The “gaze” system of shooting is a Hampshire Avon equivalent for the
shooting from tubs that has been practised for many years. The shooting
from the latter is much more suitable for large marshes and open sheets
of water, whereas the “gaze” is a brushwood or furze construction
suitable for the river bank. But they are alike in this—that the
shooting of many guns keeps the fowl upon the move, whether they ring
round pools and marshes or follow the course of a stream. The habit of
all fowl to prefer flying over water enables a duck “drive” (for these
two methods are duck drives) to be successfully brought off without
drivers. We have read of Mr. Abel Chapman’s success by the tub method in
the Spanish marshes, and also of a royal son of King George III. and his
want of success in shooting fowl from a tub on the Berkeley Castle
haunts of the wild goose. At the latter other methods are now adopted,
but the sport is not very great, although this is because of the
difficulty of getting shots, and not because of any scarcity of fowl.
Mr. Chapman had splendid sport in Spain, but the fowl there were greatly
in excess of their numbers in England, and besides, they appear to have
flown conveniently low. Much shooting by many guns generally makes the
fowl mount very high, unless the shooters are very widely distributed,
and really the great objection to wild wild-duck is that they take a
mean advantage of the gun-maker, and often fly at heights no shot gun
will reach them. But very much depends on the frequency with which they
are disturbed, and unquestionably they have very pretty days of sport on
the Hampshire rivers by means of these “gazes.” Where there are very
many birds some will be certain to fly low enough to shoot, and they do
not usually mount, in flying down a river, as they do in circling round
a pool, to see whether a descent is safe. Probably this is because they
believe themselves to be leaving danger behind when following the course
of a river.
In making these “gazes” it is necessary that there should be protection
from the sight of the fowl coming from both up and down the river, and
also that the shelters should be so arranged as to enable shooters to
get into them without flushing fowl close by. The way the shooting is
arranged is for the manager to point out each man’s “gaze,” or hide, or
butt, to him, and give him just long enough to get there a minute or two
before shooting is to begin. Each gunner is requested not to fire until
a certain time by the watch, which is fixed upon so as to allow the man
with farthest to go to comfortably reach his “gaze” before time is up.
Mr. Robert Hargreaves, who has done a good deal of this kind of shooting
as well as most others, is of opinion that teal for the second barrel
give the most difficult of all shooting. He describes the action of a
company of teal as like the bursting of a bomb when they are shot at by
the first barrel, so that for the next shot the game may be anywhere and
going in any direction. This seems very admirable description, but it is
only thanks to those “gazes” that the first shot is not just as
difficult as the second. The teal seems to be the only bird that can set
the laws of gravity wholly at defiance, and at the glint of a moving gun
can shoot straight upwards, _apparently_ at the same speed it was
travelling forward before being frightened. Often the bird is by this
means out of range by sheer altitude before the shooter has recovered
from the intended allowance ahead that he expected to have to give, and
began to swing for, before the teal converted themselves into living
rockets, and thus disconcerted the shooter.
The beauty of this kind of duck shooting is that every species of duck
has a different flight from its successor, that the shooter never knows
what is coming, nor from what direction it will be. One never does see
all the grouse that pass near enough for a shot, and then one is only
watching one way; but in “gaze” shooting it is necessary to watch every
way. This is essentially sport in which humanity in a double sense is
the best policy. To shoot farther than you can kill is to wound duck
that will possibly die out at sea, and it is also to send all the duck
within hearing up one storey higher, and to spoil the sport of your
fellows as a consequence.
The best sizes of shot for duck are probably No. 7 or 8 if reliance is
to be placed upon hitting head or neck, or No. 4 if it is desired that
body shots should kill. Probably No. 6 is the very worst size to use,
because it has power enough to get through the breast feathers but not
through the breast bone of a duck at a moderate range. No. 8 does not
appear to the writer to do much damage to a coming duck unless it
catches him in the head and neck, and then it is fatal, and that is all
that can be said of No. 6, which has so much less chance of hitting the
vitals. There is a very well developed horror of plastering, and that is
the reason why No. 4 is very popular for wild duck. A choke bore and No.
4 shot are a good combination for this sport.