Sporting hunt

“ As it is the highest ambition of every SPORTSMAN to be in possession of a HUNTER, numbers are so called, who are by no means entitled to that distinction. Various opinions are entertained respecting the more minute properties of a horse destined to the particular purposes of the field, and this diversity can only be justified by an allusion to the kind of hounds with whom he is intended to hunt. Horses of an inferior description, {496} cross bred, and without a point of perfection, or the property of speed, may be called HUNTERS with harriers ”

“ OR BREECH-LOADING SHOT GUN.
Sporting in France has never been brought to the same state of perfection as in this country. Grouse-shooting on our wild romantic hills is a very different sport from quail, partridge, or rabbit shooting in the vales and on the hills of the Continent. Wild game requires great energy and perseverance on the part of the sportsman, courage and strength on the part of the dog, and last, though not least, great capacity on the part of the gun. ”

“ Only legitimate methods of sport should be followed; torch hunting and the slaughter of game in deep snow or in the water are held to be unsportsmanlike.
Hunting big game in the wilderness is, above all things, a sport for a vigorous and masterful people. The rifle-bearing hunter, whether he goes on foot or on horseback, whether he voyages in a canoe or travels with a dog-sled, must be sound of body and firm of mind, and must possess energy, resolution, manliness, self-reliance, and capacity for hardy self-help. ”

“ Shooting at driven game on occasions when the day's sport includes elaborate feasts in tents on a store of good things brought in waggons or on the backs of sumpter mules, while the sport itself makes no demand upon the prowess of the so-called sportsman, is but a dismal parody upon the stern hunting life in which the man trusts to his own keen eye, stout thews, and heart of steel for success and safety in the wild warfare waged against wild nature. ”

“ They usually know nothing at all of sport, though professing to know a good deal, as in their vocabulary sport is only another name for exercise: they fondly imagine that the man who trots on horseback every morning round the Tier-Garten, especially if he wears English gaiters and carries a hunting-crop, is a sportsman, and consider any game “sporting” where there is plenty of running—even if no demand be made on the courage, decision, quickness or other mental qualifications of the players. ”

“ The costume of the next great amusement of the country, that of Hunting, differs at present in few essential points from what it was in the sixteenth century. The chief variations may be included in the disuse of killing game in inclosures, and in the adoption of more speed, and less fatigue and stratagem in the open chace; or in other words, it is the strength and speed of the fleet blood-horse, and not of the athletic and active huntsman, or old steady-paced hunter, that now decide the sport. ”

“ Otherwise how could a veteran sportsman, who in his time has shot so many thousand partridges, still feel a pleasure whenever he brings one down, and always find something new, something peculiar in the fact? How much greater and more permanent is this attraction in sports, where a thousand dangers offer themselves to the hunter, as is the case in hunting the larger animals of prey! I gratefully saluted every new day as the offerer of fresh joys: disregarding difficulties and fatigue, I constantly seized my good rifle again, and merrily followed the same routes. ”

“ Again, in the case of shooting and fishing, it is strange that English gentlemen should love to do the work which should be done (if done at all) by the butcher and fishmonger. Here too, as in hunting, the skill of the sportsman lends to the sport a seeming charm, which it would not otherwise possess. Yet the essential point of the sport does not lie in this exercise of skill, but in the fact that the animal's life is at stake. Sport is none the less sport when enjoyed by the poor man, who clumsily “pots" a blackbird, than by a noble lord, who dexterously brings down a snipe or woodcock. ”

“ Chairman New Hampshire State Development Commission
An explorer told me one time that the greatest sport in the world is man-hunting. "There are thrills," he said, "in hunting big game, such as lions, tigers, wild boars and elephants. But for what may be called a great thrill there is nothing like the sport of hunting a man. That is a game that calls forth all the skill one has." ”

“ Then is the moment for the sportsman, who, concealed in a large thicket and comfortably [Pg 315] seated at the summit of the hill, listens and laughs in his sleeve as he hears the affrighted partridge call, and the timid hare rushing through the vines towards him; they approach, are within range of his gun, and ere long the shot-bag is emptied, and the sportsman is in that rare but agreeable dilemma of not knowing what to do with his game or his gun. ”

“ So I know plenty of men, experts with the shot-gun, who honestly prefer shooting quail in the East over well-trained setters or pointers, to the hardier, manlier sports of the wilderness.
As it is with hunting, so it is with riding. The cowboy's scorn of every method of riding save his own is as profound and as ignorant as is that of the school rider, jockey, or fox-hunter. ”

“ This feeling of a combination of wild country with the presence of the game itself, to form a real sport, is most keenly manifested when we turn our attention to the rifle. This noble weapon is thrown away in an enclosed country. The smooth-bore may and does afford delightful sport upon our cultivated fields; but even that pleasure is doubled when those enclosures no longer intervene, and the wide-spreading moors and morasses of Scotland give an idea of freedom and undisturbed nature. Who can compare grouse with partridge shooting? ”

“ I came to a cross road where hounds checked, and met a lady whom I asked if she had viewed my hare. She said yes, but she would rather not tell me where she had gone, as she looked on hunting as cruel. I told her I respected her feelings of humanity, and if I were of her opinion I would give up hunting. I asked her her views on shooting and whether she did not think it was cruel that so many things died from wounds. She replied, “No good sportsmen ever wound things, they always kill them dead.” How many of us, I wonder, could under this definition claim to be good sportsmen? ”

“ A race in which the contestants are paired off by being strapped together at the ankles and thighs. Remarkable speed can be obtained by practice under this handicap. There are definite rules to govern three-legged races, and official harness may be bought from sporting goods outfitters. As a race, however, it is like sack racing, to be classed among the sports designed to afford amusement rather than as a display of skill. ”

“ Talking of runs brings up a wealth of reminiscences, for it is a district in which the keenest interest is taken in the doings of hounds by the non-hunting fraternity, who are sportsmen to the very core. To set the runner and his friends talking hunting is like putting a match to gunpowder, and two brilliant bursts we noted down would make the fortune of a season’s sport. Finding a fox near Hyatt’s Spinney, the bitches, with tuneful chorus, drove him along into the open country of large acred fields surrounded by stone walls. ”

“ As contests I should select a hard day's shooting over dogs, cross-country riding, tug-of-war, boxing, long-distance rowing, or, in fact, any contest in which the special element of racing in light ships has no part. For such contests I could pick, not eight, but eighty men well over thirty years old, and if the limit were extended to twenty-four years of age I could secure an army. Is there any one who doubts that my rowing men would knock the non-athletes into a cocked hat? For it must be remembered that the bulk of rowing men are not exclusively devoted to oarsmanship. ”

“ Hare hunting is, in the estimation of the sporting world, held in a certain degree inferior to the other two, (so far as hard riding and personal courage is concerned;) because the exercise is not so violent, nor is the chase of equal duration. ”

“ The balls fly round—the thong binds tight—it is a deadly weapon. The user of it rides and stalks and sees and throws and feels the same as any other hunter. Time and place, weapon and game have little to do with any differences in hunters.
Up to this 1919 hunting trip in the wilds I had always marveled at the fact that naturalists and biologists hate sportsmen. Not hunters like the Yellow Knife Indians, or the snake-eating Bushmen of Australia, or the Terra-del-Fuegians, or even the native country rabbit-hunters—but the so-called sportsmen. ”

“ The desire to kill is instinctive, and, refined under civilizing influences, produces the sportsman. The mere love of killing for the sake of doing so soon palled on people who had any conception of sport. The true theory of sport, whether in playing games or in hunting, necessarily involves the idea of a contest or trial of skill wherein there is a certain element of chance. The rapid destruction of game, consequent upon the easy mastery of nature by man, led in quite early times to the establishment of game preserves and the enactment of laws for the preservation of game. ”

“ But if close and judicious hunting be necessary, the places to be beaten are comparatively few, and the sportsman’s eye readily detects the spot where the pack is sure to be discovered. He leaves the open feeding-grounds for heathery knowes and sheltered valleys; and while the uninitiated wearies his dogs in vain over the hill-side, where the birds, hours before, might have been expected, the older sportsman profits by his experience, and seldom fails in discovering the dell or hillock, where, in fancied security, the indolent pack is reposing.—Bewick—Wild Sports. ”

“ It is pleasant for the sportsman to be in countries so alive with game; yet it is so plenty that one would think shooting pigeons or grouse would seem more like slaughter, than the excitement of skill to a good sportsman. Hunting the deer is full of adventure, and needs only a Scrope to describe it to invest the western woods with historic associations. ”

“ Hunting, in respect to the enjoyment, as well as the description of each particular kind of CHASE, will be found under their distinct heads of "Hare-Hunting," "Fox-Hunting," and "Stag-Hunting;" leaving nothing for introduction here, but such general remarks, and salutary inculcations, as appertain solely to the systematic concerns of the field. The prudent sportsman is invariably the guardian of his own safety ”

“ In the old days sport filled up our leisure hours, but that, in these days, is not always to be had without going far afield, as, from the number of guns in the hands of the natives, the game within their reach has been mostly destroyed. ”

“ Then the inexplicable charms of danger excite the sportsman's feelings; his physical faculties, like those [Pg 169] of the Indian, are doubled; he grasps his rifle with a firmer clutch, and looks down the blade of his hunting-knife with anxiety and yet with satisfaction. It grows dark, but his eyes pierce the gloom—his life is at stake, but he forgets that it is so; for the love of the chase, the wild pleasures of the huntsman, have taken possession of his soul. ”

“ Such being the case, no wonder that the numbers of horsemen increase every day, and that the hunting field, from the select company of a few country squires and hard-riding young men, has developed into an unruly mob of people, who ride over the hounds, crush together in the gateways, and follow like a flock of sheep through the gaps and over the fences, negotiated by more skilful or courageous sportsmen. ”

“ There are the sporting farmer, a doctor or two, boys on ponies, parsons on cobs, strangers from London, neighbours from South Devon, the master of Pixton and other "county" people, and of course every hunting lady of the district, not all of whom use the side saddle! Among this goodly company hardly one is there whose thoughts and anxieties are not centred on the chase—the chase stripped of polish and luxury, the chase divorced from good cheer and even from opportunities for vain display. The instinct and passion of the hunter possesses them all. ”

“ The sun gets up, and the mist shines like silver gauze. They pass the hounds jogging along to a distant meet, at the heels of the huntsman's hack, whose face is about the color of the tails of his old pink, as he exchanges greetings with coachman and guard. Now they pull up at a lodge, and take on board a well-muffled-up sportsman, with his gun-case and carpet-bag. An early up-coach meets them, and the coachmen gather up their horses, and pass one another with the accustomed lift of the elbow, each team doing eleven miles an hour, with a mile to spare behind if necessary. ”

“ But men define sport differently. To those whose ambition it is to kill really wild game in a wild and savage country in which they will get but little help from any but their own right hands, to them I say, try the high solitudes round Elbruz and the ironstone ridges of Svânetia.
The best time for sport in the mountains is the end of June, July, August, and the first week in September, after which another month may be spent profitably hunting bear and boar in the chestnut forests on the Black Sea; for aurochs the hunter should be in the sylvan labyrinths at the head of the Kuban in August. ”