The Complete English Wing Shot

Part 1

THE COMPLETE ENGLISH WING SHOT

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME

THE COMPLETE MOTORIST THE COMPLETE GOLFER THE COMPLETE PHOTOGRAPHER

H.M. THE KING AS A BOY ]

THE COMPLETE ENGLISH WING SHOT

BY G. T. TEASDALE-BUCKELL

WITH FIFTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK: McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. LONDON: METHUEN & CO. 1907

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PREFACE

When the publishers asked me to write a book upon Shooting and its interest, I at first doubted whether I knew enough of the matter to fill a book of much size without repeating all the traditional lore that is to be found in every unread text-book, but I had no sooner undertaken the business than I came to a conclusion that has since been confirmed, that to deal as best I could, with the kind help of many sportsmen, with the controversial subjects would have taken the whole space at my disposal for any one of them. Consequently, ever and again I have had to decide what to eliminate, and I have tried to leave out that which most people know already, and to deal as best I can in short space with questions that are now more or less under discussion, and consequently those that game preservers and shooters in this and other countries are thinking about. It has been very difficult to draw a line between the controversial and current subjects and the unchallenged facts which have been too often repeated already, but that this is the right principle is, I think, obvious from the position that the opposite course would involve. What is meant can be best explained by glancing at a few traditional survivals in gunnery and shooting, and its accompanying unnatural history, which, along with many others, would occupy space if one were to attempt to deal with all the accepted, as well as the repudiated, statements upon them. Nobody wants to be told that he should put the powder into a cartridge-case before the shot, but to begin at the beginning would involve the necessity of giving that and other puerile information. Nobody would be the better for a learned chapter on gun actions. In the first place, these actions are no longer patents, they are open to anyone who likes to use them, and consequently the days when one selected a gun-maker because his patent action was conceived to be the better, are long gone by. The reason is that each gun-maker can be trusted to use the best principle when he has a choice of them all, or at least the best available for the money to be expended upon its making in the gun. Ejectors are nearly in the same position; but single triggers are not. I was so fortunate as to make a discovery in regard to single triggers that is now acknowledged to be of great assistance to the gun trade; the want of it had for a hundred years been the stumbling-block to the patent single triggers that had begun to trouble gun-makers in the time of the celebrated Colonel Thornton. That is referred to in its proper chapter, because single triggers now occupy the place that formerly actions held, and at a later date ejector systems usurped, in assisting to the selection of a gun-maker.

To begin at the beginning in the repudiation of frequently accepted fallacy possibly would not compel a reference to the sometime beliefs that hares change their sex; that skylarks fall into snakes’ mouths after their skyward song—a statement that troubled Mr. Samuel Pepys, who, as Secretary to the Admiralty under two protectors and two monarchs, and as a member of the Royal Society, should have been in a position to get the best information. Nor would such a beginning involve the repudiation of the belief once held that bernicle geese turned into “bernacle” molluscs, or vice versâ. But it would oblige an author to enter into repudiation of the oft-stated belief that nitro powder is quicker than black powder, although big and heavily charged caps have to be employed for the nitro, whereas the small were amply sufficient for black powder. One would also be obliged to point out that the oft-repeated prophecy, that the smallest stock of grouse bred the better August crop, has been doomed to disaster always, and that precisely the reverse is true. However, there are still people who by what they say must be judged to hold to the unproved proposition that the stones breed grouse.

COL. THORNTON’S PLUTO (BLACK) AND JUNO. BY GILPIN. SHOWING WHOLE-COLOURED POINTERS SIMILAR IN FORMATION TO THOSE OF SUTTON SCARSDALE TO-DAY ]

It would be necessary also to point out that some parrot cries are a hundred years old and at least forty years out of date, but are still repeated as if they were original and true. Some of these are that pointers have better noses than setters, and also require less water; that cheese affects dogs’ noses (sanitation by means of carbolic acid does so, but cheese is harmless enough); that Irish setters have more stamina and pace than any others. The latter statement I have seen disproved for forty years at the field trials in this country, and the former has always failed to find corroboration at the champion stamina trials in America. I have had great chances of forming an accurate opinion, as I entered and ran dogs at the English championship trials over thirty-six years ago, and I am the only one who has ever judged at the champion trials of both England and America.

It would be necessary also to repudiate the mistake that “foot scent” is something exuding from the pad of an animal and left upon the ground by the contact of the feet. It would be necessary to affirm that fat from the adder is not the best cure for the poison when dog or man is bitten, but that raw whisky taken inwardly in large doses is; and as dogs will sometimes point these vipers, it might be well to affirm that these creatures do not swallow their young, as is commonly supposed. It would be necessary also to state that when partridges “tower” they are not necessarily, but only sometimes, hit in the lungs, but have often received a rap on the head just not enough to render them totally unconscious; and a case has lately been reported where two unshot-at partridges in one covey “towered” and fell, and were caught alive, grew stronger, and upon one of them being killed it was found to be badly attacked by enteritis, and not by lung disease. And consequently the myth about “towered” partridges always falling dead and on their backs does not require dealing with, as might have been the case a quarter of a century ago, when nevertheless the phenomenon was only misunderstood in the laboratory, and not in the field of sport.

It is hardly necessary to assert that “pheasant disease” as commonly seen in the rearing-fields is not fowl enteritis, as it is so often said to be, because the foster-mothers are hardly ever affected by any illness when their chicks are dying by hundreds of the disease. The pheasant disease has never been subjected to pathological examination and investigation.

To start at the beginning would make it necessary to state that the “muff ’cock,” or the bigger woodcock, that comes in a separate migration, is not the hen of the smaller birds, and that distinction can only be made between the sexes by internal examination of the organs. It might be necessary in similar circumstances to say that woodcock and snipe do not live on suction, as is often believed even now; that nightjars and hedgehogs neither suck the milk of goats nor cows; that foxes do not prefer rats and beetles to partridges and pheasants; that swallows do not hibernate at the bottom of ponds; that badgers do not prefer young roots to young rabbits; that ptarmigan and woodcock are not mute, and that the former do not live on either stones or heather; that badgers can run elsewhere than along the sides of a hill, and that they are not compelled, by having the legs on one side shorter than on the other, to always take this curious course, which would involve them in the difficulty of having to entirely encircle a hill before getting back to their holes; nevertheless, this faith is still held in some parts of the country, just as it is said that the heather bleating of the snipe is a vocal sound, whereas it is often made simultaneously with the vocal sound.

I have tried to avoid dealing with any such things as these, which may be supposed to come within the region of common knowledge of any beginner in shooting, but another point has troubled me more. I have written a good deal for the press. Articles of mine have appeared in The Times, The Morning Post, The Standard, The Daily Telegraph, The County Gentleman, Bailey’s Magazine, The Sporting and Dramatic, The Badminton Magazine, Country Life, The Field, The Sportsman, The National Review, The Fortnightly Review, The Monthly Review, and elsewhere, and I am afraid that I have unconsciously repeated the ideas running through some of these articles, without acknowledgment to the various editors.

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