Читать книгу The Complete English Wing Shot - George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell - Страница 3

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When the publishers asked me to write a book upon Shooting and its interest, I at first doubted whether I knew enough of the matter to fill a book of much size without repeating all the traditional lore that is to be found in every unread text-book, but I had no sooner undertaken the business than I came to a conclusion that has since been confirmed, that to deal as best I could, with the kind help of many sportsmen, with the controversial subjects would have taken the whole space at my disposal for any one of them. Consequently, ever and again I have had to decide what to eliminate, and I have tried to leave out that which most people know already, and to deal as best I can in short space with questions that are now more or less under discussion, and consequently those that game preservers and shooters in this and other countries are thinking about. It has been very difficult to draw a line between the controversial and current subjects and the unchallenged facts which have been too often repeated already, but that this is the right principle is, I think, obvious from the position that the opposite course would involve. What is meant can be best explained by glancing at a few traditional survivals in gunnery and shooting, and its accompanying unnatural history, which, along with many others, would occupy space if one were to attempt to deal with all the accepted, as well as the repudiated, statements upon them. Nobody wants to be told that he should put the powder into a cartridge-case before the shot, but to begin at the beginning would involve the necessity of giving that and other puerile information. Nobody would be the better for a learned chapter on gun actions. In the first place, these actions are no longer patents, they are open to anyone who likes to use them, and consequently the days when one selected a gun-maker because his patent action was conceived to be the better, are long gone by. The reason is that each gun-maker can be trusted to use the best principle when he has a choice of them all, or at least the best available for the money to be expended upon its making in the gun. Ejectors are nearly in the same position; but single triggers are not. I was so fortunate as to make a discovery in regard to single triggers that is now acknowledged to be of great assistance to the gun trade; the want of it had for a hundred years been the stumbling-block to the patent single triggers that had begun to trouble gun-makers in the time of the celebrated Colonel Thornton. That is referred to in its proper chapter, because single triggers now occupy the place that formerly actions held, and at a later date ejector systems usurped, in assisting to the selection of a gun-maker.

To begin at the beginning in the repudiation of frequently accepted fallacy possibly would not compel a reference to the sometime beliefs that hares change their sex; that skylarks fall into snakes’ mouths after their skyward song—a statement that troubled Mr. Samuel Pepys, who, as Secretary to the Admiralty under two protectors and two monarchs, and as a member of the Royal Society, should have been in a position to get the best information. Nor would such a beginning involve the repudiation of the belief once held that bernicle geese turned into “bernacle” molluscs, or vice versâ. But it would oblige an author to enter into repudiation of the oft-stated belief that nitro powder is quicker than black powder, although big and heavily charged caps have to be employed for the nitro, whereas the small were amply sufficient for black powder. One would also be obliged to point out that the oft-repeated prophecy, that the smallest stock of grouse bred the better August crop, has been doomed to disaster always, and that precisely the reverse is true. However, there are still people who by what they say must be judged to hold to the unproved proposition that the stones breed grouse.

COL. THORNTON’S PLUTO (BLACK) AND JUNO. BY GILPIN. SHOWING WHOLE-COLOURED POINTERS SIMILAR IN FORMATION TO THOSE OF SUTTON SCARSDALE TO-DAY

It would be necessary also to point out that some parrot cries are a hundred years old and at least forty years out of date, but are still repeated as if they were original and true. Some of these are that pointers have better noses than setters, and also require less water; that cheese affects dogs’ noses (sanitation by means of carbolic acid does so, but cheese is harmless enough); that Irish setters have more stamina and pace than any others. The latter statement I have seen disproved for forty years at the field trials in this country, and the former has always failed to find corroboration at the champion stamina trials in America. I have had great chances of forming an accurate opinion, as I entered and ran dogs at the English championship trials over thirty-six years ago, and I am the only one who has ever judged at the champion trials of both England and America.

It would be necessary also to repudiate the mistake that “foot scent” is something exuding from the pad of an animal and left upon the ground by the contact of the feet. It would be necessary to affirm that fat from the adder is not the best cure for the poison when dog or man is bitten, but that raw whisky taken inwardly in large doses is; and as dogs will sometimes point these vipers, it might be well to affirm that these creatures do not swallow their young, as is commonly supposed. It would be necessary also to state that when partridges “tower” they are not necessarily, but only sometimes, hit in the lungs, but have often received a rap on the head just not enough to render them totally unconscious; and a case has lately been reported where two unshot-at partridges in one covey “towered” and fell, and were caught alive, grew stronger, and upon one of them being killed it was found to be badly attacked by enteritis, and not by lung disease. And consequently the myth about “towered” partridges always falling dead and on their backs does not require dealing with, as might have been the case a quarter of a century ago, when nevertheless the phenomenon was only misunderstood in the laboratory, and not in the field of sport.

It is hardly necessary to assert that “pheasant disease” as commonly seen in the rearing-fields is not fowl enteritis, as it is so often said to be, because the foster-mothers are hardly ever affected by any illness when their chicks are dying by hundreds of the disease. The pheasant disease has never been subjected to pathological examination and investigation.

To start at the beginning would make it necessary to state that the “muff ’cock,” or the bigger woodcock, that comes in a separate migration, is not the hen of the smaller birds, and that distinction can only be made between the sexes by internal examination of the organs. It might be necessary in similar circumstances to say that woodcock and snipe do not live on suction, as is often believed even now; that nightjars and hedgehogs neither suck the milk of goats nor cows; that foxes do not prefer rats and beetles to partridges and pheasants; that swallows do not hibernate at the bottom of ponds; that badgers do not prefer young roots to young rabbits; that ptarmigan and woodcock are not mute, and that the former do not live on either stones or heather; that badgers can run elsewhere than along the sides of a hill, and that they are not compelled, by having the legs on one side shorter than on the other, to always take this curious course, which would involve them in the difficulty of having to entirely encircle a hill before getting back to their holes; nevertheless, this faith is still held in some parts of the country, just as it is said that the heather bleating of the snipe is a vocal sound, whereas it is often made simultaneously with the vocal sound.

I have tried to avoid dealing with any such things as these, which may be supposed to come within the region of common knowledge of any beginner in shooting, but another point has troubled me more. I have written a good deal for the press. Articles of mine have appeared in The Times, The Morning Post, The Standard, The Daily Telegraph, The County Gentleman, Bailey’s Magazine, The Sporting and Dramatic, The Badminton Magazine, Country Life, The Field, The Sportsman, The National Review, The Fortnightly Review, The Monthly Review, and elsewhere, and I am afraid that I have unconsciously repeated the ideas running through some of these articles, without acknowledgment to the various editors.

As Colonel Hawker went to school in gunnery to Joe Manton, so did Joe Manton go to school to Hawker in the matter of sport. But we have changed. That those who make guns can best teach how to make guns I do not doubt for a moment; that when they write books on the making of guns those books are regarded as an indirect advertisement is inevitable, but they are none the worse for that, if readers know how to read between the lines, and it is not necessary to go to a shooting school to do that. But when gun-makers add to their business by means of books upon sport and by “shooting schools,” they are turning the tables on us. To that I have no objection. But when it is asserted that shooting schools teach more than the sport itself, as has lately been done, then I think it is time to protest that even if they could teach shooting at game as well as game teaches it (which is absurd), that even then they cannot teach sportsmanship, of which woodcraft is one part and the spirit of sport and fellowship another.

But the greatest value of sportsmanship is, after all, that idle man should be the more healthy an animal for his idleness. Consequently, when shooting parties are made an excuse for more smoke and later nights than usual, even if the shooting is not spoiled next day, less enjoyment of life follows, and lethargically apparent becomes the missing of that perfect dream of health, that reaction after great exertion ought to bring to those who have ever felt it.

It is often said that big bags have ruined the sporting spirit. That is not so: big bags are necessary proofs that the science of preservation of game is on the right lines, and their publication is also necessary on these grounds. At the same time, it is a fact that hard walking is not appreciated as much as it was thirty years ago, and ladies can now take just as forward a place in the shooting of game and deer as men can or do. This is not all because ladies are better trained physically, but because sports have been made much easier, than formerly they were. Bridle-paths enable ponies to traverse the deer forests with ladies on their backs, and where that can be done deer stalking is not quite what it was when a Highland laird declared that he saw no use in protecting the deer, since nobody could do them much harm. But the wonder to me is not that we do not like great exertion, but that we ever did like it for itself. But then I speak as a man in years, and one who has in the foolishness of youth killed a stag and carried home his head, cut low down, for sixteen miles, rather than wait for the tardy ponies to bring it in with the carcase.

I suspect that a change of ideas will take place when it is discovered that driven-game shooting can, more than any other, be learnt at the shooting schools, and that when the trick is known it becomes the easiest kind of shot. If it is true that the schools can teach it, then everybody will learn it, and what is common property will become as unfashionable as it is the reverse at present. I believe that half the difficulty in the driven bird is in thinking it is difficult. The fastest bird at 30 yards range one is likely to meet with in a whole season does not require a swing of the muzzle faster than, or much more than half as fast as, a man can walk. What is difficult in driven game is shooting often, the swerve of the game, the changes of pace and angle of different birds in quick succession, but distinctly not the pace. Before I had ever seen a grouse butt, I remember sitting down to watch another party of shooters on a distant hill, more than half a mile up wind of where I sat to watch. I saw their dogs point, and a single bird rise, which, with many a switchback as it came, I watched traverse the whole distance between us, and I killed it as I sat. That was my first driven grouse, but it is not by any means why I say that driven game offers the easiest kind of shooting; it is because the average of kills to cartridges are so much better than they are in other kinds of shooting. Take, for instance, double rises at pigeons, which are easy compared with double rises at October grouse, and it will be noted that the crack pigeon shots do not generally kill even their first double rise at 25 yards range, and that four or five double rise kills are nearly always good enough to win, as also very often is a single double rise with both birds killed. Very moderate grouse drivers can do better than that, and pheasants that are not very high are slain in much greater proportion. The fact is that all shooting is extremely difficult if one attempts to satisfy the most severe critic of all, namely the man who shoots. But at my age I would much rather think myself fit to do a day’s hard walking than a day’s hard shooting. I think there are a good many people of that opinion, otherwise dog moors would not make more rent per brace than the Yorkshire driving moors, but they do. The trouble is that places where birds will lie to dogs are limited, and it is childish to drive packs of birds away for the sake of thinking one is shooting over dogs when one is not shooting at all, but only doing mischief. Personally, I would not try to shoot over good dogs on Yorkshire grouse. Bad ones would not matter; but then they would give me no pleasure.

When it was a literary fashion to abuse covert shooting as butchery and grouse driving as no sport, it was not done by sportsmen of the other school; and later, when the literary genius of the period was turned in the opposite direction, and we were constantly being told that a walk with a gun and dog was pleasant but no sport, it was only done by those who were a little afraid of being out of the fashion. I have been so unfashionable as to defend both by turns, and I have always been of opinion that any sport which appeared to be growing unpopular was worthy of the little support I could give it. It will probably greatly surprise those who dare not, with imaginative pens, shoot at the tail of a bird, to be told that Mr. R. H. Rimington Wilson recently informed me, that if he were to back himself to kill a number of shots consecutively he would select driven birds in preference to walked-up game; and besides, that he preferred to be let loose on a snipe bog to his own, or any other, big driving days. My opinion has been that you can always make any sort of shooting a little more difficult than your own performance can satisfactorily accomplish to the gratification of your own most critical sense.

Driving game and big bags are often, but not always, acts of game preserving.

On this subject I had written a chapter, but fearing that I had not done that view justice, after a conversation I had with Captain Tomasson, who has Hunthill and is the most successful Scotch grouse preserver by the all driving method, I asked him to criticise some articles I had previously written in the Field, the sense of which I have tried to express again in the following pages. He very kindly did so, or rather stated the case for the Highlands, which I have substituted for mine. It only differs in one respect from the sense of my own suppressed chapter—namely, it does not remark on the difficulty of explaining why, if recent Scotch driving has partly defeated disease, even more Yorkshire driving, prior to 1873, nevertheless preceded the worst and most general Scotch and English disease ever known. However, everyone will argue for himself: I can only pretend to present a mass of facts to assist a judgment, but not a quarter of those I should like to give have I room for, and I regret that Captain Tomasson is even more restricted by space.

I have shot over spaniels in teams and as single dogs, but as I consider that I know less of them than Mr. Eversfield, who probably knows more than anyone else, I asked him to read and criticise my article, which he promised to do. But in returning it he has professed himself unable to criticise, and very kindly says that he likes it all, so I leave it, being thereby assured that it cannot be very wrong.

There is one subject connected with shooting, or the ethics of shooting, about which there is much more to be said than ever has been attempted—namely, that partridge preservers are now, and will be more in the future, indebted to the fox for their sport. This may appear a wild paradox, but before I am condemned for it I would, in the interests of the gun, ask those who disagree to read my chapters on partridge preserving, where, if they still disagree, they will find a partridge success described that will amply repay their good nature, unless they know a plan by which season’s partridge bags can be doubled, doubled again, and then again, in three consecutive years.

On the subject of dogs, I may say that thirty to thirty-five years ago I recommended to some American sportsmen three different sorts of setters. Either two of them had bred well together in England. These have been crossed together ever since in America, and no other cross has been admitted to the Stud Book devoted to them. They have been a revelation in the science of breeding domestic animals, for, in spite of all the in-breeding represented there, I was enabled to select a puppy in 1904 that in Captain Heywood Lonsdale’s hands has beaten all the English pointers and setters at field trials in 1906. I have more particularly referred to this in a chapter on English setters, and in another on strenuous dogs and sport in America.

I have already tendered my thanks, but I should like publicly to repeat my indebtedness, to those who have lent me the best working dogs in England for models, or have sent me photographs of them and other pictures. These include Mr. Eric Parker, Editor of The County Gentleman, Mr. W. Arkwright, the Hon. Holland Hibbert, Mr. Herbert Mitchell, Mr. C. C. Eversfield, Mr. A. T. Williams, Captain H. Heywood Lonsdale, Mr. B. J. Warwick, the Editor of Bailey, Mr. Allan Brown, and the President of the world’s oldest established, and National, Field Trial Society, namely Col. C. J. Cotes, of Pitchford Hall, who has sent me some photographs of his, and his late father’s, Woodcote pointers and retrievers, including an original importation of 1832, and founder of his present breed of the latter race, and in doing this he has been kind enough to say:—

“I have always considered you to know more about the breaking and breeding of setters than any man living, and that it was entirely through you that the apex of setter breeding was reached about twenty-five years ago, and through your recommendation I obtained the eight setters in 1881 that founded my present breed.”

I am glad to be able to quote this, because my name is little known to younger shooters, although I write many, preferably unsigned, articles upon rural sports and other matters.

G. T. T.-B.