Part 30

This is open to sentimental objections, of course, but there are two ways of doing even this: one of them seems to bear lesser sentimental objection than the other. The most effective plan is that one which it is said was adopted at Netherby when and before the Prince of Wales shot there. The statement has often been made, and has never been contradicted in public, so probably it is true, that when the birds are called to feed away from their home waters by the sound of a horn, they are penned up, and then let out a few at a time to fly home over the heads of the guns. The Prince has expressed the intention of never shooting at trapped creatures, and probably he is unaware how the Netherby duck were managed, because if it is done in the way described above there is a sort of penning, but so managed as to give the duck all the world before them if they elect to take chances before they come to the guns. There is absolutely nothing to show that the duck have been detained longer than just enough to divide them into small batches, but what the Prince of Wales has said does nevertheless express the sentiment of sportsmen generally. 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. If this plan is adopted, it is fairly easy with clever management to send the duck home in small batches, provided the feeding-ground is widely enough scattered, so that one party of ducks cannot see another when it is flushed or when in the air making for home. Duck imitate each other to such an extent that if they did see one lot disturbed and made to fly home, probably a great many would rise at once and do the same. Obviously the better way to avoid this is to start the duck out of covert at the end nearest home first—“home” being here, as above, used in the sense of the duck’s resting-place, which is generally, but not invariably, water. At Netherby it is said that ducks are made to consider the coverts their homes in some cases. It cannot be laid down to apply generally that any one system is the best, because all depends upon the kind of place the birds are to be reared in. However, this may be taken to apply everywhere—that it is easier to rise duck in small batches out of covert and from several miles of streams, than from sheets of water where every bird can see all that happens. The driving from pool to pool is oftenest resorted to, but in that case the artificially reared birds are more easily employed as an additional sport to many days than for regular duck days.

At Netherby there have been 10,000 hand-reared duck in a season, and difficulty only arises when it is sought to kill a good proportion of these in one day. Here there are three or four different rearing places or “homes.” Most of the eggs have in the past been purchased, and placed under domestic hens in the manner of pheasants’ eggs. At Tring Park the eggs are procured by penning off a portion of marsh and water of about 4 acres, and the birds are caught up, wing clipped, and turned out in this, in the proportion of three duck to a mallard. At Tring the young duck are started with some hard-boiled egg, bread-crumbs, and boiled rice, but at Netherby this is done with duck meal; later, they are fed on maize porridge mixed dryish, and later with maize whole and dry. At Netherby they are given a little pan of water to each coop from the first. This has to serve until they are three weeks old, when puddles 30 feet in circumference are made for them; and although ten in a coop is the rule, and they are shut in at nights along with the foster-mother, they crowd in hundreds into these clay constructed puddles. The food is also given in a small pan at each coop. Any method which drops sticky food on the backs of the ducks is sure to lead to trouble. At six weeks old the birds are taken to their permanent homes, which at Netherby are mostly the brooks or burns flowing through the estate.

Wet is not bad for young ducks as long as they can get under the brooding hen, but wet and cold as well is not their best weather, and none of the most successful breeders allow the little ducks to have their fling in large sheets of water, or even ponds or brooks, until they are six weeks old. When quite small, the greatest enemies of the duck are hot sun without shade, and cold wind. In the early stages they are best fed four times in the day, as at Netherby, where over 1000 ducks have frequently been killed in one day. There they are penned out exactly as pheasants generally are, in a field surrounded with wire netting to keep out foxes.

Obviously in no manner ever discovered can true wild duck be killed in such numbers as these. That they have been caught in numbers equally large in decoys, and could be shot by taking them away from the decoys and letting them out a few at a time in the neighbourhood of the guns, is certain, but it never has been done, and a decoy is only used as a neck-breaking trap to supply the markets with duck, widgeon, and teal.

There is nothing whatever to be said against the hand rearing of wild duck. If they are properly managed, they give far harder and better shooting than pheasants; especially is this the case if they are left long enough to get their mature plumage.

Some difference of opinion has arisen on the best size of shot to use for wild duck. Probably No. 4 is the best size, if the particular gun will shoot it well. The size to be most objected to is No. 6, which has not penetration enough for the body shots at any moderate range, and is not thick enough to make sure of hitting head or neck. If the latter is to be relied upon, No. 7 is better than No. 6, but not better than No. 8. But if this principle is adopted, only shots should be taken when the head and neck is well in view, for from behind these sizes can only wound. They wound a good deal in any case, but when duck are coming anything like straight for the gun (which seldom happens) body striking small pellets glance off like hail. No. 4 shot may not hit often enough to please shooters; but duck cannot take this size away apparently unharmed to die by slow torture. For that reason it is the sportsman’s size. The neck and head shot please the shooter, because they alone inflict sudden death in the air, and the work looks to be a clean hit and a clean miss; but when this appearance is obtained by the use of small shot things are not what they seem. Nothing can be said when the game comes down, but every bird missed must be suspected of being “tailored.”

All game birds cling to the ground or the tree tops when they are flying, more or less, as the wind suits them. The real wild duck cling to the water, and follow down the course of a stream in such a way that two or three guns can be so posted as to command the whole lateral extension of flighting duck or teal, except that both these birds are easily scared by shooting to mount far out of gun-shot. When they are mounted they do not necessarily follow the stream, for the reason that they can probably see other water far ahead, and they make for it in a direct line. But as the shots will mount them, so also a succession of men posted in their line of flight will each send them a little higher, and consequently the shooter should not only be invisible to the duck before he has fired, but after also; otherwise he will spoil sport for the next gun down stream, or up, as the case may be.

WILD WILD-DUCK

Perhaps it is a misnomer to speak of any duck as “tame,” it gives a false impression; but by wild wild-duck is meant to be implied those fowl that breed in a natural way, and are only to be killed with much success by artifice. For instance, there are three great varieties of wild-duck shooting besides the punt gunner’s business. The most practical of these is “flighting”; the next often “indulged” in, if it can be called indulgence, is “shore shooting”; and the third kind is the “gaze” system that is practised mostly upon the Hampshire Avon and Stour. There are many modifications of this system employed upon other rivers and on chains of pools.

FLIGHT SHOOTING

Taking these in the order named, it may at once be stated that flight shooting gives beautiful sport, but has the disadvantage that it is selfish amusement, because one cannot invite friends to assist in a form of sport that not only depends much on the weather, as all sports do, but altogether upon it. “Flighting” is the interception of the wild duck in the evening when they come from the sea or other resting-places to their inland feed. Consequently, the line of flight must be known, and besides, this knowledge is not quite enough, because a change of wind alters the course of the fowl, which may be said to have a different line of flight for every wind. But even when the fowler has hit off the correct land spot where the fowl go over, that is not all. The weather counts for much more than this; for it usually happens that upon a still night the duck go over at so great a height that shooting is out of the question. Then upon a starlight night they are so difficult to see that hitting is out of the question, and it is only on cloudy, windy, moonlit nights that much good can usually be done, and only then is much execution likely if a good head wind is blowing against the fowl. At most, flight shooting only lasts from a quarter to half an hour in the evening. In the morning, when the fowl have fed and betake themselves seawards, it may last a good deal longer, especially if, after those have gone which are not inclined to rest in their feeding-grounds (and there are generally a good many of these), those grounds are disturbed purposely. Flighting is a sport that has one very great advantage: if positions are well chosen—not too near either the day home or the night feeding ground—no harm whatever is done by shooting every day. The fowl cannot be driven away by that means. One hears the present generation of shooters disparaging the easy shots their great-grandfathers gloried in, but flight shooting is as old as the “scatter gun,” and it is still the most difficult of all shooting. The author’s experience of shooting in the half light is that it is next to impossible to hold sufficiently forward. But this is an observation that he has never been able to explain satisfactorily to himself. It is not suggested that half light travels slower than good light, but merely that the true position of the moving mark is not recognised by the brain as quickly as anything in a good light.

SHORE SHOOTING

This sport is much more affected by the weather even than flight shooting. Speaking broadly, the shore is a good place for a youngster to learn the art of shooting in the early season, say in September. Then the curlews and the golden and green plover will be young, and the most blundering performer will hardly be able to avoid getting near enough for a shot sometimes, and will not be able to prevent an occasional foolish young thing flying into the load. A good many shots will be fired at creatures going low down enough over water for the splash of the pellets to be a guide to the gunner for his next shot. But too much reliance must not be placed on any such appearances when the bird is more than a foot above the water, because after the pellets have passed the game they will be going so slowly as to appear far behind when they splash the water, even when, in fact, they might have been straight for the mark, or even in front. With shooting schools in such numbers, it is much more humane to rely for education upon the class of shooting given at them than to mangle birds that are of no use when killed. This remark does not, of course, apply to golden plover, which are quite as good food as a snipe, nor to green plover and curlew, which it is said are good food, but only to the terns and small fry that are not eaten.

However, clay bird shooting can never teach confidence and knowledge of what is and what is not at shooting distance. For this reason the saltings and the shore experience of a young gunner are valuable to him, although the real wild fowlers of the district have every right to believe themselves injured by people who constantly disturb fowl by shooting at “rubbish.”

The young shooter, then, should not begin by trying to see how far a gun will kill, for it is no credit at all to kill far off. It is the easiest kind of shot, because the “game” is moving relatively to the swing of the gun far slower far off than near by. It may credit the gun-maker to kill a long shot, but not the shooter when he misses the next near one. Consequently, if one must go shore shooting in summer, or before summer visitors have gone, a good way is to make a rule never to excuse a miss as being too far. It is wonderful how, by beginning at near easy shots and never missing, the ability gradually comes to make a gun do its best at farther distance; whereas beginning at long shots teaches nothing, and every miss begets loss of confidence, which is the one thing most essential in shooting. But from the summer shore shooter to the veteran winter business man of the shore, who makes a living by his gun, or at least makes his day’s wages every day he thinks it worth his time to go fowling, there is as much difference as between “W. G.” in his prime and the stoniest stone-waller who ever blocked cricket balls upon an artificial wicket. Your real clever wildfowler of the shore is not born, he is made by a lifetime of experience. He and a new-comer may start out in opposite directions, and the local may in a night and a day kill far more widgeon and duck than he can carry home at two goes (most likely he will take them in a boat), and your new-comer without assistance may never have been within shot of fowl all the time, and probably will only escape the rising tide by the help of Providence.

A would-be shore shooter, then, can only succeed by placing himself in the hands of the best local fowler he can get to take on the job. This remark is equally true with regard to the old sportsman from elsewhere as it is of the novice down for a holiday. It is not here only a question of the weather, but largely also one of geography. Every creek through the mud flats has to be mapped out in the mind of him who would make use of creeks in order to stalk wild fowl. 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. Indeed, it is not much good at any other time. It is only in the very wildest and worst of nights and days that wild fowling is at its best. There must be snow for choice, and frost also, even on the seashore. In fact, the weather must be so hard that the fowl can only feed on mud flats that are tide-washed, for the reason that everywhere else the ground is too hard, and too much covered with snow and ice, to enable ducks to reach the mud bottoms of fresh water, or to enable widgeon and teal and geese to feed elsewhere at all. About once in ten years we have six or eight weeks of such weather, and then the favoured spots swarm with fowl of all kinds to such an extent that for miles and miles along the coasts birds on the mud and in the air appear almost as numerous, and as all-pervading, as the great fat snowflakes that have little less of wills of their own than the fowl themselves, and are little less playthings and creations of the air and water.

In such wild weather three shots at knotts have resulted in a bag of 600 birds, to say nothing of the wounded. Then grey geese and brent fly low, and follow the receding, as they have to move from the flowing, tide; for they are always hungry, and it is no time to be particular. 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.

How is it that the fowl that are migrants, and have already come perhaps 2000 miles, are caught like this, maybe upon the north Norfolk coast, when by flying away to the west coast of Ireland or to sunny Spain they would find the condition of temperature they require and lots of food? Probably those that were there when the weather started its avian trials did that, and possibly the multiplication of migrants, as the storm continues, are birds that have already had a thousand miles’ race to ride before the storm and have been worsted in the attempt. If so, their weakness and want of food is the cause. They have not the strength to cross snow-covered England, where they could get no bite nor sup on the way. In other words, they perish, like Mrs. Dombey, because they have not the strength to make an effort.

It is not these belated and consequently starved birds that the shore shooter wants to make the acquaintance of, but the first to arrive on the wings of the storm, and consequently any aspirant to this kind of sport should keep in touch with the best local fowler whose services he can buy. The latter must telegraph the instant that the weather and the fowl together forecast the coming storm, and the birds know before thermometer and barometer together can indicate what is to be. Then the gunner must take the first train and telegraph to his fowler to make all arrangements, otherwise there may be a day’s loss of time when he does arrive, because his fowler will be where the thickest of the fowl are, and there will be nobody left behind who knows exactly where that is at any precise period of the day or night. All who do know will be engaged in the slaughter for themselves, for on the free saltings and the shore all men are equal who are good fowlers, and the others do not count.

When such weather as this comes, history is going to be made, history that will last a hardy honest small community a decade or more to discuss, and for the robust it is well worth joining in, but it is also worth paying for, and a good price too. It is true that by showing you around a wildfowler does not lose his own sport, or not all of it; but unless you are a good sportsman as well as a good shot, your joint bags will not equal that of an experienced fowler by himself, and consequently luxuries at zero and in a gale of snow have to be paid for on a basis far higher than ordinary keeper’s tips. That is, they have to if you want to come in for the cream of the sport.

THE “GAZE” SYSTEM

The “gaze” system of shooting is a Hampshire Avon equivalent for the shooting from tubs that has been practised for many years. The shooting from the latter is much more suitable for large marshes and open sheets of water, whereas the “gaze” is a brushwood or furze construction suitable for the river bank. But they are alike in this—that the shooting of many guns keeps the fowl upon the move, whether they ring round pools and marshes or follow the course of a stream. The habit of all fowl to prefer flying over water enables a duck “drive” (for these two methods are duck drives) to be successfully brought off without drivers. We have read of Mr. Abel Chapman’s success by the tub method in the Spanish marshes, and also of a royal son of King George III. and his want of success in shooting fowl from a tub on the Berkeley Castle haunts of the wild goose. At the latter other methods are now adopted, but the sport is not very great, although this is because of the difficulty of getting shots, and not because of any scarcity of fowl. Mr. Chapman had splendid sport in Spain, but the fowl there were greatly in excess of their numbers in England, and besides, they appear to have flown conveniently low. Much shooting by many guns generally makes the fowl mount very high, unless the shooters are very widely distributed, and really the great objection to wild wild-duck is that they take a mean advantage of the gun-maker, and often fly at heights no shot gun will reach them. But very much depends on the frequency with which they are disturbed, and unquestionably they have very pretty days of sport on the Hampshire rivers by means of these “gazes.” Where there are very many birds some will be certain to fly low enough to shoot, and they do not usually mount, in flying down a river, as they do in circling round a pool, to see whether a descent is safe. Probably this is because they believe themselves to be leaving danger behind when following the course of a river.

In making these “gazes” it is necessary that there should be protection from the sight of the fowl coming from both up and down the river, and also that the shelters should be so arranged as to enable shooters to get into them without flushing fowl close by. The way the shooting is arranged is for the manager to point out each man’s “gaze,” or hide, or butt, to him, and give him just long enough to get there a minute or two before shooting is to begin. Each gunner is requested not to fire until a certain time by the watch, which is fixed upon so as to allow the man with farthest to go to comfortably reach his “gaze” before time is up. Mr. Robert Hargreaves, who has done a good deal of this kind of shooting as well as most others, is of opinion that teal for the second barrel give the most difficult of all shooting. He describes the action of a company of teal as like the bursting of a bomb when they are shot at by the first barrel, so that for the next shot the game may be anywhere and going in any direction. This seems very admirable description, but it is only thanks to those “gazes” that the first shot is not just as difficult as the second. The teal seems to be the only bird that can set the laws of gravity wholly at defiance, and at the glint of a moving gun can shoot straight upwards, _apparently_ at the same speed it was travelling forward before being frightened. 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; but in “gaze” shooting it is necessary to watch every way. This is essentially sport in which humanity in a double sense is the best policy. To shoot farther than you can kill is to wound duck that will possibly die out at sea, and it is also to send all the duck within hearing up one storey higher, and to spoil the sport of your fellows as a consequence.