Shooting season

“ Many gentlemen, again, keep their pheasants till nearly Christmas: October goes by frequently without a bird being brought down in some preserves. Early in the new year, if the weather be mild, as it has been so often latterly, the birds begin to show signs of a disposition to pair off, and in consequence the guns are laid aside before the certificates expire. So that the keeper thinks the actual shooting season has grown shorter and the sport is more concentrated, and taken in rushes, as it were. ”

“ This distance will grow longer each week of the shooting season. In September birds that would be likely to drop in roots three fields behind the guns, might easily go six, seven, or eight fields in November.
It is impossible to drive partridges very far directly up wind, and it is almost impossible to turn them very much when going fast and high down wind. Roots are even more important to big driving bags than they are to “walking up.” ”

“ On some of the moors there are but cottages and farmhouses for the occupation of the sportsmen, but on others the houses are excellent, and let with the moors, as many take a moor season after season and invite their friends to shoot between the 12th of August [p.217] and October. The grand shooting parties that are annually given in Scotland by owners of large estates and fine shootings extends throughout the whole of the shooting season, and guests come and go without intermission; as one leaves another arrives. ”

“ As a result one gets hard cross shots but has the advantage of seeing every bullet strike, as the soil is very dry at this season. This makes interesting shooting. One gets game enough to keep the camp in meat and not enough so that he feels like a butcher. ”

“ Parts of the ground no doubt will test your nerve as a cragsman, but it does not entail the perpetual climbing of markhor and ther ground, and in April, May and June a fair number of good chances may be relied upon. As Ward says, ‘Patience and steady shooting are what are necessary; a man does not require to be a first-rate walker or a really brilliant shot during that season; but he does require to be enduring, and not too eager about getting up at once to his game.’ Of course, if the sportsman blazes away at indifferent heads he will not get the big ones ”

“ Nobody gets up early enough in the morning for that now: very often the first day passes by without a single shot being fired. The eagerness for the stubble and its joys is not so marked. This last season the late harvest interfered very much with shooting ”

“ Still, ther shooting is very enjoyable in the spring (in the autumn, when the beasts are in their summer coats, they are hardly better worth killing than bears at the same season) , and a few days ther shooting, if it can be indulged in before proceeding after markhor or ibe [Pg 327] x, is the best possible tonic for one’s nerves. The ground—rocky slopes covered thinly with pines and bushes—always looks more dangerous than it really is. The rock is sound limestone, and does not give way under one’s foot; there is nearly always a friendly bush to hang to, and the very blades of grass are tough. ”

“ Pigeons nest in June, a season{292} during which there is absolutely no legitimate sport with the gun whatever; the woodcock are not yet grown, the snipe have passed to their northern homes, and the sportsman fills the vacancy with the emulation of surpassing his associates at trap-shooting. ”

“ After this beat, shot-cartridges were substituted for ball, and for the rest of that day and several following ones caza menor was the order of the day. The system of small-game shooting adopted on these plains combines both walking up and driving at the same time, and requires a few words of description. It must be borne in mind that we always have on one side of us—towards the north and east—the marisma, practically at this season an inland sea, and upon this circumstance the system is based. The plan of campaign consists in driving the game down upon the marisma ”

“ The first time that we went over on the three days shooting, I made forty-two, forty, and forty-five brace to my own shoulder, and on our return we enjoyed the comfort of a day's lazy rest amongst the comforts of Dalnawillan Lodge. We were all very happy, my two chums in raptures, and insisting on engaging their guns for the next season.
Man proposes, God disposes.
The birds were healthy in a way when we left, but did not look well in plumage. It had been a wet draggly summer, and that partly accounted for it; but before leaving we saw a few very seedy birds on our Dunbeath march. ”

“ If my method could be generally adopted, of letting the fifteenth day of September, after the moulting season is passed, and when the birds are beginning again to congregate on their favorite feeding-grounds, be the commencement of every sort of upland shooting, without any exception, the sport would be enormous ”

“ Do not be inveigled into buying a lot of useless guns, rods, or sporting paraphernalia; a real sportsman does not require them.
I think I have now pretty well exhausted the subject, and told you how to go to work.
PARTRIDGE MANORS AND ROUGH SHOOTING
Bright, beautiful, glorious June!
I have often been asked which of the four seasons I like the best; my answer has ever been the same: "The hunting, shooting, fishing, and racing." One season I detest (the very name of it gives me the cold shivers) —the London one; defend me from that ”

“ As some adjoining country is to be driven on the morrow, the night is passed in one of the many delightful shooting-boxes, simply furnished chalets with wainscot interiors, dotted about on the timber-line regions of the Duke’s shoot. The entire month of October is thus devoted to driving, and never is ground beaten twice the same year, so that some idea can be formed of the extent of the shoot. ”

“ Summer Shooting As a general rule our guns should be put away for a long rest before the summer vacation. There is, however, one game situation which justifies their use, and it is this situation which sometimes appropriately allows a small-gauge gun to be placed beside the rod and reel in making up a vacation outfit. ”

“ The hostess and the ladies of the party invariably join the shooters at luncheon, and some of the ladies go out with the shooters in the morning to watch their prowess in the field; but this entails a great deal of walking where partridge shooting is concerned, which is quite another thing to covert shooting in November and December. ”

“ Oorial shooting, however, is by no means a summer amusement, and there is little to be gained then except dysentery from bad water and sunstroke by hunting the deep stifling ravines and almost red-hot stony hills. In the cooler months it is most enjoyable. ”

“ That is to say, when the sportsman leaves camp at daylight the wind may be blowing from the south-east and will continue so up to any time between seven and nine o’clock, when, after chopping about for a short time, it will settle into another quarter, say north-east, for the rest of the day. In forest, thick bush, and long grass, it is often apt, at all times of the day, to be very changeable and uncertain, and may chop round in eddies when least expected, and this is what often makes shooting in these places so disappointing. It is therefore necessary to constantly test the wind. ”

“ The great deep ditches are dry in summer; and though shooting be not the object, yet a gun for knocking over casual vermin is a pleasant excuse for idling in a reclining position shoulder-high in fern, hidden like a skirmisher in such an entrenchment. ”

“ There is certainly a pleasant amount of excitement about shooting—not perhaps equal to that afforded by "forty minutes without a check," but quite enough to make one willing to brave the elements, even on a raw November morning, and to stand with one's fingers aching with cold behind a fence waiting for the advent of that little brown bird who will flash past you like a meteor—alas! ”

“ Much can, no doubt, be done to improve one’s shooting by regular practice. Some years ago I was discussing the subject with one of the old Highland proprietors who is a first-class rifle shot, and he told me that for many years he had been in the habit of practising shooting at a small wooden stag, which he had placed in all kinds of different positions and at different distances on the hill. ”

“ An old uncle of mine in Derbyshire, who has shot away a fine estate, I scarcely ever recollect to have seen out of doors without his gun. I saw him lately, when in that county, a feeble, worn-out old man, just able to totter about, but still with the gun on his arm. For those, however, who can find it in their hearts to lay aside the gun at the prescribed time, and yet long for rural sports, what can so delightfully fill up the spring and summer as the fishing-rod? There is no rural art, except that of shooting, for which modern science and invention have done so much as angling. ”

“ The law forbids any man to shoot either partridge or pheasant when the last second has passed away of the last minute of the first hour after sunset on the first day of February. No doubt the law-makers were mindful that the light one hour after sunset at the beginning of February would make it extremely difficult for a sportsman to hit a flying pheasant or partridge. The law-makers wisely drew no distinction between misses and hits—pheasant-shooting means, they held, shooting at a pheasant with evident intent to kill. ”

“ I have often blundered on them by chance while hunting for other game; but when I have gone out expressly in pursuit of them, I have never had even tolerable sport.
If the law were altered, and September shooting permitted, the case would be altered also; and in many regions of our country, as the Kaatskill Mountains, and some parts of Columbia and Saratoga counties, in New York; the Pocono Mountains, and the Blue Ridge, generally, in Pennsylvania; and many districts of Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, rare sport might be had. ”

“ There is an action about blue-quail shooting which is next to buffalo shooting—it's run, shoot, pick up your bird, scramble on in your endeavor to keep the skirmish-line of your two comrades; and at last, when you have concluded to stop, you can mop your forehead—the Mexican sun shines hot even in midwinter. ”

“ Here is a young man, full of health and vigour, on the evening of the 31st August, questioning a fellow-man, who has just travelled some hundred miles and more to Downcharge Hall, with his arm round his gun-case, as to his intention of shooting on the 1st of September. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ward writes about winter shooting:
If it could be done, the plan would be not to decide to enter the valley (i.e. Cashmere) until information of a really heavy fall in December or early in January had been obtained. The late falls of snow do not drive the deer down. The hazel buds are swelling, and they can graze on them; the sap is rising in various bushes and trees, and the deer can eat the smaller twigs, but an early fall forces the animals into the valleys.... ”

“ The sound seemed to release a spring, for instantly the fawn bounded away, his white flag raised, and joined the others in the safety of the wilderness.
Providence was kind to the buck and his family and in spite of their many enemies late autumn found them still together. Through October, the hunters' month, when the law permits the shooting of males, they all grew exceedingly wary. The sound of a gun in the still forest would send them fleeing swiftly and tirelessly toward the denser coverts to the north. ”

“ At the end of the march it is his duty to cut down thorn-trees and bushes, and drag them into camp to make the boma, when his work for the day is over, excepting that he has to collect firewood and water for himself and his mess. Should the sportsman go out to shoot, he is ever ready to follow his master for the sake of the meat. ”

“ One day resembles the other; they are like the leaves of a tree in the late autumn; all of them are brown, only one falls to the earth sooner than another.
The 1st of December--at Night.
A shooting festival has taken place and enlivened the quiet town of Meran. Early in the morning I was awakened by the band of music which accompanied the shooters from the Sandplatz in front of the Post to the targets. Then the whole day long the report of the rifles was heard and made me feel quite nervous, and later the shouts and jodles of the peasants who arrived rather the worse for wine. ”

“ Rain, as far as the actual shooting goes, does no harm to shooting. In fact, if your adversary has to wear glasses it gives you a great advantage over him as his glasses get covered with a film of water.
A dull drizzle is often accompanied by a dead calm and better shooting light, than a sunshiny day. ”

“ Naturally enough, it follows that the sound of pistol shots is frequently heard in the land, and since it happens nine times out of ten that the argument is between transients, the permanent resident is not nearly so interested in the outcome as one might imagine—particularly when the shooting takes place at night and beyond the town limits. ”