Chapter XVI: Part 16

Bags of woodcock at Lord Ardilaun’s place have very frequently been misstated. Possibly the most “authoritative” mistake is in _The Snipe and Woodcock_, by Mr. L. H. de Visme Shaw, who says that in one day 508 ’cock were obtained at Ashford. That is not so. Lord Ardilaun very kindly informed the author that 205 ’cock was his best, but he explained that he was away from his game book at the time he wrote, and it is very likely, therefore, that Mr. R. J. Ussher is right in giving 209 ’cock as the record for one day there. The 205 ’cock were killed in January 1895, and at that time there were 508 ’cock killed in six days by seven guns. The big day was January 25th. Although not in a day, in a season, more ’cock have been killed at Muckross, near Killarney, than even at Ashford, or than anywhere else in the United Kingdom.

Several people besides the artist Chantrey have accidentally killed two woodcocks at a shot. Possibly it was never done by design.

Probably the best single day’s bag in England was that of 101 birds in Swanton Wood, on Lord Hastings’ Norfolk estate.

BLACK GAME

The season for these birds opens in the North on 20th August, and in the South on 1st September. They have been lately exterminated in the New Forest and in Norfolk, and have long since disappeared in most of the counties south-east of Staffordshire. In Salop and Wales there are a few of them, as there are also in Devonshire and Somersetshire and in all the northern counties. They are and always have been absent from Ireland, but are found throughout the Highlands and the border counties, and are far more numerous in Dumfriesshire and Selkirkshire than elsewhere. Probably the species is decreasing in numbers everywhere, except in isolated patches of country where they are especially preserved. They are found throughout North Europe and North Asia, but in the Caucasus there is a second and only other species, which is smaller, and in which the cocks are blacker, than in our species. A peculiarity of black game is that the cocks do not acquire the lyre tails until the third year, although the hens are said to be fertile in the second year. The white under the tail of the black cocks is flecked with black until the bird grows old, when the black gradually disappears. It is not at all uncommon to see beautiful word painting detailing the glories of the lyre tail, amongst other beauties, on 20th August, but this is not painting from nature, for neither old nor young birds have the lyre tail at that time. The old birds are then in full moult, and although they can fly as well as ever, they lie to dogs then as at no other time of the year, except in July and the earlier days of August. No one would wish these old stagers to be shot then, where they are numerous enough to afford driving later in the season. But where they are scarce, and that is nearly everywhere, they are liable to become more so by the inability of sportsmen to kill them at the only time of year they can be approached. The man who shoots them during the first seven days of grouse shooting breaks the law, but assists to save the race; for too many cocks there always are, and the majority of them are too old, and interfere with their younger relations in the breeding season. This cannot be avoided as long as sportsmen make a practice of killing the young birds over dogs during grouse shooting. Until after 1st September the birds of the year lie close and to their sorrow rise singly, so that one has but to find a brood and exterminate it. The old cock will not be with the chicks, and probably the grey hen will get shot; but she is more likely to escape than any of the young ones. Consequently, where the birds are not separately driven later in the season, the preservation and shooting of this fine game bird proceeds upon the principle of killing all the young ones and leaving all the old. That is exactly opposite to the principle adopted for all other game, and we cannot wonder that the race decreases in numbers. Another reason for the decrease is that moorlands are being more drained than they formerly were, and this destroys the rushes, upon the seeds of which young black game mostly live in their early period. They do not breed in the woods, but prefer to have their chicks on the lower moors, where they can find rushes, heather, and bracken. Whether they eat bracken in its early stages of growth, as pheasants have been known to do, the author is not aware, but upon the moorlands around St. Mary’s Loch, where there are no coverts, there used to be large numbers of black game, and in hunting the moors they were rarely to be found elsewhere than in the rushes and the ferns. Probably, therefore, ferns as well as rushes are useful in some way to them, although it may be because ferns are a great resort of flies. The way that every young bird has to be found separately, and each gives the dog a point (whereas the grouse in most counties rise in broods), makes the keepers treasure the black game for the dog-breaking facilities they offer. They teach dogs to believe that there is always another in the heather, until they are sure there is not. But black game offer very easy shots, and consequently sportsmen rather despise them in this early stage. Then, on a sudden, a total change comes over the young birds, as it were in a night, and they are transformed into birds as wary as wild geese, and sit up on the hillocks to watch for danger. After that they must be stalked, driven, or left alone.

Stalking black game with a rook rifle is nice sport—infinitely more difficult than stalking red deer. With the shot gun it is still harder, because of the necessity of a nearer approach. But difficult as it is, the author once knew of a most extraordinary stalk. Two guns, unknown to each other, both stalked from different directions the same black cock on his fir tree; both, by luck or judgment, got up to the game; each fired at the same instant, and when the game fell, each unaware that the other had shot, claimed the bird. If that sort of thing can be done, it cannot be very difficult. But probably it never happened before or since, and as a matter of fact it is difficult to stalk black game.

If these birds were really plentiful they would be the most valued of all our game birds for driving. Probably there is not a pin to choose between their pace and that of grouse when coming down wind. The author has watched them coming to the butts together for half a mile, and the only difference was that the black cock were two storeys higher than the grouse. That shows which would be most appreciated by sportsmen, who are never happy unless they are accomplishing the difficult. But they are too few to drive separately in most places, and do not drive well with grouse. It would have been no uncommon thing had those third-storey birds turned back in the air and gone off over the drivers’ heads while the silly grouse were facing the music of the butts and dying in clouds of smoke, for this reference is to black powder days. Your black game can think in the air, like the wild ducks, and they can also fly into a wind about as fast as with one, again imitating the marvellous and unexplained power of some wild fowl, especially the teal. Pheasants, partridges, and grouse are creatures of the wind more or less, and pretty difficult to turn when the wind has got them, but not so your black game; they smell danger from afar, often only suspect it, but as they are like wild ducks, not slaves but kings of the wind, they will act upon their suspicion, because it is nothing to them to beat up against a wind, and besides, they are careless how long they fly. You cannot drive wild ducks, nor pigeons, nor black game, if they suspect your purpose. But when things are well managed they give great sport. Usually they will not, like a grouse, almost knock your cap off by rushing past your butt too near to shoot. They will be well up and look to be going easy. There they deceive, for they will be coming quite as fast as grouse if it is down a moderate wind, and if up wind very much faster, so that the lead, or allowance, and swing required is far more likely to be under than over done.

The author has taken part in killing 40 brace of black cock in a day, with no more excuse than that it was good for the dogs; but the kind of shooting in which anyone may be proud of a good score is in driving. Then the shooters have every right to gratification, but the drivers have far more. Late in the season, when black game are fit to drive, they sit up in the fir trees to look out for the enemy. They are so still in the dark Scotch pines that you may not see a bird as you go to take up your stand, but possibly the quarry has been watching all the time, and has observed not only the shooters but the drivers. Then your black game will probably be able to get away by the flanks, or if not, like the wild ducks, they may remember that there is always room at the top. In other words, they have the habits of game birds in August and of wood pigeons and wild duck in October. They are only unsatisfactory because the young birds are too confiding to shoot, and the old ones too artful to get shot.

The Duke of Buccleuch has had great sport with black game on his Drumlanrig Castle estate, but his best years there were a long time ago; the birds have been gradually growing fewer ever since. His very best year was in 1861, when 1586 black game were killed. This total upon an estate of more than 150,000 acres, although the largest, is nevertheless very small when compared with grouse and partridge bags over estates of one-tenth the size. Apparently the black game do not lend themselves to great concentration of breeding birds, or if they do, their fertility does not seem to be very great. Besides, concentration for shooting is extremely difficult, as is proved by the biggest bag ever made in a day. At Sanquhar, in Dumfriesshire, the late Duke of Buccleuch, with the assistance of eight other guns, once killed 247 black game in the day, of which over 200 were black cocks. This is probably the record day’s bag for Scotland or anywhere else, but it is noteworthy that it is only about one-tenth the number of grouse that have been killed in a day, and we may fairly say that the art of preserving black game has to be discovered, as also has that of introducing the bird into country new to it, which is only saying the same thing in other words.

The author has shot black game on Dartmoor and in Caithness and in most of the intermediate counties where they exist. Everywhere he has noticed a too great number of black cocks in proportion to hens, and as polygamous birds they should be treated like pheasants in this respect. The other point most noticed is that not more than a quarter of the grey hens breed. There is reason for this, and if it could be discovered, probably black game might be reared in numbers equal to grouse. The author merely speculates when he says that the excess of cocks has something to do with the trouble, but probably a worse fault still is that the old birds of both sexes are not shot, and the young ones are. There is no greater mistake than to believe that driving is an automatic selection of the old birds for destruction. This is far from the case in grouse shooting in Scotland, although in Yorkshire it is different; but your old black cock and grey hen carry years of wisdom to the topmost branch of the Scotch pine, and from that vantage post meet human strategy with avian tactics—and live to fight another year.

It is a great pity that someone does not take up the black game question and study it thoroughly. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of bracken, pine, and rush ground in Scotland, England, and Wales that have no sporting value. They are too high for pheasants and partridges, and do not grow the right food for grouse. The result is that they are useless, but are nevertheless natural homes for black game, and are so much appreciated that bachelor black cocks will inhabit them for years, as also will a few old grey hens that do not breed, and the probability is that they keep off all the breeding birds.

The grey hen lays from six to ten eggs on the ground. They are of a yellowish shade spotted with darker colour of brown or orange-brown. The playing-grounds and manners of the birds in love and war are best described in Booth’s rough notes, and best illustrated in Millais’ game birds and shooting sketches. However, both seem to suggest that all the birds in the neighbourhood meet on one playing-ground. This is not so, and there are sometimes and probably always several simultaneous tournaments in very near proximity.

The black game has feathered legs but not feathered feet, as has erroneously been stated.

These birds have been successfully introduced, and have bred for some years, at Woburn Abbey. Capercailzie have also been added to the birds of England by means of their successful introduction in the woods of Woburn, by the Duke and Duchess of Bedford.

PIGEON SHOOTING

There are three kinds of pigeon shooting in this country: that from traps; that against the farmer’s great enemy the wood pigeon (_Columba palumbus_); and that of the wild blue rock pigeon (_Columba livia_) along the cliffs. The stock dove (_Columba ænas_) is found amongst the wood pigeons in small proportion to their numbers.

A few years ago the “trap shooting,” as it was called, was very fashionable, and probably it will be so again, when the shooting schools have sufficiently shown that they can teach anybody to hit targets sent overhead, and cannot do much for any form of shooting that depends for its accuracy and quickness upon balance and good walking powers. Not that pigeon shooting is much of a school for this class of shooting either, but it is shooting at birds going away from the gun and rising at a fair range. At 30 yards rise the majority of those who shoot pigeons fail to kill many more than half their birds with _two_ barrels. It is a very poor shot indeed who misses as great a proportion of shots at driven pheasants. Yet with this evidence constantly before the eyes of everybody who reads his sporting papers, it is very frequently asserted that driven game is much more difficult to kill than birds rising in front of the shooter. Besides this, the pigeon springs from the ground slowly compared with a partridge or a grouse or a snipe, and it does not cause the sportsman to walk after it. The author has on many occasions seen pigeons dropped within 3 yards of the trap constantly by a man in good form, but he never saw a full-feathered grouse, partridge, or snipe knocked over as near as that to its rise. The difficulty of shooting rising game is to shoot straight quick enough; that of shooting driven game is to wait long enough and shoot straight. For the first, there is an individual limit for each of us, which no amount of practice seems to improve. There is, for the second, no limit to the cultivation of patience.

But this only applies to the single shot of each kind. The difficulty of driving is not in the shot, but in the shots. There is no limit to the number of possible chances, and for this reason one cannot exercise patience and let the game get very near, lest other chances should be lost. The real difficulty, then, in shooting driven game well is to shoot the far-off birds as soon as the gun will kill them, in order to change guns quickly and be ready again.

In pigeon shooting the double rise is the most difficult. Few kill half their birds at 25 yards rise, and still folk will talk of the difficulty of driven game as compared with flushed game. The author does not believe there is any pigeon shooter who can, even occasionally, kill a dozen blue rocks in double rises at 30 yards. He knows there are plenty of people who can frequently kill a dozen grouse, pheasants, and partridges driven overhead. And yet a rising blue rock is not “in it” with the spring of an October grouse, partridge, or snipe for quickness. A ten-year-old boy has been coached at the shooting school to kill driven game well, but nobody ever saw or will see a ten-year-old walk after October grouse and kill them well. An old man of eighty has made quite as good work as the rising generation at driven game, but not at shooting over dogs.

Still, pigeon shooting from traps is only now regarded as a test of skill by a very small and decreasing minority, and the reason is that the coming game has been invested with a difficulty that does not properly belong to it, and one that will grow less each year as the prejudice against going to school to learn skill with the gun decreases. At present it is not the townsman who finds driven game difficult, but the countryman who has learnt his shooting on game, but only a little of it, and who is “above” going to school again.

The rules for pigeon shooting can always be had from the Secretary of the Gun Club, Notting Hill; they are slightly changed occasionally, and therefore it is not wise to repeat them here. There are five traps, each of which is supplied with a pigeon, and either of these birds is released for the man at the mark to shoot at when he calls “Pull.” The operation of the traps is done by hand, but a hand that does not know which trap is to be opened.

Ordinary game weapons are of no use in these competitive pigeon matches. Guns are used of above 7 lbs., that will absorb the recoil of large charges of powder and shot, the latter of which is limited to 1¼ oz. The usual plan is to use small-sized shot, so that there shall be many of them in this weight of load, and to use enough powder to cause the light pellet to strike with as much energy as pellets a size larger from a game gun and charge of powder. Pigeon weapons used always to be chambered for 3 inch cartridges, but whether this will continue, now that concentrated powders have come in and are much used for pigeons, is doubtful.

Some very wonderful scores have been made in America by professional pigeon shots. Probably nothing is more deceptive than the scoring of long runs at pigeons, which may be the best blue rocks or very blundering slow-rising fowl. In America they have not had a very good class of pigeons, and their records are consequently not fairly comparable with those made in England at best blue rocks. The American birds are of the English race, but not of the blue rock variety. The latter are a domesticated breed of the wild rock pigeons of the coast caves, where its pursuit is vastly more difficult than shooting its cousins from a trap.

The records of kills of even best blue rocks do not tell us very much of the form of the men who made them. Some apparently very wonderful shooting was done half a century ago, at 40 yards rise. Later, guns were reduced in bore, and in weight and load; boundaries were shortened, and 12 bore charges of nitro powders were improved, so that conditions have varied from time to time so much that nobody can say with any certainty who were the best pigeon shots or at what period they lived. Probably Horatio Ross got out of a gun as great a proportion of its accuracy and power as any man who ever lived, and although the numbers of gunners who can shoot driven game well has greatly increased, the number who can shoot pigeons even moderately well has very much declined in England. Our countrymen now lose the Grand Prix de Monte Carlo with nearly as great certainty as formerly they won it. This does not appear to be because the competition is more severe than it was, for the author knows some winners of the Grand Prix whom he could not call first-rate shots. One of the writer’s first pigeon shooting matches was at a private house party at Vaynol Park. His experience there serves to illustrate the differences between good blue rocks and what are usually called “owls”; this term means any bird either bigger or with more white in it than a blue rock has, also it serves to show that an occasional “owl” is a good test of ready marksmanship. The writer had won a single stake, and only required one more bird out of the double rise stake to win that too. It was getting dusk, and the birds had been very smart. When the traps fell, two white ones came out and circled round to right and left as slowly as they could. Of course the shooter thought it an obviously soft thing to get them both; but “certainties” in shooting have a way of following the example of racing precedents. He missed both quite easily, and had to pay instead of to receive—except in “chaff.”

It might be thought that something should be said on the ethics of pigeon shooting, since the exigencies of polo have abolished it at Hurlingham, and the screeching brigade have rendered this as a moral victory in the press.

The author has bred pigeons in Lincolnshire dovecotes for this sport, and is not a bit ashamed of the fact. Moreover, as Edward VII. was at that time shooting them, the company is good enough.

THE WILD ROCK PIGEON

This bird generally has to be shot from a boat, and usually on a sea not as steady as it might be. The pigeons live in the cliff caves, and disturbance causes them to dash out with a speed and a twist that is highly productive of sport that is not very fatal to the birds.

It is clear that there are limits to the appreciation of difficulty in shooting, otherwise these cave rock pigeons would attract all those shooters who can never get pheasants high enough or fast enough for them. But they do not. There is certainly a chance of mingling the pleasures of sport with the pains of sea-sickness, and so an excuse of a kind for leaving the wild rock pigeon severely alone.

THE WOOD PIGEON

In summer these birds are widely distributed through nearly every wood in the country, and the majority of the large flocks we see in the winter come from abroad. Summer gives shooting to anyone who has patience to wait for a very occasional shot, but in winter great sport is to be had wherever the big flocks are found. These flocks often number many thousands of individuals, and do not visit the same spots every year. The attraction is always food: acorns, clover-fields, and turnip-fields are most attractive. If left alone, the pigeons would soon clear a big field of every blade of clover or of every turnip leaf. In ordinary weather they are very wild indeed, and must be attracted to the hidden shooter with decoys of kinds. But in hard frost, when there is some frost fog in the air, through which the birds look as big as barndoor fowls with their puffed-out feathers, they are almost careless of man or gun. At least, they are so occasionally, and in such circumstances the author has shot lots of them from the roadside hedge without any concealment, but by merely walking along and shooting those which rose nearest to the fence. Another way of shooting them is to wait for them to come in to roost. The latter gives a few very sporting shots, but neither plan is likely to give great sport, and the best is undoubtedly to be had only by the double means of the use of decoys and a constant and simultaneous disturbance of the pigeons in all the coverts of a neighbourhood by a number of guns.

In this way the birds are kept upon the move all the time, they are attracted to your hide by your decoys or dummy pigeons, and many times over 100 and sometimes over 200 pigeons have in this way been killed in one day by a single gun. The shooting is all the harder because of the necessity of shooting from a shelter, except in snow-time, when occasionally a white nightshirt is a good substitute for any hide, and the gunner may stand out in the open unobserved by the birds. Very tall bamboo rods are useful to fix up dummy or stuffed wood pigeons, _head to the wind_, on the tallest branches of the trees near by the sportsman’s hide. Others can be placed upon the ground to give additional confidence to the coming birds. Even better results can be obtained by the use of one or two live decoys on the ground amongst the dummy or stuffed birds.

A live decoy is best used on the principle of the “play bird” of the bird-catching fraternity. He is made to rise from the ground occasionally, so that he flaps his wings and settles again. This is done by the pulling of a string which is fastened to the pigeon and works over a lever. Anything in the shape of a couple of sticks placed some yards apart, with the string fastened to the farther from the shooter and running loosely over the top of the nearer, will answer the purpose of hoisting up the pigeon 4 feet or a yard. In tying it to the running string between the two sticks, it is necessary so to arrange as not to impede the wing movement and not to turn over the bird in flipping it upwards. It is not the rise that must be looked to for attracting wild ones, but the natural way the bird settles after it has been flipped into the air. This will be seen much farther away than the dummies on the ground, or even those in the trees, but it is not so much because of the distance whence it is seen as because of the confidence it begets that it is the best form of decoy. In this sport the quicker one shoots the better, because there are always more birds coming, and if you wait they may get near enough to hear the shot, or even to see the smoke, after either of which those particular birds are lost for the day. The best position for a hide is in the fence of a covert, near to not very tall trees on which dummies can be placed, and where the adjoining field affords food—for choice, a turnip or a clover field.

The shooting at settling pigeons as they steady themselves is child’s play, but the ambitious gunner need not wait for this, and will have plenty of opportunities of being dissatisfied with his own skill. If there should be big hawks about, as described by Lord Walsingham of one of his famous shoots, the gunner is likely to realise that even wood pigeons can emulate the twisting of the snipe and the speed of a down-wind grouse, and do it all at one time.

It may be asked whether wooden dummies are likely to take in the live birds. There is no doubt about that, if they are set head to wind, as the real thing always sets himself. Moreover, it has occurred that a peregrine has so much mistaken the nature of these imitations as on one occasion to dash at one of them, hurl it yards away, and suffer himself to become a gunner’s substitute for the tardy quarry, and so to gaze out of a glass case ever after as a warning to rash and greedy humanity.

The author believes that Mr. Mason of Eynsham Hall, who now has Drumour in Perthshire, holds the record for a day’s wood pigeon shooting. He is not very certain of the score, but believes it was 253 birds, if memory is reliable.

With all the records of trap shooting before him, the author cannot make up his mind to occupy space with them; for, as already said, they are not comparable amongst themselves.

DEER IN SCOTLAND

The kind of rifle best suited for red deer in Scotland is a double .303, .256, or .275. These weapons with a hollow-fronted or a soft-nosed bullet can be made to expend all the impact energy within the body of a deer, whereas if hard the bullets would pierce a stag from end to end and possibly do him no immediate damage. Magazine single rifles would be almost as effective if they were not noisy in loading, and single loaders are slow, but almost as extremely moderate in price as the latter. The sporting range for a stag before the express rifles was from 40 to 100 yards. The express increased the range at which a true sportsman would risk a shot up to 150 yards, and the high velocity rifles named above are doubtless as deadly at 250 yards as the Henry rifle was at 100 yards. The flat trajectory of a rifle giving an initial velocity of from 2000 to 2400 feet per second is of even more importance than the latter’s greater energy of impact, for deer are very easily killed if hit in the chest cavity by an expanding bullet, as those are which are soft-nosed or hollow-pointed. The latter is much the better principle for deer, because expansion is then caused as much by striking the soft flesh or the skin as it is by striking a bone. The cause of the expansion in the latter case is hydraulic pressure, increased with the velocity of the bullet, through the 87 per cent. of water of the deer’s flesh.

A SCOTTISH DEER HEAD OF UNUSUALLY HEAVY BEAM—A THIRTEEN POINTER
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A FINE WILDLY TYPICAL NINE POINT SCOTTISH HEAD OF 38 INCH SPAN
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A TYPICAL SCOTTISH RED DEER HEAD, THIRTEEN POINTS

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MRS. SMITHSON
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A TYPICAL NEW ZEALAND ROYAL HEAD
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Deer forests vary in value even more than they do in rentals. Many of them are let from year to year with “limits” of stags set by agreement. When, as often happens, these limits are so high that the forests cannot produce as many good deer, the yearly tenants possibly shoot bad stags, and make up their number in this way. These bad stags are mostly young beasts which ought to come in for the rifle of some future tenant. So are prospects ruined by the “limits” that ought to improve them. Forests of this character are well known, and only find tenants amongst the uninitiated, who are too proud or too busy to ask for information.

On the other hand, where forests are let on lease or kept in the hands of proprietors, a totally opposite system of “nursing” sometimes goes farther than sporting sentiment approves. At one time, deer wire was much resorted to in order to keep the fat winter-fed stags at home. But a park stag has no sporting value, and so the wire has to a great extent been abandoned. But feeding by hand is increasing. The fact is that there are more deer than the forests will support both in winter and summer, and deer that are fed get as tame as calves in the winter. In the autumn the shooter will not be able to detect this result of hand feeding, but he is very likely to hear of it, or even to see pictures taken of the wild deer herd playing in the presence of the camera. This is calculated to lower the values of deer forests, as the idea of the red deer’s wildness is reduced.

Much more might be done than has been attempted by introducing fresh blood from the Caucasus, where the stags are as big as wapiti, and in the Carpathians cross freely with the Western sort to be found in Scotland. The two varieties meet naturally in the Carpathian Mountains. The wapiti second crosses are not considered successful. They are wapiti without the size, and red deer without the antlers. But some of the first crosses have been fine beasts. Crossing is rather out of favour in Scotland, because park deer were used for the purpose, and park deer are supposed to introduce domestic habits and appearance. But in the wild high altitudes of the Caucasus is a race of deer as wild, as hardy, and twice as big as those of Scotland, and also they have splendid heads, out of all proportion more massive than the Scotch stags’ heads.

His Majesty the King prefers deer driving to stalking. Deer stalking is a young man’s sport, except where the hills and hill paths enable deer ponies to go almost anywhere. But stalking, and not driving, is the sport of the Highlands, probably as much because driving deer is helping one’s neighbours as for any other reason. The paintings of deer drives that one still sees many engravings of are for the most part fancy affairs. Deer generally move slowly, and not like race-horses. In going through a pass they usually travel at a pace they intend to keep up for five or ten miles. They may rush sometimes, but the author believes that this artistic idea had its origin in the time of the deerhound. The Scotch manner of finding deer is by “spying” with the telescope. The Continental manner is by listening for the “roar,” or love challenge, of the stags in the deep woodlands where “spying” would be impossible. Consequently, the woodland deer of the Continent is shot in the rutting season, unless he is driven. In Scotland, leases make the season terminate by the end of the first or second week in October.

The sight of deer is remarkably sharp, but they trust much more to their olfactory powers for protection, and they generally take a couch where their eyes protect them from the down-wind enemy and their noses from the up-wind approach of a foe. Then they prefer to travel up wind. A novice may succeed as well as an old hand if he can shoot and judge distances, because as a novice he will never try to stalk a stag for himself. That higher sportsmanship is to be learnt with years, but at the beginning the professional stalker is as necessary as the rifle itself. To protect him, it has been said that the deer trusts most of all to his sense of smell, next to that of sight, and lastly to that of hearing. Probably at the same stalk it is not very uncommon to observe both sight and hearing mislead the stag into danger, and smell to put him right. The author has fired at and missed a stag, which started away from the sound, saw the splash of the bullet beyond him, and, trusting his sight before his hearing, rushed back towards the shooter; then he has got the scent of the latter, and thus known all about the situation in an instant. The echo may often confuse stags, and so make them mistrust their own sense of hearing. They will often apparently gaze at a man in full view of them and appear not to see him unless he moves. The very slightest movement is enough. But although the wind in the corries often plays curious tricks in warning a stag that is apparently safely up wind of the stalker, it is doubtful whether it ever plays tricks against the stag and sends him back into the arms of the stalker, as a splash from a ball in the water does sometimes.

TYPICAL STAG OF TEN POINTS, SHOT IN KASHMIR BY COL. SMITHSON
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A STAG OF THIRTEEN POINTS, SHOT IN KASHMIR BY MRS. SMITHSON
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It may be remarked that since the Government have cut down the .303 to 25 inches, instead of its previous 30 inches, it makes a very fair stalking rifle, although it is no longer the arm of precision it was at long range. In order to maintain the velocity, they have been obliged to cause more pressure in the chamber by altering the shape of the “lead,” or leading passage for the bullet, from the chamber to the bore of the rifling. If, however, they have been able to do this by this means, what could they not have done by applying the same improvement to the long barrel! Only in the last year before its condemnation, the latter had been discovered to be the best barrel in the world when properly loaded. But it required a bigger charge than the Government ever gave to it. Messrs. Kynoch claim a great improvement for this rifle by the discovery of their axite powder, and with all these improvements there seems now to be no reason why the sportsman in ordering new rifles should be satisfied with any less flat trajectory than that given by the Mannlicher with its initial 2350 foot-seconds velocity. The author will not discuss trajectories in this work, because he has reason to question the accuracy of the text-books, including the last issued by the Government; and it would be clearly unwise to challenge criticism here, without having the space to enter fully into the matter.

BIG GAME

As we have nothing bigger than a red deer in a state of nature, all the big game has to be looked for abroad. There is really no country which can easily and quickly be reached where big game is to be shot. Somaliland and British East Africa probably afford the best chances for African species, Wyoming the best for wapiti in the United States. India and the adjoining countries is now, as it always has been, the greatest big-game shooting arena in the world. It might have been challenged by South Africa in the days of Gordon Cumming, but that district was soon shot out by the Boers. However, South Africa at that time will for ever remain a lesson to game preservers. It swarmed with an enormous variety of big game, against the increase of which the unmolested lions and other beasts of prey were powerless for harm. They had no effect whatever in restricting the increase of buffalo, antelopes, and zebra. Yet the fashion inclines to believe that a few peregrine falcons would seriously damage the stocks of grouse in Scotland and Yorkshire. Probably, if the truth were known, there were as many grouse in Scotland before anyone ever thought of killing vermin as there are now. It is very often forgotten that vermin eat vermin as well as other creatures.

The question of rifles for big game would occupy more space than the whole of these pages to treat of it adequately. Briefly, it may be said that for each animal there is a best rifle, and for hardly any two species is the same weapon the best. A compromise is effected by using different bullets for the same rifle, and the principle on which to choose weapons is to go for a thoroughly effective weapon for the most important species to be hunted, and by altering the bullet make it do moderately well for other less important beasts. In hunting for elephants and buffalo, it is necessary to be able to stop a charging beast with a temple hit. Both the elephant and the buffalo of Africa are particularly hard to bring down with a forehead shot, or they were before the days of high velocity rifles of from .500 to .600 bore. Those of .303 bore and less are not to be trusted unless they smash the brain, and themselves smash up in the brain, and not before or after piercing it. A No. 6 shot pellet is about one five-thousandth the weight of a partridge, and has no immediate effect on the bird unless it enters a vital spot. The 215 grain bullet of the .303 weighs about one two hundred-thousandth the weight of an elephant, and yet there have been those who advise the use of such bullets for these beasts. It appears to the author, who has never shot an elephant, but has listened to all views of those who have shot them, that the small-bore men trust a great deal to the natural timidity of the big beasts, and believe that they will not charge even if they are wounded. Of course elephants differ in temper at various times more than most animals, and a charging African elephant at close quarters is possible, to say the least.

The big bore solid bullet has been displaced to a great extent by high velocity bullets of less weight and diameter but more length. These bullets are trusted to pierce farther than the old 4 bore bullet, and to give as severe a shock. The object is to do as much damage within the head as possible, and not merely to pierce it. Expanding bullets are not to be trusted for this business, because the bone of an elephant’s head from the frontal shot makes all bullets tend to flatten up too much, unless they are very hard. In other words, for these hard-skinned, hard-boned animals the biggest bullet makes the biggest hole, and any expanding of the bullet tends to break it up and prevent an entry into the vitals. For soft-skinned animals it is very different. An expanding bullet is in every way preferable to a hard bullet, whether from big or small bore. The latter has a tendency to go through the animal and expend its energy on the other side, and the former tends to flatten out and smash up large portions of the internal organs and to remain in them.

But every prospective big-game hunter will be wise to go to some of those who make it a business and a specialty to fit out expeditions, and there he will not only hear the latest views of those who have returned from expeditions, but see the very latest designs for increasing the effectiveness of rifles. If the author were going for big game, and especially dangerous game, the first persons he would consult are Mr. Henry Holland (whose opportunities of hearing the latest views of sportsmen returned from expeditions are unique), Messrs. Rigby, Purdey, Westley Richards, and Gibbs of Bristol, for the last new thing, because rifles cannot be said to have reached finality, and are being evolved and improved every day, as is also the powder to be used with them.

There is at present considerable difference of opinion as to whether .450 high velocity rifles are equal to the task of dropping an African elephant by a frontal shot.

Mr. Naumann believes that they are equal to anything, and he has had experience; but then he may have been lucky in not having his bullet deflected from the brain by the mass of bone it has to break through. A great deal would certainly depend upon the angle at which the bullet first struck the bone. Steel cores to the bullets prevent expanding or breaking up of that part of the bullet, but not of the leaden covering, and this expansion necessarily would greatly retard the speed and distance of penetration.

A VARIED BAG

SEAL SHOOTING

There was some talk of a sportsman’s badge being earned by the person who had killed a seal, a stag, and a golden eagle. The former is very easy to kill, but very difficult to bag. It must be shot absolutely dead instantaneously, or it struggles into the water and there sinks. It has to be caught when basking on the rocks or sands, and this generally means shooting from a boat in a sea which will not be still, so that the chances of a brain shot are not great. To shoot seals when they come up to have a look at a passing boat is to wound them generally, but if they are killed they sink. Possibly the only advantage of shooting seals is to save some fish. The salmon waiting to run up rivers are made to suffer greatly very often. The seal of our coasts is not the fur seal, and has little value when shot.

CAPERCAILZIE

This is the finest game bird we have, unless it be considered that the lately introduced wild turkeys are finer; both are the offspring of imported birds, for the turkeys never were British birds, and the capercailzie after extinction were re-introduced in the Taymouth Castle district by the then Earl of Breadalbane.

The birds do not grow in Scotland to nearly the size of those of the Continent, and fine as they are they give but little sport, and are thought to be objectionable in many ways. One of these is said to be that they eat the leaders of the Scotch pine and so ruin the trees; but it is difficult to believe this to be correct, for the leaders of the pines could hardly be reached from any other branch but its own, and this would prove a very insecure seat for so heavy a bird. However, capercailzie are increasing in Scotland, in spite of the determination of many woodmen to keep them down. That they form a very pretty addition to a day’s bag, and create the excitement that variety usually affords, is true enough. There is no place equal to some of the less elevated estates in Perthshire for variety of bag. There capercailzie, roe deer, brown hares, rabbits, duck, teal, blackcock, pheasants, grouse, partridges, woodcock, two sorts of snipe, and wood pigeons, as well as a variety of the scarcer kinds of duck, may all be killed in one day. But it is difficult to beat for the majority of these varieties of game in any one way; for instance, capercailzie and black game seem to require special methods of beating covers for them, and then they are not both likely to take the same course, as the caper can make but little headway up hill and the black game can. Where capercailzie are numerous they are very interesting to drive and shoot, for it is not easy to do either properly. But they are usually too scarce for special days in October, and in August they give no sport in their half-fledged condition. Seventy of these birds have been killed in driving in one day near Dunkeld. The hens lay from 6 to 13 eggs. The full-grown cock-of-the-woods weighs from 9 to 13 lbs. in Scotland, but is bigger in Scandinavia. The hen lays late in May, and the birds are polygamous. Linnæus gave the scientific name _Tetrao urogallus_ to the cock-of-the-woods, which is known in Gaelic as Capultcoille. He is Tiwr to the Norwegian, and Tjäder to the Swede; Glouhar to the Russian, and Auerhahn to the German. These birds became extinct in Ireland about 1760 and in Scotland about 1780, and were not re-introduced successfully until 1837, although repeated attempts had been made.

THE QUAIL

is rarely a winter resident in England or Ireland, but was so much more frequently in the middle of last century. Then, too, large numbers used to come to this country in May to breed here. They were supposed to leave in September, but the author believes that the majority left before the shooting season, as he has often found broods in the sixties which disappeared before the opening of partridge shooting.

They cannot be forced, or even encouraged, to migrate to this country. Instinct once lost cannot be re-created by any act of ours. The King tried turning out a lot of quail at Sandringham, where they bred, but being spared they migrated, and not one of them came back. Still, although His Majesty is not likely to try this experiment again, it seems to the author to have proved the possibility of success, provided ambition does not soar too high. It shows that if we had quail leagues in the various counties, we might greatly add to our sport by buying up the imported live quail and releasing them. If we could get Hungarian partridges at ninepence or a shilling each, who would not buy them? The quail is quite as fertile of sport and breeds as freely, and after being turned down in the spring wanders no more before breeding than the partridge that has also been turned down, but in the autumn. Consequently, although it does not always pay a single estate to turn out either, it would pay the sporting interest of a county to do it. Quail lay from 10 to 20 eggs, rear most of their young, and 10,000 of these birds can be had in the spring for about £400. That is not much for an addition of 10,000 game birds to a county in a time when each head killed costs from 3s. 6d. to 5s.; but when the chances of the breeding of these 10,000 are taken into account, it becomes a likely 50,000 and a possible 100,000 extra game birds. What does it matter that those not shot are lost to the county? They will be re-imported from Africa and Italy another season, and can be again bought alive, instead of being killed for the London hotels and clubs. We are fond of deploring the extermination of these migrants, but the receiver is as bad as the catcher, especially when he eats in the breeding season that which he professes to wish to preserve. Even on the lowest ground of self-interest, a quail turned out in England is worth many dead ones.

The scientific name of the quail is _Coturnix communis_, and this migrant is not to be confused with the non-migratory “Virginian Colin,” “Bob-white,” or more truly partridge, the scientific name of which is _Ortyx virginianus_.

Quail are beautiful birds to shoot over dogs, and although they will not drive, the shooting of them over dogs can be indulged without doing any injury to partridge driving.

THE LANDRAIL

There is no better bird for the table than the landrail, but he is hardly a sporting bird. His flight is very slow, but he is sometimes missed by quick shots who have been shooting rapid rising partridges and shoot too quickly at these slow flying birds. The landrail has from 7 to 10 eggs, breeds successfully in insect-breeding seasons, and has been shot in large numbers in a single field. A little more than a quarter of a century ago, Mr. Farrer, Mr. C. W. Digby, and Alex. M. Luckham shot 24½ or 25½ couple of landrail in a field of clover-heads at the end of Nine Barrow Down, Purbeck; and in 1905 there were 26½ couple killed in the day about two miles west of this field. Sparrow hawks used to be trained especially for taking landrails, as mentioned in Chafin’s _History of Cranbourne Chace_, dated 1818. In 1880 there were 211 landrails shot at Acryse Park, Folkestone, and 35 birds in one day by two guns in two clover-fields. The landrail, or corncrake, is known as _Crex pratensis_.

TEAL

The teal breeds freely in this country, and only requires to be less often shot in the early days of the shooting season to multiply rapidly. In those early days it affords no sport, but becomes a wonderful flyer when full feathered. It has from 8 to 15 eggs. No captured teal can be made use of for breeding, but their eggs are easily dealt with, just as those of the wild duck are treated. It is possible to introduce teal to a new place by placing their eggs in the nests of moorhens. The scientific name of the common teal is _Querquedula crecca_.

THE GOLDEN PLOVER