When the publishers asked me to write a book upon Shooting and its
interest, I at first doubted whether I knew enough of the matter to fill
a book of much size without repeating all the traditional lore that is
to be found in every unread text-book, but I had no sooner undertaken
the business than I came to a conclusion that has since been confirmed,
that to deal as best I could, with the kind help of many sportsmen, with
the controversial subjects would have taken the whole space at my
disposal for any one of them. Consequently, ever and again I have had to
decide what to eliminate, and I have tried to leave out that which most
people know already, and to deal as best I can in short space with
questions that are now more or less under discussion, and consequently
those that game preservers and shooters in this and other countries are
thinking about. It has been very difficult to draw a line between the
controversial and current subjects and the unchallenged facts which have
been too often repeated already, but that this is the right principle
is, I think, obvious from the position that the opposite course would
involve. What is meant can be best explained by glancing at a few
traditional survivals in gunnery and shooting, and its accompanying
unnatural history, which, along with many others, would occupy space if
one were to attempt to deal with all the accepted, as well as the
repudiated, statements upon them. Nobody wants to be told that he should
put the powder into a cartridge-case before the shot, but to begin at
the beginning would involve the necessity of giving that and other
puerile information. Nobody would be the better for a learned chapter on
gun actions. In the first place, these actions are no longer patents,
they are open to anyone who likes to use them, and consequently the days
when one selected a gun-maker because his patent action was conceived to
be the better, are long gone by. The reason is that each gun-maker can
be trusted to use the best principle when he has a choice of them all,
or at least the best available for the money to be expended upon its
making in the gun. Ejectors are nearly in the same position; but single
triggers are not. I was so fortunate as to make a discovery in regard to
single triggers that is now acknowledged to be of great assistance to
the gun trade; the want of it had for a hundred years been the
stumbling-block to the patent single triggers that had begun to trouble
gun-makers in the time of the celebrated Colonel Thornton. That is
referred to in its proper chapter, because single triggers now occupy
the place that formerly actions held, and at a later date ejector
systems usurped, in assisting to the selection of a gun-maker.
To begin at the beginning in the repudiation of frequently accepted
fallacy possibly would not compel a reference to the sometime beliefs
that hares change their sex; that skylarks fall into snakes’ mouths
after their skyward song—a statement that troubled Mr. Samuel Pepys,
who, as Secretary to the Admiralty under two protectors and two
monarchs, and as a member of the Royal Society, should have been in a
position to get the best information. Nor would such a beginning involve
the repudiation of the belief once held that bernicle geese turned into
“bernacle” molluscs, or _vice versâ_. But it would oblige an author to
enter into repudiation of the oft-stated belief that nitro powder is
quicker than black powder, although big and heavily charged caps have to
be employed for the nitro, whereas the small were amply sufficient for
black powder. One would also be obliged to point out that the
oft-repeated prophecy, that the smallest stock of grouse bred the better
August crop, has been doomed to disaster always, and that precisely the
reverse is true. However, there are still people who by what they say
must be judged to hold to the unproved proposition that the stones breed
grouse.
[Illustration:
COL. THORNTON’S PLUTO (BLACK) AND JUNO. BY GILPIN. SHOWING
WHOLE-COLOURED POINTERS SIMILAR IN FORMATION TO THOSE OF SUTTON
SCARSDALE TO-DAY
]
It would be necessary also to point out that some parrot cries are a
hundred years old and at least forty years out of date, but are still
repeated as if they were original and true. Some of these are that
pointers have better noses than setters, and also require less water;
that cheese affects dogs’ noses (sanitation by means of carbolic acid
does so, but cheese is harmless enough); that Irish setters have more
stamina and pace than any others. The latter statement I have seen
disproved for forty years at the field trials in this country, and the
former has always failed to find corroboration at the champion stamina
trials in America. I have had great chances of forming an accurate
opinion, as I entered and ran dogs at the English championship trials
over thirty-six years ago, and I am the only one who has ever judged at
the champion trials of both England and America.
It would be necessary also to repudiate the mistake that “foot scent” is
something exuding from the pad of an animal and left upon the ground by
the contact of the feet. It would be necessary to affirm that fat from
the adder is not the best cure for the poison when dog or man is bitten,
but that raw whisky taken inwardly in large doses is; and as dogs will
sometimes point these vipers, it might be well to affirm that these
creatures do not swallow their young, as is commonly supposed. It would
be necessary also to state that when partridges “tower” they are not
necessarily, but only sometimes, hit in the lungs, but have often
received a rap on the head just not enough to render them totally
unconscious; and a case has lately been reported where two unshot-at
partridges in one covey “towered” and fell, and were caught alive, grew
stronger, and upon one of them being killed it was found to be badly
attacked by enteritis, and not by lung disease. And consequently the
myth about “towered” partridges always falling dead and on their backs
does not require dealing with, as might have been the case a quarter of
a century ago, when nevertheless the phenomenon was only misunderstood
in the laboratory, and not in the field of sport.
It is hardly necessary to assert that “pheasant disease” as commonly
seen in the rearing-fields is not fowl enteritis, as it is so often said
to be, because the foster-mothers are hardly ever affected by any
illness when their chicks are dying by hundreds of _the_ disease. _The_
pheasant disease has never been subjected to pathological examination
and investigation.
To start at the beginning would make it necessary to state that the
“muff ’cock,” or the bigger woodcock, that comes in a separate
migration, is not the hen of the smaller birds, and that distinction can
only be made between the sexes by internal examination of the organs. It
might be necessary in similar circumstances to say that woodcock and
snipe do not live on suction, as is often believed even now; that
nightjars and hedgehogs neither suck the milk of goats nor cows; that
foxes do not prefer rats and beetles to partridges and pheasants; that
swallows do not hibernate at the bottom of ponds; that badgers do not
prefer young roots to young rabbits; that ptarmigan and woodcock are not
mute, and that the former do not live on either stones or heather; that
badgers can run elsewhere than along the sides of a hill, and that they
are not compelled, by having the legs on one side shorter than on the
other, to always take this curious course, which would involve them in
the difficulty of having to entirely encircle a hill before getting back
to their holes; nevertheless, this faith is still held in some parts of
the country, just as it is said that the heather bleating of the snipe
is a vocal sound, whereas it is often made simultaneously with the vocal
sound.
I have tried to avoid dealing with any such things as these, which may
be supposed to come within the region of common knowledge of any
beginner in shooting, but another point has troubled me more. I have
written a good deal for the press. Articles of mine have appeared in
_The Times_, _The Morning Post_, _The Standard_, _The Daily Telegraph_,
_The County Gentleman_, _Bailey’s Magazine_, _The Sporting and
Dramatic_, _The Badminton Magazine_, _Country Life_, _The Field_, _The
Sportsman_, _The National Review_, _The Fortnightly Review_, _The
Monthly Review_, and elsewhere, and I am afraid that I have
unconsciously repeated the ideas running through some of these articles,
without acknowledgment to the various editors.
As Colonel Hawker went to school in gunnery to Joe Manton, so did Joe
Manton go to school to Hawker in the matter of sport. But we have
changed. That those who make guns can best teach how to make guns I do
not doubt for a moment; that when they write books on the making of guns
those books are regarded as an indirect advertisement is inevitable, but
they are none the worse for that, if readers know how to read between
the lines, and it is not necessary to go to a shooting school to do
that. But when gun-makers add to their business by means of books upon
sport and by “shooting schools,” they are turning the tables on us. To
that I have no objection. But when it is asserted that shooting schools
teach more than the sport itself, as has lately been done, then I think
it is time to protest that even if they could teach shooting at game as
well as game teaches it (which is absurd), that even then they cannot
teach sportsmanship, of which woodcraft is one part and the spirit of
sport and fellowship another.
But the greatest value of sportsmanship is, after all, that idle man
should be the more healthy an animal for his idleness. Consequently,
when shooting parties are made an excuse for more smoke and later nights
than usual, even if the shooting is not spoiled next day, less enjoyment
of life follows, and lethargically apparent becomes the missing of that
perfect dream of health, that reaction after great exertion ought to
bring to those who have ever felt it.
It is often said that big bags have ruined the sporting spirit. That is
not so: big bags are necessary proofs that the science of preservation
of game is on the right lines, and their publication is also necessary
on these grounds. At the same time, it is a fact that hard walking is
not appreciated as much as it was thirty years ago, and ladies can now
take just as forward a place in the shooting of game and deer as men can
or do. This is not all because ladies are better trained physically, but
because sports have been made much easier, than formerly they were.
Bridle-paths enable ponies to traverse the deer forests with ladies on
their backs, and where that can be done deer stalking is not quite what
it was when a Highland laird declared that he saw no use in protecting
the deer, since nobody could do them much harm. But the wonder to me is
not that we do not like great exertion, but that we ever did like it for
itself. But then I speak as a man in years, and one who has in the
foolishness of youth killed a stag and carried home his head, cut low
down, for sixteen miles, rather than wait for the tardy ponies to bring
it in with the carcase.
I suspect that a change of ideas will take place when it is discovered
that driven-game shooting can, more than any other, be learnt at the
shooting schools, and that when the trick is known it becomes the
easiest kind of shot. If it is true that the schools can teach it, then
everybody will learn it, and what is common property will become as
unfashionable as it is the reverse at present. I believe that half the
difficulty in the driven bird is in thinking it is difficult. The
fastest bird at 30 yards range one is likely to meet with in a whole
season does not require a swing of the muzzle faster than, or much more
than half as fast as, a man can walk. What is difficult in driven game
is shooting often, the swerve of the game, the changes of pace and angle
of different birds in quick succession, but distinctly not the pace.
Before I had ever seen a grouse butt, I remember sitting down to watch
another party of shooters on a distant hill, more than half a mile up
wind of where I sat to watch. I saw their dogs point, and a single bird
rise, which, with many a switchback as it came, I watched traverse the
whole distance between us, and I killed it as I sat. That was my first
driven grouse, but it is not by any means why I say that driven game
offers the easiest kind of shooting; it is because the average of kills
to cartridges are so much better than they are in other kinds of
shooting. Take, for instance, double rises at pigeons, which are easy
compared with double rises at October grouse, and it will be noted that
the crack pigeon shots do not generally kill even their first double
rise at 25 yards range, and that four or five double rise kills are
nearly always good enough to win, as also very often is a single double
rise with both birds killed. Very moderate grouse drivers can do better
than that, and pheasants that are not very high are slain in much
greater proportion. The fact is that all shooting is extremely difficult
if one attempts to satisfy the most severe critic of all, namely the man
who shoots. But at my age I would much rather think myself fit to do a
day’s hard walking than a day’s hard shooting. I think there are a good
many people of that opinion, otherwise dog moors would not make more
rent per brace than the Yorkshire driving moors, but they do. The
trouble is that places where birds will lie to dogs are limited, and it
is childish to drive packs of birds away for the sake of thinking one is
shooting over dogs when one is not shooting at all, but only doing
mischief. Personally, I would not try to shoot over good dogs on
Yorkshire grouse. Bad ones would not matter; but then they would give me
no pleasure.
When it was a literary fashion to abuse covert shooting as butchery and
grouse driving as no sport, it was not done by sportsmen of the other
school; and later, when the literary genius of the period was turned in
the opposite direction, and we were constantly being told that a walk
with a gun and dog was pleasant but no sport, it was only done by those
who were a little afraid of being out of the fashion. I have been so
unfashionable as to defend both by turns, and I have always been of
opinion that any sport which appeared to be growing unpopular was worthy
of the little support I could give it. It will probably greatly surprise
those who dare not, with imaginative pens, shoot at the tail of a bird,
to be told that Mr. R. H. Rimington Wilson recently informed me, that if
he were to back himself to kill a number of shots consecutively he would
select driven birds in preference to walked-up game; and besides, that
he preferred to be let loose on a snipe bog to his own, or any other,
big driving days. My opinion has been that you can always make any sort
of shooting a little more difficult than your own performance can
satisfactorily accomplish to the gratification of your own most critical
sense.
Driving game and big bags are often, but not always, acts of game
preserving.
On this subject I had written a chapter, but fearing that I had not done
that view justice, after a conversation I had with Captain Tomasson, who
has Hunthill and is the most successful Scotch grouse preserver by the
all driving method, I asked him to criticise some articles I had
previously written in the _Field_, the sense of which I have tried to
express again in the following pages. He very kindly did so, or rather
stated the case for the Highlands, which I have substituted for mine. It
only differs in one respect from the sense of my own suppressed
chapter—namely, it does not remark on the difficulty of explaining why,
if recent Scotch driving has partly defeated disease, even more
Yorkshire driving, prior to 1873, nevertheless preceded the worst and
most general Scotch and English disease ever known. However, everyone
will argue for himself: I can only pretend to present a mass of facts to
assist a judgment, but not a quarter of those I should like to give have
I room for, and I regret that Captain Tomasson is even more restricted
by space.
I have shot over spaniels in teams and as single dogs, but as I consider
that I know less of them than Mr. Eversfield, who probably knows more
than anyone else, I asked him to read and criticise my article, which he
promised to do. But in returning it he has professed himself unable to
criticise, and very kindly says that he likes it all, so I leave it,
being thereby assured that it cannot be very wrong.
There is one subject connected with shooting, or the ethics of shooting,
about which there is much more to be said than ever has been
attempted—namely, that partridge preservers are now, and will be more in
the future, indebted to the fox for their sport. This may appear a wild
paradox, but before I am condemned for it I would, in the interests of
the gun, ask those who disagree to read my chapters on partridge
preserving, where, if they still disagree, they will find a partridge
success described that will amply repay their good nature, unless they
know a plan by which season’s partridge bags can be doubled, doubled
again, and then again, in three consecutive years.
On the subject of dogs, I may say that thirty to thirty-five years ago I
recommended to some American sportsmen three different sorts of setters.
Either two of them had bred well together in England. These have been
crossed together ever since in America, and no other cross has been
admitted to the Stud Book devoted to them. They have been a revelation
in the science of breeding domestic animals, for, in spite of all the
in-breeding represented there, I was enabled to select a puppy in 1904
that in Captain Heywood Lonsdale’s hands has beaten all the English
pointers and setters at field trials in 1906. I have more particularly
referred to this in a chapter on English setters, and in another on
strenuous dogs and sport in America.
I have already tendered my thanks, but I should like publicly to repeat
my indebtedness, to those who have lent me the best working dogs in
England for models, or have sent me photographs of them and other
pictures. These include Mr. Eric Parker, Editor of _The County
Gentleman_, Mr. W. Arkwright, the Hon. Holland Hibbert, Mr. Herbert
Mitchell, Mr. C. C. Eversfield, Mr. A. T. Williams, Captain H. Heywood
Lonsdale, Mr. B. J. Warwick, the Editor of _Bailey_, Mr. Allan Brown,
and the President of the world’s oldest established, and National, Field
Trial Society, namely Col. C. J. Cotes, of Pitchford Hall, who has sent
me some photographs of his, and his late father’s, Woodcote pointers and
retrievers, including an original importation of 1832, and founder of
his present breed of the latter race, and in doing this he has been kind
enough to say:—
“I have always considered you to know more about the breaking and
breeding of setters than any man living, and that it was entirely
through you that the apex of setter breeding was reached about
twenty-five years ago, and through your recommendation I obtained the
eight setters in 1881 that founded my present breed.”
I am glad to be able to quote this, because my name is little known to
younger shooters, although I write many, preferably unsigned, articles
upon rural sports and other matters.