the maximum of torture to the quarry. A fox is
“vermin,” they say; then in Heaven’s name let it be classed as vermin,
and destroyed as such. But what happens is precisely the reverse of
this. Foxes are carefully preserved in order that they may be hounded
to a hapless, miserable death, the conception of which transcends any
ordinary imagination. Gamekeepers and farmers, to whom foxes are a
grave nuisance, are paid _not_ to destroy them painlessly by gun or
otherwise. Gamekeepers, indeed, receive so much for each fox found on
their preserves.
The object, then, of the hunt is to keep foxes from being destroyed in
the natural course of that warfare between item and item of human and
feral life, and to preserve them for a more cruel fate. Let us see how
cruel that is. The gamekeeper on land which is announced to be hunted
on a certain day has carefully during the night earthed up a fox’s hole
so that the beast cannot get back to it in the morning. At a certain
hour pack and company arrive, and the master learns from the gamekeeper
that he is likely to “find” in such and such a spinney. Thither all
proceed, gay ladies and fresh-coloured men, and presently hounds give
tongue and are in cry. They have “found.”
Immediately the field is in commotion. Gay ladies and fresh-faced men
thunder off irregularly. The fun has begun; they are going to enjoy
themselves. But what is the fun? To each of those amiable people it
no doubt is involved in the music of the hounds, in the company, in
the cross-country ride, in the excitements and hazards and humours of
the run. To the master and his huntsmen it involves in addition the
responsibility for keeping hounds in hand--a matter of considerable
skill.
But what does it involve to the fox? This sleek, furry creature that
steals chickens and ducks, and young pheasants and partridges, who is a
nuisance to farmer and gamekeeper alike, but to preserve whom is made
worth their while--this poor “vermin,” having no “earth” to hide in,
is flying for his life before a pack of strong dogs, any one of which
would be capable of answering for him.
THE DEATH.
He has (it may be) three or four hours’ run before him, with that
terrible bell-tongued chorus behind him. One can conceive him towards
the close, his strength failing, even his vulpine cunning, his eyes
starting from his head and glassy with terror, his jaws dropping
foam, his heart like a hammer that must break, straining--straining,
helplessly, hopelessly towards some covert that he knows now is not.
And upon that at last the more merciful rush, the feeble turn at bay of
an exhausted creature, the mellay of hounds, and--Death. Is it possible
to conceive that to a creature any greater torture could be applied?
Is it really necessary to deal with that fatuous argument--the
argument of minds that are either wholly dishonest or ignobly
unintelligent--that the fox is “vermin,” and that he enjoys the run?
Surely it has only to be stated to glare at one in all its farcical
absurdity. I know of a household in which it is considered cruel to
allow the cat to play with the mouse she has caught, and yet this
household--men and women--is engaged in hunting other “vermin”--the
fox--three days a week during the season.
Is it credible? But it is true. Women, who I have no reason to suppose
are not kind daughters and affectionate mothers, will gleefully
boast how they were in at the death--to see, that is, one poor furry
creature torn into pieces by a swarm of hounds while in the throes of
exhaustion, of terror, and of despair. Is it lack of imagination, or is
it worse?
And that time-worn defence of all sport is no defence here--I mean the
plea that men are improved in health and certain lofty animal qualities
by the pursuit of this savage sport. For, to speak plainly, the fox is
wholly unnecessary. The essentials of hunting are the hounds, who enjoy
themselves, the horses, who as a rule must be admitted to do likewise,
unless over-ridden, and the hunters, to whom the gratification of the
hunt is the ride through brisk air, the cross-country fences, the air
of adventure surrounding the run.
All these essentials are found equally in a drag hunt. Those who
have had experience of drag hunts (from which an animal quarry is
eliminated) will admit that there is as much pleasure in them as in
the fox-hunt. Nay, they are more advantageous, and for two reasons. In
a “drag” you are sure of a run; you are not dependent on the accident
of a “find.” And, secondly, you have the benefit of knowing when you
may order your change to meet you, and thus avoid inflicting pain on
your horse. The drag obviates all cruelty in a sport which is otherwise
invigorating and virile. Therefore, in Heaven’s name, let the masters
of hounds, who are also men of feeling, cease to preserve the fox, and
cultivate the drag.
The abolition of the Royal Buckhounds did much to throw into disfavour
the abominable sport of hunting a tame stag, and it is known that
aristocratic circles do not look with favour on the atrocious sport of
coursing. Is it impossible to enlist the sense of the upper classes in
this country in the abolition of fox-hunting?
FOOTNOTES:
[21] This article originally appeared in the _Daily Mail_ of February
8, 1905.
BIG-GAME HUNTING
BY ERNEST BELL
“If asked why I had gone elephant-hunting at the age of
nineteen, I would say that it is simply because I am the lineal
descendant of a prehistoric man.”
F. C. SELOUS.
Apparently there is a considerable public who like reading books about
the slaughter of what is called “big game,” or we should hardly have
such a continuous supply of them issued from the press. As, however,
vanity is apparently no small incentive to the deeds of the big-game
hunters, it is perhaps a fair deduction that the same feeling may have
something to do with the publication of their records, and that such
books are in fact not always speculations on the part of publishers,
but are sometimes printed by the authors themselves.
Certainly the unbiassed reader might be excused for agreeing with the
sentiment expressed in the preface of one of the exponents of the art,
when he writes: “I shall guard myself against the desire to make the
reader be present at the death of my 500 victims, which would be very
monotonous to him, for after all, though circumstances may vary, the
result of a hunt after wild animals is always the same.”
A study of several books of the sort certainly confirms the impression
that the subject is a very monotonous one. The illustrations also share
the same want of variety, for almost all represent dead animals, varied
only by the arrangement of guns and naked savages about them. They
apparently illustrate nothing at all but the one fact--which one would
think was neither surprising nor creditable--that the perpetrators,
with the aid of Express double-barrelled rifles, Winchester six-shot
repeaters, revolvers, explosive bullets, smokeless powder, rockets,
the electric projector, Bengal lights, etc., and a band of natives to
load and work the machinery, succeed in destroying the lives of some
more beautiful animals. As it is expressed by one author: “At the very
spot where a minute before there rose, in all its savage beauty, this
majestic conception of Nature, the largest and the most powerful of the
animals of the earth, nothing more than a mass of grey flesh appears
in the blood-spattered grass.” The climax is reached when we see the
“hero,” as sometimes happens, sitting with proud mien on the top of
some huge animal, not apparently realizing that the same juxtaposition
which brings out the size of the animal is apt to suggest also the
_smallness_ of the man whose greatest pride and delight can be wantonly
to destroy so grand a creature. We must beg to differ with this
writer’s enthusiastic exclamation that elephant-hunting is certainly
“the greatest and noblest sport in the world.” Rather we should be
inclined to call it the meanest and most contemptible abuse of man’s
superior powers.
EXPLOSIVE BULLETS.
Of the means employed to accomplish the hunters’ ends let us say a few
words. Explosive bullets we know have been universally condemned in
human warfare on account of their barbarity, but against defenceless
animals they are still held to be legitimate by so-called sportsmen.
Thus, we read: “The impact causes the bullet to expand. Often it
breaks into pieces or else takes a mushroom shape, the head in its
tremendous velocity dragging and catching with its edges the flesh and
viscera; and it often happens in the case of delicate animals that
upon leaving the body it makes a hole as big as the crown of a hat.”
That a sportsman writing for other sportsmen should feel no shame in
making such a statement shows only how we take our morality from our
surroundings, and how demoralising in this case the surroundings must
be. After this, we cannot expect to find much chivalry displayed in
this “the greatest and noblest” of sports, and we cannot be surprised
to find the author telling us with pleasure how in pure wantonness
he hid behind a tree within 10 yards of a female elephant and lodged
a bullet in her heart. This, however, is outdone by an incident in
another volume we remember, where we were told that the finest stag was
shot by a certain Grand Duke, “while it was asleep, at 20 yards.” In
fact, most big-game hunters seem--perhaps not unnaturally--to suffer
from a similar want of chivalry. We find Mr. Seton-Karr, an authority
on the subject, relating how one of his party imitated the young fawn’s
cry of distress, when, as he says: “The immediate result was to entice
within range numbers of Virginian deer or blacktail, most of them
does, and eight fell victims to this somewhat unsportsmanlike device.”
Whether such treachery is to be considered “unsportsmanlike” must
depend on what meaning we attach to the word, but if it means “unlike a
sportsman,” we fear the word is misused here.
Of the impartiality of the big-game hunter in his slaughter we have
many instances. Any creature that can be shot is fitting game for
him, and he delights in shooting it. One well-known writer gives the
following list of creatures killed by him during six weeks:
“Five elephants, 2 lions (male), 8 leopards, 2 wart hogs, 11
great spotted hyænas, 7 striped hyænas, 4 oryx beisa antelope,
10 awal antelope, 2 common gazelle, 2 bottlenose antelope,
2 gerenuk antelope, 1 lesser koodoo, 18 dig-dig antelope, 4
bustard, 2 small bustard, 2 sand grouse, 3 genet, 14 guinea
fowl, 22 partridge, 4 hares, 30 various.”
Thus 155 animals--mostly wholly unoffending creatures--were
slaughtered by one man in six weeks. We are assured that on a second
expedition much the same bag was made, but that he then got no
elephants (which are rapidly being exterminated in that country). To
further whet the appetite, the would-be young slaughterer is favoured
with a view of a room in the mighty hunter’s house, which is decorated
(or disfigured) apparently from floor to ceiling with the heads,
skulls, and skins of these slaughtered animals--“trophies,” they are
called--with a lavishness hardly inferior to that exhibited in a
butcher’s or poulterer’s shop at the season when we commemorate the
birth of Christ.
TEMPORARY REMORSE.
Of the actual cruelty involved in this kind of amusement--for it
professes to be nothing more--we may give a few specimens:
“My victim, which I see only through a curtain of raindrops,
visibly suffers, her flank swelling out abnormally and then
subsiding; she is shot in the lungs. We pass round her in such
a way that she shall not see us approach, but she seems more
taken up with her sufferings than with us, and at the moment I
am going to fire she falls down on the grass, still breathing.
I draw near and give her the _coup de grâce_ behind the ear.
Around her is a large pool of blood, which the rain carries in
a red stream towards the bottom of the little valley.
“It is the male at which I fired first of all. As I afterwards
found, his shoulder was broken. Maddened by pain and his feeble
efforts, the animal roars with rage, and, blowing furiously
with his trunk, tears at everything within reach.… His cries
and groans become so terrible that they must be heard a mile
away.
“Poor beast!… Never have I been able to contemplate so near
the death of an elephant in all its details. She is lying eight
yards from us in the full sunlight at the edge of the water,
which is tinged with red, and we look on in silence while
life leaves the enormous body; her flank heaves, blood flows
from breast and shoulder, her mouth opens and shuts, her lip
trembles, tears flow from her eyes, her limbs quiver; with
her trunk hanging down, her head low, she sways to right and
left, then falls heavily on one side, shaking the ground and
spattering blood in every direction.… All is over!
“Such a spectacle is enough to make the most hardened hunter
feel remorse. It seemed to me that I had done a bad action.
Several times have I said to myself, upon seeing those splendid
animals suffer, that I ought to place my rifle in the gun-rack
for ever.”
That a man who has spent several years in little else but the
destruction of animals for his own pleasure should feel even a
temporary remorse is evidence of the brutality of this particular
scene, but we do not know how to characterise the combination of
easy sentiment, costing nothing, with the cruel selfishness which
immediately turns to the account of fresh slaughter.
THE HUNTER’S JOY.
Or take the following bloody tale, told with evident pride: