Part 10

“Be to others kind and true, As you’d have others be to you,”

will make no mistake in shooting form, and will certainly never allow his gun to rake the flanks of his neighbours as he swings his body in walking in line, nor will he allow a gun at any instant, loaded or unloaded, in loading or unloading, to point at anybody for a fraction of a second. Besides which, he will rather let off a dozen woodcocks, unshot at, than run the risk of putting out beaters’ eyes, or of being told that, “although that gun seems so harmless on the game, it has probably got some shot in it.” Besides this, a shooter is responsible for the care, and also the appearance of care, of his loader, and the two things are not quite the same; for although care implies that shooters’ bodies are safe, it does not always refrain from attacking their nerves. For instance, when empty guns are jerked about, aligning everybody in turn, it is quite safe for the bodies, but very bad for the nerves of those who do not know the guns are unloaded.

Drawing for places is the best plan of posting guns. The author has found any other way, such as trying to give the best places to the honoured guest, very unsatisfactory. You never can give the best places to some people, for they do not know how to stand still. The writer has sometimes had the best shooting himself when he has taken the worst place, simply because the “honoured guests” were acting as “flankers,” and sending the game elsewhere that should have gone to them. To show yourself as little as you like, but to move not at all, is obviously a part of good shooting form.

It is hardly necessary to say that it is not the best of form to tell a fellow-guest that the management of the beat is “rotten,” and then to make some remark that your host translates into flattery. The fellow-guest may have taken your criticism as a useful hint to the host already, with your own “great authority” attached to it.

Somewhere the author has heard that His Majesty has expressed his opinion that a pheasant shared is a good deal worse than a pheasant missed; and in the head keeper’s room at Sandringham hang some verses which therefore obviously have the King’s approval, the more surely because they hang there in spite of their greater precept than polish. They appear to round off a chapter on form in shooting with a Royal behest. Part of them read—

“Never, never let your gun Pointed be at anyone: That it may unloaded be, Matters not the least to me. You may kill or you may miss, But at all times think of this: All the pheasants ever bred Won’t repay for one man dead.”

CRACK SHOTS—I

_Bailey’s Magazine_ initiated an interest-provoking scheme when it set its readers to work to solve the difficult problem of which twelve men were the most expert in each branch of sport. It started with polo, in an article by Mr. Buckmaster, wherein the play of each man was reviewed in the true impartial spirit of criticism. The names had just then almost been officially given to the world in the Hurlingham “recent form” list; and this the readers of _Bailey_ confirmed. In one article the twelve best fishermen were voted for; and fly fishing, unlike polo, is a private sport; unlike shooting, it is not even carried out in private parties, and really there was nothing to go upon except the literary efforts of the fishermen voted upon. Because a man can write and can interest fishermen, he need not necessarily be a clever angler. Francis Francis was the one; by all accounts he was very far from the other. Consequently, the voting for anglers of highest form was on a totally different basis from that of the less private as well as the wholly public sports. Had we set the ballot-box going for crack marksmen (exclusive of riflemen and pigeon shots) sixty years ago, the man who must have come to the top was Colonel Hawker. He would have been there by right of the story he told to young shooters, for whether he was the superb marksman suggested by his writings or not, there was nobody to challenge it—no one who had shown that he knew woodcraft and watercraft half as well. Probably there has never been anyone since who could hold a candle to the Colonel for a complete knowledge of the latter art and science (for gunnery was as much a concern of his as the habits of fowl). Had we voted, we must inevitably have placed him top of the tree; because game shooting then was not a thing to be conducted in large parties, but was a concern only of my friend, my pointer, and myself. There were no spectators except the beaters, who were up the trees to mark, and the gamekeeper, who carried a game-bag, and perhaps rode a shooting pony.

Pigeon shooting did a little, a very little indeed, to make for publicity years afterwards; and there were occasional matches shot at partridges, but these were sometimes more by way of testing the game capacity of estates than the shooting skill of the marksmen. Thus on one occasion there was a match shot in the south-west corner of Scotland and in Norfolk on the same day, and although Norfolk won by a little, the bags were near enough together to prove that the two districts were then very equal as natural partridge country. That they are very unequal now only proves that the more care has been bestowed upon game in the Eastern Counties.

But had there been any voting for crack marksmen in those days, it is certain that, after Hawker, the men who were most talked of (the match makers) would have come out next. They alone were heard of by all sportsmen, and the sporting magazines had chronicled their prowess. Other shooters were “born to flush unseen, and waste their powder on the desert hare”—to misquote to fit the occasion.

In these times in a sense it is different. Men do see each other shoot in parties up to fourteen. But it is clear that when parties, even half as big, are constantly changing, and meeting fresh guns every time, that the form of any individual amongst them soon gets to be known as accurately as that of any race-horse in training at headquarters. This is how it happens that it has been possible to select a dozen men of mark and marksmanship difficult to displace in the consensus of opinion of the men they meet and shoot with.

But just as the majority were never heard of when George Osbaldeston, Lord Kennedy, Horatio Ross, Coke of Norfolk, Colonel Anson, and the rest, were shooting matches, so it may very well be that the best shots of our day never shoot in big parties, and are not known as good shots at all. There are still large numbers of shooters so much sportsmen that they think of woodcraft and sportsmanship first, and only of marksmanship as a secondary and necessary accomplishment.

What, after all, is putting a bullet into the heart of a stag at 100 or 150 yards distant? Any gun-maker’s assistant could make sure of doing it at the standing deer, provided he did not happen to suffer from buck fever, and unless he was a sportsman at heart he would not. But to stalk that stag is a problem of a very different character. The novice will probably make a mess of the simple business of following the heels of his stalker—he who carries his rifle, finds the stag, stalks him, puts “his gentleman” in position, places the rifle in his hand, and tells him when to fire. When the latter can do all that without the stalker’s assistance, he may, and will, flatter himself that the mere shooting straight was quite an elementary stage in the art of woodcraft, and that marksmanship counts for very little indeed in the most fashionable and most sporting use of firearms in Britain. Besides this, stalking is as private as fishing with the dry fly; and again, had our ancestors had to select a stalker for premier position, it would have been Scrope first and the rest nowhere, just on the same grounds as before: Scrope had described his splendid sport in his book.

Then, obviously, the shooters of grouse over dogs are barred also; because, two being company and three none, it would be impossible to take a consensus of opinion. If it were possible, what principle would choice be made upon? The mere shooting straight is very little of the work to be done. Surely the man who can handle his own brace of pointers or setters, a retriever also, and shoot as well, is a step above him who can only shoot. Then the man who can walk for ten hours is far and away better than he who is beaten in five.

In the old partridge shooting matches it was the pace that killed and the pace that won, and there are few men who can walk fast all day and shoot straight; still fewer whom people would name as the best, because they would not have seen them. Then there is the big-game hunter, who must be judged, though probably wrongly, on the size of his bag. He, too, does not perform in public. And all these sportsmen have to be left out of count in such selections as the readers of _Bailey_ have made. Their verdicts, as a matter of course, have gone to the men who can best deal with streams of game by means of three ejector guns and a couple of loaders. It is not so much a question of shooting straight as shooting straightish and often. The man who kills two out of four in one unit of time is better than he who kills three out of four in twice the time. At the end of the day the former’s bag will be the bigger, he will have had more sport, and, as the late Prince Duleep Singh advised his sons, “Cartridges are made to be let off.”

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. 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. The excellent shot who can kill 10 pheasants quickly and consecutively cannot necessarily kill 30, much less 100, in three and ten times the period. To do it, he must be in condition of the best—at least his arms must. There are crack shots like Lord de Grey, who in his prime was in a class by himself in the butts, but would not have held his own with Lord Walsingham in a stiff day’s walking up game. Some of the crack shots have not been above shooting-school practice at streams of clay birds, sent over them in order to get the arms used to working each gun fairly, quickly, and accurately, and without the man becoming demoralised by suddenly asking too much of his muscles. The writer has found his arms aching under the work as if with rheumatism.

The voting placed Lord de Grey still at the top of the tree; one shooter remarking that he was quite in a class by himself. Lord de Grey uses hammer ejector guns, and he can always shoot slowly, and on his day (and they are mostly his days) he is said to be just as quick as the chances occur; some of his greatest admirers declare that you can never tell by the interval when he changes guns. Mr. R. Rimington Wilson and Lord Walsingham are bracketed for second place: the latter does less shooting than he used to, and the former more. Most of the modern generation have gone to school to Lord Walsingham, and Mr. Wilson is described as the best grouse shot in the world. The Prince of Wales takes rank amongst the twelve best, and it is said, to the credit of the Royal sportsman, that he would always draw for places if he were allowed to do so. His keenness is beyond question, and his experience abroad as well as in this country is well known. As a shot he is very quick. Prince Victor Duleep Singh is remarkably quick too, and as accurate as can be. Low flying pheasants he can kill regularly without hitting them elsewhere than in the head and neck, but then he went to school to his father at ten years old. Amongst the men who have come to have great credit as shots of late years is Mr. J. F. Mason, who now has Drumour, long shot over by the late Barclay Field. Mr. Mason can kill wild pigeons as well as game, the former with results never exceeded. The Hon. H. Stonor is another gunner selected by the voting for the twelve cracks; he is particularly good at high pheasants, and is built for shooting. Mr. Wykeham Martin and Mr. E. de C. Oakley are said to be quite exceptional performers in a high wind. Lord Falconer, whose shooting with the late Baron Hirsch in Hungary was a revelation, and Lord Ashburton, who gave us all a lead in partridge preserving, are noted for being graceful shots, and as effective as any; and Mr. Fryer of Newmarket is, with a 6¼ lb. gun and 1 oz. shot, as deadly as any man living, on driven partridges. Mr. Arthur Blyth, one of our greatest partridge preservers, and Mr. Heatley Noble are both included in the marksmen twelve. It will be noted with interest that several of these gunners use hammer guns, and most of them guns of full weight and a light charge of shot.

It is very likely that _Bailey’s_ scheme found severe critics, but after all it is a better plan than that which allowed Hawker and Scrope to write themselves into fame, and it will certainly go to make the History of Sport.

CRACK SHOTS—II

The author having criticised the article in _Bailey’s Magazine_ in the above remarks, was nevertheless himself responsible for it all, except the voting, so that his criticism is obviously intended in good part, and is only to indicate what a very limited class of shooting comes under review in an article of the kind. There have been wonderful shots who cannot be compared. For instance, good snipe shots, who saw Mr. Hugh Owen shoot snipe in Pembrokeshire thirty-five years ago, told the author that he not only beat them, but out-classed them, as well as everyone else he ever met. What surprised was the great distances he killed these birds consecutively with No. 5 shot—the size always used by Lord Walsingham.

Since that article was written the author has often been told that Lord de Grey is the only shooter who is as good as his reputation. No doubt he is as good, for many of those who voted put him “in a class by himself,” and more particularly when the shooting was extra difficult, as in a strong wind and when birds were far out. Then his hammer ejector choke bores, which are handed to him at full cock, and always loaded with 42 grains of Schultze powder and 1–1/16 of No. 5, have a way of finding the right place at a greater rate than any others. It has been said of him that you can never tell by the interval when he changes his guns. The two most discussed incidents in his shooting have been when he accomplished five grouse coming together, by changing guns after he had shot one barrel, and then had time to get two more of the five in front of him and two behind. On another occasion, in walking through covert a cry of “mark” brought round Lords de Grey and Walsingham, when, amongst the trees, they accounted for four partridges each, or the whole covey of eight birds. Lord de Grey is a very deliberate shot when he has time to be so, and he has been seen to swing his gun some distance without succeeding in getting on his game, and in consequence to refrain from shooting. Therefore no question can arise about the fact that he aligns, at least when there is time. Lord Walsingham wrote some years ago to describe to a newspaper his method of killing wood pigeons, which, amongst other evolutions, had been occasionally chased by a falcon. He said: “The way in which a certain measure of accuracy, although by no means a satisfactory measure to myself, was attained in shooting at these wood pigeons could scarcely be better described than in the words of your correspondent. He writes: ‘I myself race the birds, as it were, in my mind without bringing up the gun; I then swing it and fire. This swing or pitch is all done in one motion’! So far I go with him entirely, but when he adds, ‘and the gun is not stopped even after the trigger is pulled,’ I differ from him in practice. In my case the gun is stopped at the instant of pulling the trigger, having been swung to as nearly as possible to the exact spot the bird may be expected to reach by the time the charge can get there to intercept it.” Lord Walsingham was using 3¼ drams of Hall’s Field B powder and 1⅛ oz. of No. 5 shot from a cylinder gun.

The number of cartridges used for the 1070 grouse in the day in 1888 was 1500. As a feat of endurance and woodcraft this is hardly likely ever to be surpassed, especially with black powder. Only a shooter who never suffered from gun headache could have done it. But even when that is said, the keeping the birds on a 2200 acre moor for 20 drives is the point of the story. When the late Sir F. Milbank killed his 728 birds, he reduced his shot to ⅞ of an ounce in order to get penetration, and declared that he would still further reduce to ¾ of an ounce for the sake of still more penetration.

Mr. F. E. R. Fryer has been observed to have three pheasants dead in the air at once, and yet in another page he is described as a deliberate shot. It has also been shown upon another page that it takes just ⅓ of a second to bring the backward movement in recoil to rest. Probably the reaction of the shoulder takes as long after recoil, so that if the tallest first bird fell from 40 yards high, and took, by the action of gravity, 2¾ seconds to reach the ground, when quite dead, we may examine the time thus:—

Recoil and reaction after first kill ⅔ seconds Fresh aim and let off ¾ seconds Recoil and its reaction after second kill ⅔ seconds Fresh aim and let off ¾ seconds —— Total 2.83 or about 2¾ seconds

Three-quarters of a second seems to be ample time for getting aim and letting off. Partridges and pheasants when there is no wind travel about 60 feet a second, and Mr. Fryer has also been observed to take quadruple toll out of a covey; if we may assume this done within 40 yards in front and 40 behind, we have 4 birds killed in 4 seconds.

This would represent the times:—

First recoil and recovery ⅔ seconds Second aim and let off ⅔ seconds Second recoil and recovery ⅔ seconds Third aim and let off ⅔ seconds Third recoil and recovery ⅔ seconds Fourth aim and let off ⅔ seconds

So that four from one covey of partridges represents quicker shooting than three pheasants in the air together, provided, of course, that the partridges are not coming against a wind, and are not in straggling formation.

These two little calculations are made in order to show the enormous importance of as little recoil as possible, and that is also the reason that the author has set himself to design a ballistic pendulum capable of easily taking the momentum of recoil, and the momentum of the shot, at the same discharge, which is a thing that cannot be done by the chronograph, because that instrument only records the time (not the striking velocity) of the thing that hits it and breaks connection, and that thing is the fastest pellet instead of the average of all, or the total of the pellets. Powder-makers can still further reduce recoil; that is, if they are encouraged by a general demand for those powders that give the least recoil for an equal power of shot impact.

The author was reminded not long ago by the Rev. W. Serjeantson of an occurrence of thirty years ago. Three guns, of which he and the author’s were two, were shooting together over dogs, and twice on the same day, after a brood of grouse had risen, the author, having been fully occupied in shooting, asked the keeper which way the rest of the brood had gone. His reply was on both occasions, “They have all flown one way.” That is, there were six up and six killed, which sounds much more commonplace than it really is, because, as it so seldom happens that three guns do shoot together over dogs, when by chance they do so there is a very good excuse for two barrels to be let off at the same bird, but of course only when the birds rise all together, as they did on these occasions.

The most sporting bird the author has made the acquaintance of is the Virginian quail. Three guns advancing to a point at these birds would not often get six birds at the flush of the covey, although, on an occasion when they rise at twice, two guns have got five, as happened once when, with Mr. Hobart Ames, who is President of the Shovel Trust in America, the author was shooting over his and Mr. H. B. Duryea’s celebrated setters, one of which could easily have earned in America £500 a year at the stud if his owner had not preferred to shoot over him. But it is not at the rise of the covey that these birds are difficult. As soon as they are flushed they fan out and take to covert, and their twisting second rise, with the scrub between them and the gun, makes them very difficult. Mr. and Mrs. Duryea are both remarkably good quail shots; the author could not say which is the better, but he believes Mr. Duryea claims to be the better turkey shot, a claim which the lady admits. Mr. Duryea can even make the decoy turkey gobble by the accuracy of his shooting upon occasion. In Tennessee the author was by their kindness introduced to the old English fashion of shooting by the use of shooting ponies. The mounted guns, whether one or three, had three handlers of dogs, each mounted also, and each working a brace of speedy dogs, and by that means covering three-quarters to a mile of country at a beat. The horn is used to sound “a point,” and then the six miles an hour “fox trot” is increased to hunting speed, until the point is reached, when the shooters slide off and shoot. The useless (?) nigger can, at such times, manage to lead six horses. This sport is a sort of cross between hunting and shooting, as also was that of ancient England, if all accounts are true. So was hunting in the New Forest, when William Rufus missed his way, and ran up against an arrow by mistake.