Part 34

In summer these birds are widely distributed through nearly every wood in the country, and the majority of the large flocks we see in the winter come from abroad. 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. But in hard frost, when there is some frost fog in the air, through which the birds look as big as barndoor fowls with their puffed-out feathers, they are almost careless of man or gun. At least, they are so occasionally, and in such circumstances the author has shot lots of them from the roadside hedge without any concealment, but by merely walking along and shooting those which rose nearest to the fence. Another way of shooting them is to wait for them to come in to roost. The latter gives a few very sporting shots, but neither plan is likely to give great sport, and the best is undoubtedly to be had only by the double means of the use of decoys and a constant and simultaneous disturbance of the pigeons in all the coverts of a neighbourhood by a number of guns.

In this way the birds are kept upon the move all the time, they are attracted to your hide by your decoys or dummy pigeons, and many times over 100 and sometimes over 200 pigeons have in this way been killed in one day by a single gun. The shooting is all the harder because of the necessity of shooting from a shelter, except in snow-time, when occasionally a white nightshirt is a good substitute for any hide, and the gunner may stand out in the open unobserved by the birds. Very tall bamboo rods are useful to fix up dummy or stuffed wood pigeons, _head to the wind_, on the tallest branches of the trees near by the sportsman’s hide. Others can be placed upon the ground to give additional confidence to the coming birds. Even better results can be obtained by the use of one or two live decoys on the ground amongst the dummy or stuffed birds.

A live decoy is best used on the principle of the “play bird” of the bird-catching fraternity. He is made to rise from the ground occasionally, so that he flaps his wings and settles again. This is done by the pulling of a string which is fastened to the pigeon and works over a lever. Anything in the shape of a couple of sticks placed some yards apart, with the string fastened to the farther from the shooter and running loosely over the top of the nearer, will answer the purpose of hoisting up the pigeon 4 feet or a yard. In tying it to the running string between the two sticks, it is necessary so to arrange as not to impede the wing movement and not to turn over the bird in flipping it upwards. It is not the rise that must be looked to for attracting wild ones, but the natural way the bird settles after it has been flipped into the air. This will be seen much farther away than the dummies on the ground, or even those in the trees, but it is not so much because of the distance whence it is seen as because of the confidence it begets that it is the best form of decoy. In this sport the quicker one shoots the better, because there are always more birds coming, and if you wait they may get near enough to hear the shot, or even to see the smoke, after either of which those particular birds are lost for the day. The best position for a hide is in the fence of a covert, near to not very tall trees on which dummies can be placed, and where the adjoining field affords food—for choice, a turnip or a clover field.

The shooting at settling pigeons as they steady themselves is child’s play, but the ambitious gunner need not wait for this, and will have plenty of opportunities of being dissatisfied with his own skill. If there should be big hawks about, as described by Lord Walsingham of one of his famous shoots, the gunner is likely to realise that even wood pigeons can emulate the twisting of the snipe and the speed of a down-wind grouse, and do it all at one time.

It may be asked whether wooden dummies are likely to take in the live birds. There is no doubt about that, if they are set head to wind, as the real thing always sets himself. Moreover, it has occurred that a peregrine has so much mistaken the nature of these imitations as on one occasion to dash at one of them, hurl it yards away, and suffer himself to become a gunner’s substitute for the tardy quarry, and so to gaze out of a glass case ever after as a warning to rash and greedy humanity.

The author believes that Mr. Mason of Eynsham Hall, who now has Drumour in Perthshire, holds the record for a day’s wood pigeon shooting. He is not very certain of the score, but believes it was 253 birds, if memory is reliable.

With all the records of trap shooting before him, the author cannot make up his mind to occupy space with them; for, as already said, they are not comparable amongst themselves.

DEER IN SCOTLAND

The kind of rifle best suited for red deer in Scotland is a double .303, .256, or .275. These weapons with a hollow-fronted or a soft-nosed bullet can be made to expend all the impact energy within the body of a deer, whereas if hard the bullets would pierce a stag from end to end and possibly do him no immediate damage. Magazine single rifles would be almost as effective if they were not noisy in loading, and single loaders are slow, but almost as extremely moderate in price as the latter. The sporting range for a stag before the express rifles was from 40 to 100 yards. The express increased the range at which a true sportsman would risk a shot up to 150 yards, and the high velocity rifles named above are doubtless as deadly at 250 yards as the Henry rifle was at 100 yards. The flat trajectory of a rifle giving an initial velocity of from 2000 to 2400 feet per second is of even more importance than the latter’s greater energy of impact, for deer are very easily killed if hit in the chest cavity by an expanding bullet, as those are which are soft-nosed or hollow-pointed. The latter is much the better principle for deer, because expansion is then caused as much by striking the soft flesh or the skin as it is by striking a bone. The cause of the expansion in the latter case is hydraulic pressure, increased with the velocity of the bullet, through the 87 per cent. of water of the deer’s flesh.

Deer forests vary in value even more than they do in rentals. Many of them are let from year to year with “limits” of stags set by agreement. When, as often happens, these limits are so high that the forests cannot produce as many good deer, the yearly tenants possibly shoot bad stags, and make up their number in this way. These bad stags are mostly young beasts which ought to come in for the rifle of some future tenant. So are prospects ruined by the “limits” that ought to improve them. Forests of this character are well known, and only find tenants amongst the uninitiated, who are too proud or too busy to ask for information.

On the other hand, where forests are let on lease or kept in the hands of proprietors, a totally opposite system of “nursing” sometimes goes farther than sporting sentiment approves. At one time, deer wire was much resorted to in order to keep the fat winter-fed stags at home. But a park stag has no sporting value, and so the wire has to a great extent been abandoned. But feeding by hand is increasing. The fact is that there are more deer than the forests will support both in winter and summer, and deer that are fed get as tame as calves in the winter. In the autumn the shooter will not be able to detect this result of hand feeding, but he is very likely to hear of it, or even to see pictures taken of the wild deer herd playing in the presence of the camera. This is calculated to lower the values of deer forests, as the idea of the red deer’s wildness is reduced.

Much more might be done than has been attempted by introducing fresh blood from the Caucasus, where the stags are as big as wapiti, and in the Carpathians cross freely with the Western sort to be found in Scotland. The two varieties meet naturally in the Carpathian Mountains. The wapiti second crosses are not considered successful. They are wapiti without the size, and red deer without the antlers. But some of the first crosses have been fine beasts. Crossing is rather out of favour in Scotland, because park deer were used for the purpose, and park deer are supposed to introduce domestic habits and appearance. But in the wild high altitudes of the Caucasus is a race of deer as wild, as hardy, and twice as big as those of Scotland, and also they have splendid heads, out of all proportion more massive than the Scotch stags’ heads.

His Majesty the King prefers deer driving to stalking. Deer stalking is a young man’s sport, except where the hills and hill paths enable deer ponies to go almost anywhere. But stalking, and not driving, is the sport of the Highlands, probably as much because driving deer is helping one’s neighbours as for any other reason. The paintings of deer drives that one still sees many engravings of are for the most part fancy affairs. Deer generally move slowly, and not like race-horses. In going through a pass they usually travel at a pace they intend to keep up for five or ten miles. They may rush sometimes, but the author believes that this artistic idea had its origin in the time of the deerhound. The Scotch manner of finding deer is by “spying” with the telescope. The Continental manner is by listening for the “roar,” or love challenge, of the stags in the deep woodlands where “spying” would be impossible. Consequently, the woodland deer of the Continent is shot in the rutting season, unless he is driven. In Scotland, leases make the season terminate by the end of the first or second week in October.

The sight of deer is remarkably sharp, but they trust much more to their olfactory powers for protection, and they generally take a couch where their eyes protect them from the down-wind enemy and their noses from the up-wind approach of a foe. Then they prefer to travel up wind. A novice may succeed as well as an old hand if he can shoot and judge distances, because as a novice he will never try to stalk a stag for himself. That higher sportsmanship is to be learnt with years, but at the beginning the professional stalker is as necessary as the rifle itself. To protect him, it has been said that the deer trusts most of all to his sense of smell, next to that of sight, and lastly to that of hearing. Probably at the same stalk it is not very uncommon to observe both sight and hearing mislead the stag into danger, and smell to put him right. The author has fired at and missed a stag, which started away from the sound, saw the splash of the bullet beyond him, and, trusting his sight before his hearing, rushed back towards the shooter; then he has got the scent of the latter, and thus known all about the situation in an instant. The echo may often confuse stags, and so make them mistrust their own sense of hearing. They will often apparently gaze at a man in full view of them and appear not to see him unless he moves. The very slightest movement is enough. But although the wind in the corries often plays curious tricks in warning a stag that is apparently safely up wind of the stalker, it is doubtful whether it ever plays tricks against the stag and sends him back into the arms of the stalker, as a splash from a ball in the water does sometimes.

It may be remarked that since the Government have cut down the .303 to 25 inches, instead of its previous 30 inches, it makes a very fair stalking rifle, although it is no longer the arm of precision it was at long range. In order to maintain the velocity, they have been obliged to cause more pressure in the chamber by altering the shape of the “lead,” or leading passage for the bullet, from the chamber to the bore of the rifling. If, however, they have been able to do this by this means, what could they not have done by applying the same improvement to the long barrel! Only in the last year before its condemnation, the latter had been discovered to be the best barrel in the world when properly loaded. But it required a bigger charge than the Government ever gave to it. Messrs. Kynoch claim a great improvement for this rifle by the discovery of their axite powder, and with all these improvements there seems now to be no reason why the sportsman in ordering new rifles should be satisfied with any less flat trajectory than that given by the Mannlicher with its initial 2350 foot-seconds velocity. The author will not discuss trajectories in this work, because he has reason to question the accuracy of the text-books, including the last issued by the Government; and it would be clearly unwise to challenge criticism here, without having the space to enter fully into the matter.

BIG GAME

As we have nothing bigger than a red deer in a state of nature, all the big game has to be looked for abroad. There is really no country which can easily and quickly be reached where big game is to be shot. Somaliland and British East Africa probably afford the best chances for African species, Wyoming the best for wapiti in the United States. India and the adjoining countries is now, as it always has been, the greatest big-game shooting arena in the world. It might have been challenged by South Africa in the days of Gordon Cumming, but that district was soon shot out by the Boers. However, South Africa at that time will for ever remain a lesson to game preservers. It swarmed with an enormous variety of big game, against the increase of which the unmolested lions and other beasts of prey were powerless for harm. They had no effect whatever in restricting the increase of buffalo, antelopes, and zebra. Yet the fashion inclines to believe that a few peregrine falcons would seriously damage the stocks of grouse in Scotland and Yorkshire. Probably, if the truth were known, there were as many grouse in Scotland before anyone ever thought of killing vermin as there are now. It is very often forgotten that vermin eat vermin as well as other creatures.

The question of rifles for big game would occupy more space than the whole of these pages to treat of it adequately. Briefly, it may be said that for each animal there is a best rifle, and for hardly any two species is the same weapon the best. A compromise is effected by using different bullets for the same rifle, and the principle on which to choose weapons is to go for a thoroughly effective weapon for the most important species to be hunted, and by altering the bullet make it do moderately well for other less important beasts. In hunting for elephants and buffalo, it is necessary to be able to stop a charging beast with a temple hit. Both the elephant and the buffalo of Africa are particularly hard to bring down with a forehead shot, or they were before the days of high velocity rifles of from .500 to .600 bore. Those of .303 bore and less are not to be trusted unless they smash the brain, and themselves smash up in the brain, and not before or after piercing it. A No. 6 shot pellet is about one five-thousandth the weight of a partridge, and has no immediate effect on the bird unless it enters a vital spot. The 215 grain bullet of the .303 weighs about one two hundred-thousandth the weight of an elephant, and yet there have been those who advise the use of such bullets for these beasts. It appears to the author, who has never shot an elephant, but has listened to all views of those who have shot them, that the small-bore men trust a great deal to the natural timidity of the big beasts, and believe that they will not charge even if they are wounded. Of course elephants differ in temper at various times more than most animals, and a charging African elephant at close quarters is possible, to say the least.

The big bore solid bullet has been displaced to a great extent by high velocity bullets of less weight and diameter but more length. These bullets are trusted to pierce farther than the old 4 bore bullet, and to give as severe a shock. The object is to do as much damage within the head as possible, and not merely to pierce it. Expanding bullets are not to be trusted for this business, because the bone of an elephant’s head from the frontal shot makes all bullets tend to flatten up too much, unless they are very hard. In other words, for these hard-skinned, hard-boned animals the biggest bullet makes the biggest hole, and any expanding of the bullet tends to break it up and prevent an entry into the vitals. For soft-skinned animals it is very different. An expanding bullet is in every way preferable to a hard bullet, whether from big or small bore. The latter has a tendency to go through the animal and expend its energy on the other side, and the former tends to flatten out and smash up large portions of the internal organs and to remain in them.

But every prospective big-game hunter will be wise to go to some of those who make it a business and a specialty to fit out expeditions, and there he will not only hear the latest views of those who have returned from expeditions, but see the very latest designs for increasing the effectiveness of rifles. If the author were going for big game, and especially dangerous game, the first persons he would consult are Mr. Henry Holland (whose opportunities of hearing the latest views of sportsmen returned from expeditions are unique), Messrs. Rigby, Purdey, Westley Richards, and Gibbs of Bristol, for the last new thing, because rifles cannot be said to have reached finality, and are being evolved and improved every day, as is also the powder to be used with them.

There is at present considerable difference of opinion as to whether .450 high velocity rifles are equal to the task of dropping an African elephant by a frontal shot.

Mr. Naumann believes that they are equal to anything, and he has had experience; but then he may have been lucky in not having his bullet deflected from the brain by the mass of bone it has to break through. A great deal would certainly depend upon the angle at which the bullet first struck the bone. Steel cores to the bullets prevent expanding or breaking up of that part of the bullet, but not of the leaden covering, and this expansion necessarily would greatly retard the speed and distance of penetration.

A VARIED BAG

SEAL SHOOTING

There was some talk of a sportsman’s badge being earned by the person who had killed a seal, a stag, and a golden eagle. The former is very easy to kill, but very difficult to bag. It must be shot absolutely dead instantaneously, or it struggles into the water and there sinks. It has to be caught when basking on the rocks or sands, and this generally means shooting from a boat in a sea which will not be still, so that the chances of a brain shot are not great. To shoot seals when they come up to have a look at a passing boat is to wound them generally, but if they are killed they sink. Possibly the only advantage of shooting seals is to save some fish. The salmon waiting to run up rivers are made to suffer greatly very often. The seal of our coasts is not the fur seal, and has little value when shot.

CAPERCAILZIE

This is the finest game bird we have, unless it be considered that the lately introduced wild turkeys are finer; both are the offspring of imported birds, for the turkeys never were British birds, and the capercailzie after extinction were re-introduced in the Taymouth Castle district by the then Earl of Breadalbane.

The birds do not grow in Scotland to nearly the size of those of the Continent, and fine as they are they give but little sport, and are thought to be objectionable in many ways. One of these is said to be that they eat the leaders of the Scotch pine and so ruin the trees; but it is difficult to believe this to be correct, for the leaders of the pines could hardly be reached from any other branch but its own, and this would prove a very insecure seat for so heavy a bird. However, capercailzie are increasing in Scotland, in spite of the determination of many woodmen to keep them down. That they form a very pretty addition to a day’s bag, and create the excitement that variety usually affords, is true enough. There is no place equal to some of the less elevated estates in Perthshire for variety of bag. There capercailzie, roe deer, brown hares, rabbits, duck, teal, blackcock, pheasants, grouse, partridges, woodcock, two sorts of snipe, and wood pigeons, as well as a variety of the scarcer kinds of duck, may all be killed in one day. But it is difficult to beat for the majority of these varieties of game in any one way; for instance, capercailzie and black game seem to require special methods of beating covers for them, and then they are not both likely to take the same course, as the caper can make but little headway up hill and the black game can. Where capercailzie are numerous they are very interesting to drive and shoot, for it is not easy to do either properly. But they are usually too scarce for special days in October, and in August they give no sport in their half-fledged condition. Seventy of these birds have been killed in driving in one day near Dunkeld. The hens lay from 6 to 13 eggs. The full-grown cock-of-the-woods weighs from 9 to 13 lbs. in Scotland, but is bigger in Scandinavia. The hen lays late in May, and the birds are polygamous. Linnæus gave the scientific name _Tetrao urogallus_ to the cock-of-the-woods, which is known in Gaelic as Capultcoille. He is Tiwr to the Norwegian, and Tjäder to the Swede; Glouhar to the Russian, and Auerhahn to the German. These birds became extinct in Ireland about 1760 and in Scotland about 1780, and were not re-introduced successfully until 1837, although repeated attempts had been made.

THE QUAIL

is rarely a winter resident in England or Ireland, but was so much more frequently in the middle of last century. Then, too, large numbers used to come to this country in May to breed here. They were supposed to leave in September, but the author believes that the majority left before the shooting season, as he has often found broods in the sixties which disappeared before the opening of partridge shooting.