This sport is much more affected by the weather even than flight
shooting. Speaking broadly, the shore is a good place for a youngster to
learn the art of shooting in the early season, say in September. Then
the curlews and the golden and green plover will be young, and the most
blundering performer will hardly be able to avoid getting near enough
for a shot sometimes, and will not be able to prevent an occasional
foolish young thing flying into the load. A good many shots will be
fired at creatures going low down enough over water for the splash of
the pellets to be a guide to the gunner for his next shot. But too much
reliance must not be placed on any such appearances when the bird is
more than a foot above the water, because after the pellets have passed
the game they will be going so slowly as to appear far behind when they
splash the water, even when, in fact, they might have been straight for
the mark, or even in front. With shooting schools in such numbers, it is
much more humane to rely for education upon the class of shooting given
at them than to mangle birds that are of no use when killed. This remark
does not, of course, apply to golden plover, which are quite as good
food as a snipe, nor to green plover and curlew, which it is said are
good food, but only to the terns and small fry that are not eaten.
However, clay bird shooting can never teach confidence and knowledge of
what is and what is not at shooting distance. For this reason the
saltings and the shore experience of a young gunner are valuable to him,
although the real wild fowlers of the district have every right to
believe themselves injured by people who constantly disturb fowl by
shooting at “rubbish.”
The young shooter, then, should not begin by trying to see how far a gun
will kill, for it is no credit at all to kill far off. It is the easiest
kind of shot, because the “game” is moving relatively to the swing of
the gun far slower far off than near by. It may credit the gun-maker to
kill a long shot, but not the shooter when he misses the next near one.
Consequently, if one must go shore shooting in summer, or before summer
visitors have gone, a good way is to make a rule never to excuse a miss
as being too far. It is wonderful how, by beginning at near easy shots
and never missing, the ability gradually comes to make a gun do its best
at farther distance; whereas beginning at long shots teaches nothing,
and every miss begets loss of confidence, which is the one thing most
essential in shooting. But from the summer shore shooter to the veteran
winter business man of the shore, who makes a living by his gun, or at
least makes his day’s wages every day he thinks it worth his time to go
fowling, there is as much difference as between “W. G.” in his prime and
the stoniest stone-waller who ever blocked cricket balls upon an
artificial wicket. Your real clever wildfowler of the shore is not born,
he is made by a lifetime of experience. He and a new-comer may start out
in opposite directions, and the local may in a night and a day kill far
more widgeon and duck than he can carry home at two goes (most likely he
will take them in a boat), and your new-comer without assistance may
never have been within shot of fowl all the time, and probably will only
escape the rising tide by the help of Providence.
A would-be shore shooter, then, can only succeed by placing himself in
the hands of the best local fowler he can get to take on the job. This
remark is equally true with regard to the old sportsman from elsewhere
as it is of the novice down for a holiday. It is not here only a
question of the weather, but largely also one of geography. Every creek
through the mud flats has to be mapped out in the mind of him who would
make use of creeks in order to stalk wild fowl. Every bank at low tide
must be an hour-glass, to indicate just when it will disappear and the
feeding fowl will be washed off their legs and will have to find other
feeding-ground. Those fowl know already where they are going for food
the instant they are flooded out, and your real fowler knows it too, and
maybe is lying up in a mud hole to intercept them. A mud hole does not
sound like a bed of roses, but, by one who understands it, can be made
quite comfortable for a winter night’s sport with the mercury
registering 15 degrees of frost. Indeed, it is not much good at any
other time. It is only in the very wildest and worst of nights and days
that wild fowling is at its best. There must be snow for choice, and
frost also, even on the seashore. In fact, the weather must be so hard
that the fowl can only feed on mud flats that are tide-washed, for the
reason that everywhere else the ground is too hard, and too much covered
with snow and ice, to enable ducks to reach the mud bottoms of fresh
water, or to enable widgeon and teal and geese to feed elsewhere at all.
About once in ten years we have six or eight weeks of such weather, and
then the favoured spots swarm with fowl of all kinds to such an extent
that for miles and miles along the coasts birds on the mud and in the
air appear almost as numerous, and as all-pervading, as the great fat
snowflakes that have little less of wills of their own than the fowl
themselves, and are little less playthings and creations of the air and
water.
In such wild weather three shots at knotts have resulted in a bag of 600
birds, to say nothing of the wounded. Then grey geese and brent fly low,
and follow the receding, as they have to move from the flowing, tide;
for they are always hungry, and it is no time to be particular. Ducks
then feed as much by day as by night, and geese possibly as much by
night as by day; for they are starving, and grow so poor in condition
when this weather lasts long as not to be worth shooting, or sending to
market when shot. It is as if the lion once more lay down with the lamb,
for the birds become almost fearless, and quite careless of their mortal
enemy man, who in the beginning of the storm rejoices in his victory
over the most wary fowl of the air, as the grey geese are, and in the
end hopes the weather may soon break to save the lives of the poor
useless things.
How is it that the fowl that are migrants, and have already come perhaps
2000 miles, are caught like this, maybe upon the north Norfolk coast,
when by flying away to the west coast of Ireland or to sunny Spain they
would find the condition of temperature they require and lots of food?
Probably those that were there when the weather started its avian trials
did that, and possibly the multiplication of migrants, as the storm
continues, are birds that have already had a thousand miles’ race to
ride before the storm and have been worsted in the attempt. If so, their
weakness and want of food is the cause. They have not the strength to
cross snow-covered England, where they could get no bite nor sup on the
way. In other words, they perish, like Mrs. Dombey, because they have
not the strength to make an effort.
It is not these belated and consequently starved birds that the shore
shooter wants to make the acquaintance of, but the first to arrive on
the wings of the storm, and consequently any aspirant to this kind of
sport should keep in touch with the best local fowler whose services he
can buy. The latter must telegraph the instant that the weather and the
fowl together forecast the coming storm, and the birds know before
thermometer and barometer together can indicate what is to be. Then the
gunner must take the first train and telegraph to his fowler to make all
arrangements, otherwise there may be a day’s loss of time when he does
arrive, because his fowler will be where the thickest of the fowl are,
and there will be nobody left behind who knows exactly where that is at
any precise period of the day or night. All who do know will be engaged
in the slaughter for themselves, for on the free saltings and the shore
all men are equal who are good fowlers, and the others do not count.
When such weather as this comes, history is going to be made, history
that will last a hardy honest small community a decade or more to
discuss, and for the robust it is well worth joining in, but it is also
worth paying for, and a good price too. It is true that by showing you
around a wildfowler does not lose his own sport, or not all of it; but
unless you are a good sportsman as well as a good shot, your joint bags
will not equal that of an experienced fowler by himself, and
consequently luxuries at zero and in a gale of snow have to be paid for
on a basis far higher than ordinary keeper’s tips. That is, they have to
if you want to come in for the cream of the sport.