George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell

“ The young partridges and wild ducks in the rearing-fields leave the coops and hunt for food in broods, but the young pheasant hunts, or rather wanders, each for itself, careless of the presence of its fellows. This is how it happens that in the wild state the hen pheasant cannot shepherd her chicks. She cannot, like them, be everywhere at once. So the thunderstorm finds many young unprotected by the mother’s wing; the hawks and the crows have no mother to beat off before they can dine on young pheasants, which they have only to find alone in order to kill with ease. ”

“ The writer’s experience of breeding dogs inclines him to the belief that the spaniel-like tendency of the breed, now that it is selected for all-red colour, is proof not only of its spaniel but probably of a springer origin. Their excitement, their merry low-carried sterns, and their noses on the ground, speak like an open book to one who has bred and watched the breeding of all races of setters for forty years, and has assured himself that selection for colour is the automatic selection of character usually found with that colour. ”

“ Feats of sport that can be forgotten are not worth remembering, for if enjoyment depended upon the size of the bag or the grandeur of a trophy, every day in which the old record was not beaten would be a day lost, whereas, in sport for its own sake alone, every triviality is supreme for the time being, and one is as keen for small things or great at sixty as at sixteen, although—and more is the pity—a great deal more self-critical. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The strange form and sudden appearance, as from nowhere, will surprise; another instant, the ancestral wild beast of prey will take possession of your cherished pet, now nearly in the next parish, and you would be helpless to intervene but for the gun in your hand and for its associations with the tree and the cord in the park. You fire at the exact instant before canine surprise is succeeded by a burst of coursing speed, and your pupil is glued to the ground, while your only hare is preserved from extinguishing her race and your chances of a broken dog as well. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a long jump from Nimrod to the hunting in the New Forest, which was obviously as much shooting as hunting, when Rufus was killed by an arrow, meant, or not meant, for a hart. Whether there ever were outlaws named Robin Hood and Little John does not matter, because fiction is always based on fact, or it does not live a day. The fiction or fact of the great shooting of the king’s deer by these outlaws has lived seven hundred years, and it is more easy to believe that there were many generations of such poachers and highwaymen than that there were none at all. ”

“ There is good reason why the driving of all kinds of game should be the most popular sport with the greatest numbers. The days when the squire shot game every day in the week, and no faster than he could eat it, have long ago departed; this is not because the “hunting” of a pheasant with gun and dog is not as good sport as ever it was, for the pheasant is at least as interesting to hunt to his lair before he is flushed and shot, as is the hare to hunt until she can move no more. In both cases the individual gives vastly more sport than when it is shot as one amongst hundreds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ You can no more get it back than you can make a field trial dog out of a show-bred one, or bring the dead instinct to life.
Having got the right blood in the form of a puppy of ten or twelve months old, and one that has learnt no bad manners at walk or in some bad breaker’s hands, there is a straight road to success, but one that is not always taken. The first thing to teach a puppy is to understand all you say to it. ”

“ These high-couraged dogs that seem to take no hint from their handlers, but to think entirely for themselves, nevertheless have but to see their handler off his horse to take it for a signal to quarter the ground closely for scattered quail, or to hunt like a retriever for dead birds. ”

“ The first question always to be asked about young dogs is whether they are gun-shy, and in a trial when no game is being shot it is wise to use the gun, but not fair to use it over much. A dog that has been used to having a shot or two fired over it during an hour’s breaking is not necessarily ready to undergo the bewildering experience of a dozen discharges in close proximity and in quick succession when no intention is obvious. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is outside the question of game killing altogether.
No kind of shooting requires more sharpness of eye than grouse driving, and when the gun is at the shoulder, engaged with one bird, we all know how easy it is for others to slip by unobserved, and then we get just as bad a reputation as if we had blazed away and missed.
Obviously, quickness of perception has much influence on success, but whether it has anything to do with form is doubtful. It is curious that what we all agree is the best possible style for the second barrel is the worst possible for the first. ”

“ There appears to be no half-way house—it is always either good or bad. Form as it is generally understood has not much to do with success, but is more a matter of appearance. If a shooter at a covert side planted his gun at his shoulder when the drive began and so kept it until a pheasant came over into line, and then he let off, his form would not be either good or bad—it would be too uncommon for either; too ridiculous to be seen, in fact; but it is precisely that which pigeon shooters and clay bird men mostly adopt. ”

“ It would be a most excellent arrangement of Nature that the grouse go for food wherever it is to be had, if it were left to Nature, but it is not. People on the cultivated farms regard the arrival of the grouse as a great day, in which Providence has sought them out for a blessing, just as the Israelites in the Wilderness thought about the quail, which were possibly merely seeking their own migratory ends, like the starving grouse. Those on the lower moors see increased numbers of grouse, and kill them, knowing that if they do not somebody else will. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even on the baser score of economy and next year’s sport, it is wise to wound no more game than human blundering compels, and not to lay ourselves out to wound by attempting to kill when the chances are so bad that the wild shooter would not risk them upon a horse-race, much less in a mere commercial speculation. ”

“ If you turn when they are out of sight, you defeat them, and they lose you. In such country as this it is not surprising that one school of shooters prefer what they call close ranging dogs, which, however, are not quarterers, but merely dogs of lesser courage, or those that fear to be lost. But, every other quality being equal, the field trials are won by the fastest stayers of the wide ranging variety, but such as do not lose themselves and do find game. ”

“ The writer confesses to being one of those selfish creatures who is supremely happy if he has satisfied his own critical spirit, even in such trifles as a day’s unwitnessed sport over dogs, the stalking of a blackcock or of a stag, the capture of a reluctant trout, or the killing of half a score of driven grouse out of a pack without a miss. ”

“ But the “leisured class,” as Americans call it, are constantly finding more work to do, more that must be done; and we shall soon, like the Americans, have no leisured class but the unemployed, just as they have none except the telegraph-boys. That is the reason sport has to be taken in junks. It does not make for a knowledge of woodcraft; but there is little woodcraft necessary in ordering the beating of coverts crowded with pheasants. Then, although the single driven bird may be a particularly easy shot to the shooter, difficulty increases precisely in the same ratio as numbers. ”

“ This is all very disappointing to those who give time and money to moor improvement, and sacrifice their shooting several years in order to get up the head of game. It is not pleasant to have to mention these partial failures, but it is felt that if we do not look facts in the face as they are, there is little chance of improvement. There is, in fact, a something besides disease that keeps the grouse stock below a certain point in the best of years, and, as Allan Brown says, causes a little grouse to require as much land to itself as a cow. ”

“ But with game, accuracy of aim is preferable to extreme quickness, if either has to be sacrificed to any great extent. You go out to shoot to please yourself, and nothing will accomplish that pleasure so certainly as constantly killing game at distances that other people cannot reach. Tall pheasants and high wild duck try a gun as well as a gunner, and if the latter can keep in the line of flight he can shoot at some angles and at slow birds twice as strong with a choke as with a cylinder, but the timing of the shot is not as easy for one as for the other. ”

“ But even this low nose on the foot scent is not invariably desirable, and the same retriever that at one time worms out a line down wind will often run like a foxhound, head up and stern down, when the direction is up wind, or even side wind. The higher the dog carries his head the faster he will go, and consequently the sooner he will come up with his game, so that to insist on retrievers carrying a low nose, even in roding game, is to insist on mediocrity. ”

“ In order to be able to do this, a man must have wonderful confidence in himself; but some experts are well able to shoot one shot only from each barrel of a rifle, and then regulate it with no more evidence. Others are obliged to make a group with each barrel in order to negative their own faults of aim, or “let off.” That will possibly be the young shooter’s form; and if it is unfortunately so, all the same he is the man who is going to use the weapon, not the gun-maker’s expert, and consequently his own test is the best for him, no matter how blundering it may be. ”

“ All the talk of the speed of driven game making it difficult has frightened and unnerved many a beginner at such birds, but it is merely the echo of what was said before shooters had learnt that they had to swing and aim ahead as well. ”

“ The falconers are now proud of teaching a hawk to “wait on” in the air while a pointer is at work, but if falcons ever hunted in a brushwood country in a state of nature, that is exactly what they would have had to do for their friends the wolves, since they could not flush for themselves, and could not kill until a flush had occurred. It is consequently quite likely that waiting on is a latent instinct in the long-winged falcons, and equally, therefore, retaining the scent was a protection against beast and bird alike. ”

“ It is a great but not uncommon mistake to confuse bustle and excitement with courage and love of hunting. No dog should have less excitement or more courage than the retriever. Excitement is so easily recognised that little need be said of it, except that it is probably a near relative of nerves, and a retriever should appear to have no nerves and no excitement. He should be able to stand still, to lie still, or to sit still, in the presence of any quantity of wounded or dead ground game or winged birds. ”

“ At a low skimming partridge coming straight for an open gateway in which the writer was standing, he has shot, as at a sitting mark, for there was neither swerve nor rise or fall; he has seen the earth kick up all round the bird at about 25 yards, and has not been any nearer bagging the game. Surely nothing but glancing shot can account for such escapes. ”

“ A lesson, before entry on game, should always be only a part of a game at romps to the dog. Consequently, it must not go on so long that the puppy tires of romping, or be repeated so often in the game that the youngster thinks it “a bore.”
Obedience is one thing, prompt obedience quite another; and it is the latter that serves the sportsman, not the former. It is the last stage of hand breaking to ensure prompt obedience when hesitation or unwillingness has gone before. ”

“ The good sheep-dog has a duty to perform that he likes, and he does it well, but ask him to do anything besides, and he objects, and gets his way. The spaniel’s business is the most taxing of all, and requires the best breaking, except when the retriever is broken to do spaniel’s duty as well as his own, as he can. That is to say, he can find live rabbits in their seats and turn them out to the gun, and stand still as they go. This is far more of a tax on any dog than steadiness in pointing, when the breaker turns out the pointed game. ”