Chapter XIV: Part 14

The real test of woodcraft arises when coverts are flat and there are no tall trees. Then it is still possible to make pheasants fly high enough for anyone, provided a few favourable conditions exist. Before referring to these, it may be well to say a word on the character of the pheasant; for it is only by knowing this that a shooter can make sure of getting the birds to behave as they are required to in unexpected or unfavourable conditions. The pheasant, then, is the most timid of game birds; whether he has been hand reared or is of wild bred origin, this character clings to him. He is, besides, as superstitious as a young lady alone in a haunted house. He is frightened at any material object, but he is much more afraid of the unseen and suspected enemy. In the pheasant pens some cocks get very familiar with their feeders, and will even spar at and wound them with their spurs; possibly they think that this treatment is the influence that brings the food. The same bird that attacks a strong bearded giant of forty within the bars would go frantic with fear if an unknown child of three summers toddled up to the outside of the bars of the pen. In the coverts the bird is still the same creature of impulse. If you make a noise, he will run before you, for he understands perfectly well what is making the noise; but if you move forward silently, and come upon the pheasant unawares, he will not run, but will either crouch and sit tight, or fly, and very likely go back over the head of his disturber. Indeed, it is generally as easy to guide a lot of pheasants as a motor car, and much more so when the latter skids. Pheasants do not skid; they do nothing for nothing, and everything is done for a very good reason. Theirs are not chance movements at any time. Knowing that a pheasant is superstitious, it is exceedingly easy to prevent him from going on foot where he is not wanted, but he is only superstitious as long as he is on foot. Noises made by hidden “stops” will have no effect whatever upon him the moment he gets upon the wing. Then he must see in order to fear.

These traits may all be made use of in causing birds to fly high where, without artifice, they would not rise 10 yards.

For instance, assume that it is wished to beat a covert which has pheasants and possesses only a few trees for roosting, and none that will make a bird mount to get over them. That does not matter. Out of just such a covert the author has seen the most pretty pheasant shooting. The way of it was this. All the birds were run out into an adjoining broom-field, from which in the ordinary way the pheasants could have been driven back to cover with the beaters re-starting at the other side of them, and at the end of the field farthest from the covert, without any of the shooting being more than moderate in difficulty. In the ordinary way of beating, stops would have prevented the pheasants running out at the far end of the broom-field, and when the beaters went round to join these stops, leaving the guns under the wood and on the field side of it, the trouble would begin, because in this case the pheasants would never fly very high. But a totally different complexion can be given to this shooting by a very slight alteration of the plan of campaign. In the first place, instead of half a dozen boys being sent round to stop the pheasants from running clean through the broom-field, a few of the most trustworthy men are sent on this business, with instructions to tap sticks occasionally, but to speak not at all, and above all never to show. The object is to prevent the birds finding out what is making the tapping noise, and if they see boys they will know directly what is the cause. By this means the other side of the field of broom farthest away from the covert is converted into a mysterious land, one into which no self-respecting pheasant will enter on any account. Having run out the pheasants into the broom, and placed the guns between the field and the wood, instead of driving the pheasants back towards the wood, the beaters will be most successful in making pheasants fly high if they attempt to drive them on, past the mystery men at the farther end of the field. _Nothing_ will make the birds go: they will all come back to their own covert; but instead of rising wild and flying low, they are now as it were between the devil and the deep sea. As they dare not face the spirit world, or the unknown quantity, the more they are frightened by the advancing beaters the better for their flying. It is one of the few cases where noise is better than silence in driving game. The more the noise the closer the birds will lie, and the closer they lie the higher they will rise, in order to get back over the heads of their mortal enemies, whom they hold dangerous in exact degree to their proximity. Then, when the pheasants have gone straight up and turned back over the noisy beaters, they see the guns between them and home, which has the effect of keeping them from sinking as they go homeward, and often makes them rise higher still.

If, besides making use of this plan, including driving the birds away from home on their feet and back to headquarters on the wing (which is the recognised principle), the last operation can be performed down wind and in a breeze, the success of the scheme will be enhanced, but it does not depend for success upon those conditions.

Every shooter professes to despise pheasant shooting unless the birds are converted into good “rocketers.” But there is a little doubt what this term conveys to different sportsmen. The author has seen sportsmen professing the faith of the rocketer, already mentioned, supremely happy when standing 50 yards outside a covert and slaying the birds that rise in the corner no farther away. Possibly the term might originally have been used to imply a bird that had risen straight up, but the author does not remember its use in that sense. For thirty years it has meant to sporting ears a bird which has risen high a long way in front, and comes with the impetus gathered in long flight over the head of a shooter. If at that moment the bird is sinking slightly on outstretched motionless wings, it is none the less a rocketer. The late Bromley Devonport’s chaff about the sportsman who preferred to seek the rocketer in its lair has doubtless lost its meaning, but all the same those who surround the corner of a covert in order to shoot just risen or just rising pheasants are truly cornering the pheasant, but not the rocketer.

How far a pheasant should come in order to get its best impetus is rather a difficult question. Clearly it must not be so far as to make the bird begin to look out for a place to alight. That is to say, it must be under 600 yards in most cases; but that does not assist very much. Probably the best distance from the rise always alters with circumstances, but there seems to be no reason for extending it beyond the midway distance between the first two “sailing” periods.

The pheasants, in common with grouse and partridges, seem to object to meeting more than a certain air resistance. When they have got up to a speed at which the air resistance becomes unpleasant, they hold their wings out still, and sail or float for some distance before renewing their wing vibrations. If they are shot before this floating occurs for the first time, they have not come to their full speed. If after, they probably have come to it. If game is making up hill, the floating occurs much later for the first time than it does when the direction is horizontal or down hill. It is possible then that, speaking strictly, a pheasant does not become a rocketer until it has passed the first floating stage of its flight. It may be that when going up wind it will not be able to float at all, but if the wind is as high as this implies, there is, again, the question whether the pheasant is entitled to be called a rocketer. The term, however, has been so much abused by misapplication that it has almost gone out of use, and people speak more frequently of high or tall birds and of fast ones, of curling and sailing pheasants.

Although pace is in great request by the pheasant shooter, he does not generally appreciate the greater difficulty of shooting through foliage at his birds. There is excuse for this. The shot does not do the trees any good, and besides there is a distinct tendency to shoot to a “gallery,” which in cover is limited by the surroundings. It unquestionably enhances the pleasure of covert shooting to be able to see what all one’s fellow-guns do. There are times when no birds come except in one way, and this is apt to be dull for those not then “engaged,” unless they can see the wings of the battle line. Nevertheless, speaking of our best English sporting spirit, if we can satisfy our own critical sense, we desire no other appreciation. But we like to appreciate others and to criticise mentally their performances, therefore we want to see them. The author, however, has pleased himself more by success in killing pheasants between tall trees that he could not see through than by any other kind of shooting. However, he would not say that this is really the more difficult in practice, although in theory it looks to be infinitely the more taxing. The author has missed more easy game than any others, he supposes by mere laziness. If there is anything special to be done, one is never late for breakfast; but on a day off one often is late, and it seems to be the same in shooting. If there is only just time, then the nerves are alive to take the smallest chance, whereas, given ample time, the author at any rate can often take just too long.

In bringing pheasants to the guns, it is often necessary to discriminate between the wild and tame bred. The former are much more upon the alert than the latter, and it is often impossible to drive them out of a cover, for the very simple reason that they cannot be got to go into and remain in it long enough to be driven out. Then pheasant driving becomes beating a country, very much like grouse or partridge driving. Wild birds are also much more apt to take wing before they are wanted to, and to fly out at the flanks of the beats over the heads of the stops. But provided the wild birds can be kept upon their legs, they will answer to the control of the woodcraftsman just as well as tame bred pheasants. Probably there is no difference in the speed at which tame and wild pheasants travel, and one is as easy to shoot as the other when brought to the gun, but the wild bred bird is not as easy to bring there as the other. If he cannot fly faster—and the author agrees with the Marquis of Granby that he does not—he can at least fly farther, and probably he is more likely in hill country, where he is mostly in evidence, to take an up-hill course. Both of these characteristics are apt to carry him well out of range of guns that are posted as experience of hand-bred pheasants suggests to be best.

Pheasants will rarely fly away to ground they do not know, but they can be made to run there. The principle of driving them is to leave one end open and close three sides by means of beaters or stops. But the birds have a natural tendency to cling to cover as they run, not necessarily woods, but any cover that can hide them; turnips and gorse, broom and ferns, they particularly like to run in. But in driving pheasants along narrow strips of covert side stops have to be well back from the plantation, otherwise by becoming aware of stops far ahead the birds may believe themselves to be pounded, and then they will fly at once, and usually towards their homes—that is, in the opposite direction to that in which they are wanted to go. At Holkham, for the reason stated, a good deal of this shooting of “pheasants back” is prohibited; but in many places it is the most appreciated of all, for those that fly back over the heads of the advancing line in covert are sure to be high 100 yards behind the rise, whereas in the line they may give rather tame shooting.

The latest generation of pheasant shooters looks back at the sport of a hundred years ago with indifference and contempt—indifference because the birds were so few, and contempt because it believes the shooting was very easy. Some of it was very easy, no doubt; but in those days there were no rides through the woods, and some of them were so thick that leather jackets had to be worn by sportsmen, who would force through after spaniels, or try to, and often find that even then they could not do it. The gamekeeper’s change of dress from velveteen to Harris or home-spun cloth indicates the change that has taken place in the coverts. Forestry has more or less come in, and with the more thickly planted trees, blackthorn and bramble, white thorn and gorse, have been stifled by want of sun and air. The pheasant now runs in the open covert, whereas he would lie close in the bramble and gorse bushes, which often grew 8 or 9 feet high. Pheasant shooting in the “hind legs” was not child’s play; it was dreadfully hard work, and the snap shots given were often most difficult, but the difficulty was not of the same kind as that of the fast, high bird in the open, which is mostly one to overcome by cool judgment and calculating trick, but it was one requiring physical strength and snap shooting.

Often it has been said that our ancestors knew nothing of the rocketer. But the hardest pheasants the author has ever had to kill have been Welsh pheasants flushed by a team of wild spaniels, and these birds often came a couple of hundred yards before they got within range, _and all down hill_. That is to say, there still exists shooting done in the same way in which it was managed before the battle of Waterloo, and that shooting is infinitely more difficult than any that can be obtained in a flat country.

The author has arrived at a time of life when he has no particular ambition to enter into competition with his dead ancestors, but he believes that their skill in shooting the few birds they had was quite as great as that of their descendants. They were flight shooters, and if they could hit flighting ducks and teal in the dusk of evening, they could do anything with the shot gun, except that they knew nothing of getting off their guns at the rate of 200 shots in 20 minutes.

This is quite a demoralising rate of shooting at first, but it is attainable by everyone, now that every gun-maker has a high tower and clay birds to put over the shooter in streams.

Fashion in shooting always seems to go by contraries. That which is most difficult becomes most fashionable, and now that anyone may learn how to hit driven game and “let off” quickly, by means of the shooting schools, it is doubtful whether fashion will not turn round and favour that which is less attainable, and not to be acquired by school teaching. This sort of shooting education cannot help a man to shoot straight at the end of a long day in hot sun and over the roughest peat hags. Only practice in the thing itself will do that: there is no royal road to high form, as there is for the butts.

In big shoots the tendency is to have two parties of beaters, to avoid a loss of time. One party gets into position while the other is beating, so that often guns have only to face about after shooting the game of one covert in order to receive pheasants driven into the beaten covert from another one.

A semicircle of beaters is advocated sometimes, but the wings are feeble protection against pheasants breaking away, and it is much better to employ stops, when there will not be the same necessity for the crescent formation.

Beaters should be supplied with smocks. It is not fair to them to send them through thick covert without some protection to their clothes, more especially if the covert is wet.

Pheasant coverts are not now often full of ground game, and the beating for both together is not as fashionable as formerly was the case. There are usually difficulties; for instance, the rabbits cannot be got to leave coverts, and the pheasants are not much shot inside them. But where the guns are used to drive the pheasants to favoured rising places, and no attempt is made to shoot the birds before they get there, rabbits and hares can very well be shot in these beating operations. The only difficulty in this is the delay that occurs in looking for the dead and wounded, and really there should be no difficulty about that, if all shooters made it a point of sportsmanship to have a good and reliable retriever. But if canine steadiness is always useful, it is essential on these occasions. Pheasants are running in front, perhaps in hundreds, and a retriever sent for a wounded rabbit must be perfectly safe not to get on the foot scent of one of the pheasants and rode it up, until overtaking it he flushes hundreds and spoils the day. There are some retrievers that it would be quite safe to send for a rabbit, because it never goes far, and also for a hare, or pheasant, back, but for neither of these forward, because there is no knowing that they will not run into the bulk of the pheasants, and when once put on wounded game it is the retriever’s business to follow until he gets it.

In very big coverts the stopping out of rabbits may safely proceed before the pheasants are shot, if care be taken that the stopping is in progress only in one part of the wood at any one time.

Sometimes it is necessary, in order to make pheasants rise far enough from the guns, to run nets across a wood 100 yards or 200 yards from its end where the guns are to be posted. Some people use a “sewin” instead. This is a long string with a bit of paper or feathers tied into it at every 5 yards or less. The whole is then lodged upon sticks stuck into the ground. If one end is given to a man, he can by jerking the string turn back large numbers of pheasants; but care is necessary to ensure that the sticks are flexible, and that the string is firmly fixed to the tops of them. The object is that the feathers or paper may dance when one end of the string is pulled.

A succession of small rises throughout the length of a covert can be arranged, by fixing at intervals short nets set up in the form of a V, with the opening towards the beaters.

SHOOTING WILD DUCKS ARTIFICIALLY REARED

During the last decade it has been discovered that wild ducks can be so managed as to give assured sport. Some people rate it a good deal higher than pheasant shooting, and besides this the wild duck is very much more easily bred than the pheasant, costs less than half, and if it does give as good sport, or better, there is nothing more to be said. But the artificially bred wild duck is very much more difficult to manage in shooting than the pheasant. The latter is a shy, nervous bird; but the duck considers things, and therein lies the trouble. If you treat him affectionately, you cannot frighten him; if you keep him wild, you are very likely to lose him altogether. You may so arrange, if you will, that the wild duck is not the least bit scared at the firing of guns. Probably this is the proper management, because, after all, when this has been brought about, your duck only the closer imitates the game birds that we love so well. You will send every pigeon clattering out of the trees if you fire a gun in covert; but the pheasants take hardly any notice, neither do partridges or grouse care for the sound of a gun, although they care very much for the sight of a man, and shy at the smoke but not at the sound made by a line of guns. The wild duck, unless taught better manners, is as scared as the pigeon by the sound of firing. Hence it is difficult to drive birds backwards and forwards over a line of guns, because even if they will take that flight twice, they will mount up five or ten times as high as a gun can reach. The more shooting there is the higher they mount, and even if they want to come down to a favourite pool they swing round and far above many times before they venture to come near enough to the surface to afford a shot. This is the nature of the really wild bird, which is nevertheless partial to one home water, and is practically at home nowhere else. Consequently, when duck are artificially reared, this wild and pigeon-like habit must be eliminated in some way, otherwise a thousand duck may show themselves only too well, and give no sport whatever. The broad principle of getting shooting at hand-reared ducks is, therefore, either to prevent guns from scaring them, or else to arrange that instead of seeing the shooters constantly they only see them once, and that once when the birds are going home. The first plan is very easily arranged by constantly letting the ducks hear a shot or two about feeding-time. It can even be brought about that the gun is the signal for food, and when that has been accomplished the danger is not that the birds will be scared away to sea or into the sky, but that they should settle near the shooters and quack for food. But without making the gun the actual signal for feeding-time, it is easy enough to let the young birds hear enough of it to disregard it entirely. If this is not done, the birds will not settle during shooting in the neighbourhood, and if they will not alight they cannot be driven. Another difficulty is that these birds love to associate in great numbers, and in a big flock what one does they all do. It is clearly too mad for a moment and dull for an hour when all the duck come over at once, and so end a morning’s shooting.

Two plans have been adopted for getting over the difficulty, both of which are based on calling the birds to feed away from home, and driving them back over the shooters in small batches.

This is open to sentimental objections, of course, but there are two ways of doing even this: one of them seems to bear lesser sentimental objection than the other. The most effective plan is that one which it is said was adopted at Netherby when and before the Prince of Wales shot there. The statement has often been made, and has never been contradicted in public, so probably it is true, that when the birds are called to feed away from their home waters by the sound of a horn, they are penned up, and then let out a few at a time to fly home over the heads of the guns. The Prince has expressed the intention of never shooting at trapped creatures, and probably he is unaware how the Netherby duck were managed, because if it is done in the way described above there is a sort of penning, but so managed as to give the duck all the world before them if they elect to take chances before they come to the guns. There is absolutely nothing to show that the duck have been detained longer than just enough to divide them into small batches, but what the Prince of Wales has said does nevertheless express the sentiment of sportsmen generally. The best deer shooting in the world is of no sporting account if it is in a park and not on open ground, and consequently there is a sentiment which counts for a good deal in the manner of driving duck to the gun.

The other plan to effect the same results without awakening any question of the ethics of sport, is to be found in feeding the duck, not in pens, but in a wide expanse of covert, and teaching them to hunt all over it for their broadcast scattered grain. If this plan is adopted, it is fairly easy with clever management to send the duck home in small batches, provided the feeding-ground is widely enough scattered, so that one party of ducks cannot see another when it is flushed or when in the air making for home. Duck imitate each other to such an extent that if they did see one lot disturbed and made to fly home, probably a great many would rise at once and do the same. Obviously the better way to avoid this is to start the duck out of covert at the end nearest home first—“home” being here, as above, used in the sense of the duck’s resting-place, which is generally, but not invariably, water. At Netherby it is said that ducks are made to consider the coverts their homes in some cases. It cannot be laid down to apply generally that any one system is the best, because all depends upon the kind of place the birds are to be reared in. However, this may be taken to apply everywhere—that it is easier to rise duck in small batches out of covert and from several miles of streams, than from sheets of water where every bird can see all that happens. The driving from pool to pool is oftenest resorted to, but in that case the artificially reared birds are more easily employed as an additional sport to many days than for regular duck days.

At Netherby there have been 10,000 hand-reared duck in a season, and difficulty only arises when it is sought to kill a good proportion of these in one day. Here there are three or four different rearing places or “homes.” Most of the eggs have in the past been purchased, and placed under domestic hens in the manner of pheasants’ eggs. At Tring Park the eggs are procured by penning off a portion of marsh and water of about 4 acres, and the birds are caught up, wing clipped, and turned out in this, in the proportion of three duck to a mallard. At Tring the young duck are started with some hard-boiled egg, bread-crumbs, and boiled rice, but at Netherby this is done with duck meal; later, they are fed on maize porridge mixed dryish, and later with maize whole and dry. At Netherby they are given a little pan of water to each coop from the first. This has to serve until they are three weeks old, when puddles 30 feet in circumference are made for them; and although ten in a coop is the rule, and they are shut in at nights along with the foster-mother, they crowd in hundreds into these clay constructed puddles. The food is also given in a small pan at each coop. Any method which drops sticky food on the backs of the ducks is sure to lead to trouble. At six weeks old the birds are taken to their permanent homes, which at Netherby are mostly the brooks or burns flowing through the estate.

Wet is not bad for young ducks as long as they can get under the brooding hen, but wet and cold as well is not their best weather, and none of the most successful breeders allow the little ducks to have their fling in large sheets of water, or even ponds or brooks, until they are six weeks old. When quite small, the greatest enemies of the duck are hot sun without shade, and cold wind. In the early stages they are best fed four times in the day, as at Netherby, where over 1000 ducks have frequently been killed in one day. There they are penned out exactly as pheasants generally are, in a field surrounded with wire netting to keep out foxes.

Obviously in no manner ever discovered can true wild duck be killed in such numbers as these. That they have been caught in numbers equally large in decoys, and could be shot by taking them away from the decoys and letting them out a few at a time in the neighbourhood of the guns, is certain, but it never has been done, and a decoy is only used as a neck-breaking trap to supply the markets with duck, widgeon, and teal.

There is nothing whatever to be said against the hand rearing of wild duck. If they are properly managed, they give far harder and better shooting than pheasants; especially is this the case if they are left long enough to get their mature plumage.

Some difference of opinion has arisen on the best size of shot to use for wild duck. Probably No. 4 is the best size, if the particular gun will shoot it well. The size to be most objected to is No. 6, which has not penetration enough for the body shots at any moderate range, and is not thick enough to make sure of hitting head or neck. If the latter is to be relied upon, No. 7 is better than No. 6, but not better than No. 8. But if this principle is adopted, only shots should be taken when the head and neck is well in view, for from behind these sizes can only wound. They wound a good deal in any case, but when duck are coming anything like straight for the gun (which seldom happens) body striking small pellets glance off like hail. No. 4 shot may not hit often enough to please shooters; but duck cannot take this size away apparently unharmed to die by slow torture. For that reason it is the sportsman’s size. The neck and head shot please the shooter, because they alone inflict sudden death in the air, and the work looks to be a clean hit and a clean miss; but when this appearance is obtained by the use of small shot things are not what they seem. Nothing can be said when the game comes down, but every bird missed must be suspected of being “tailored.”

All game birds cling to the ground or the tree tops when they are flying, more or less, as the wind suits them. The real wild duck cling to the water, and follow down the course of a stream in such a way that two or three guns can be so posted as to command the whole lateral extension of flighting duck or teal, except that both these birds are easily scared by shooting to mount far out of gun-shot. When they are mounted they do not necessarily follow the stream, for the reason that they can probably see other water far ahead, and they make for it in a direct line. But as the shots will mount them, so also a succession of men posted in their line of flight will each send them a little higher, and consequently the shooter should not only be invisible to the duck before he has fired, but after also; otherwise he will spoil sport for the next gun down stream, or up, as the case may be.

WILD WILD-DUCK

Perhaps it is a misnomer to speak of any duck as “tame,” it gives a false impression; but by wild wild-duck is meant to be implied those fowl that breed in a natural way, and are only to be killed with much success by artifice. For instance, there are three great varieties of wild-duck shooting besides the punt gunner’s business. The most practical of these is “flighting”; the next often “indulged” in, if it can be called indulgence, is “shore shooting”; and the third kind is the “gaze” system that is practised mostly upon the Hampshire Avon and Stour. There are many modifications of this system employed upon other rivers and on chains of pools.

FLIGHT SHOOTING

Taking these in the order named, it may at once be stated that flight shooting gives beautiful sport, but has the disadvantage that it is selfish amusement, because one cannot invite friends to assist in a form of sport that not only depends much on the weather, as all sports do, but altogether upon it. “Flighting” is the interception of the wild duck in the evening when they come from the sea or other resting-places to their inland feed. Consequently, the line of flight must be known, and besides, this knowledge is not quite enough, because a change of wind alters the course of the fowl, which may be said to have a different line of flight for every wind. But even when the fowler has hit off the correct land spot where the fowl go over, that is not all. The weather counts for much more than this; for it usually happens that upon a still night the duck go over at so great a height that shooting is out of the question. Then upon a starlight night they are so difficult to see that hitting is out of the question, and it is only on cloudy, windy, moonlit nights that much good can usually be done, and only then is much execution likely if a good head wind is blowing against the fowl. At most, flight shooting only lasts from a quarter to half an hour in the evening. In the morning, when the fowl have fed and betake themselves seawards, it may last a good deal longer, especially if, after those have gone which are not inclined to rest in their feeding-grounds (and there are generally a good many of these), those grounds are disturbed purposely. Flighting is a sport that has one very great advantage: if positions are well chosen—not too near either the day home or the night feeding ground—no harm whatever is done by shooting every day. The fowl cannot be driven away by that means. One hears the present generation of shooters disparaging the easy shots their great-grandfathers gloried in, but flight shooting is as old as the “scatter gun,” and it is still the most difficult of all shooting. The author’s experience of shooting in the half light is that it is next to impossible to hold sufficiently forward. But this is an observation that he has never been able to explain satisfactorily to himself. It is not suggested that half light travels slower than good light, but merely that the true position of the moving mark is not recognised by the brain as quickly as anything in a good light.

SHORE SHOOTING

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.

THE “GAZE” SYSTEM

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.

FLAPPER SHOOTING

Flapper shooting is killing wild duck before they have got their full powers of flight. Its sport consists in getting shots. Very good spaniels are wanted to make the flappers rise at all. They are very easy to kill, and even teal flushed before the sportsman are about as easy as a sitting mark. Indeed, to some people they are more easy, because a sitting mark is very often missed not only by pigeon shooters but also by platers of guns.

ENCOURAGING THE FOWL