Part 20

H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.

F. E. R. Fryer.

5. E. de C. Oakley.

Lord Ashburton.

6. A. W. Blyth.

C. P. Wykeham Martin.

Prince F. Duleep Singh.

Lord Carnarvon.

7. Lord Warwick.

Lord Westbury.

Sir Robert Gresley.

Prince Victor Duleep Singh is no doubt about as quick a game shot as his father before him; the latter as a shot compared in the same way with Englishmen as his countryman “Ranji” compares with our slower cricketers.

The Prince of Wales is very quick and very keen; not at all a feather-bed sportsman, he is ready at all times to face the weather for a very little sport. His duck shooting in Canada and his jungle sport in India are within the recollection of everybody. That he does not draw for places is because a host’s will is law even to the heir to England’s crown.

The Hon. H. Stonor, who is not easily beaten for style and accuracy, uses 33 grains of E.C. No. 3 and 1 oz. shot. He uses hammer ejector guns, as do the Prince of Wales, Lord de Grey, and Lord Bradford, who once did some record shooting in Scotland.

Mr. Wykeham Martin is supposed to be as good in a gale of wind as any man, and his rabbit shooting across rides is at least as good as anybody’s. He has made a name for himself on snipe in Ireland, and has the very sporting reputation of being the most unselfish shooter in England.

Mr. R. Rimington Wilson, who has been referred to on another page, is specially good at low crossing grouse, which are generally considered much more difficult than those which show against the sky, and he takes the near birds just above the beak, and as he was described in Bailey by some shooters as the best grouse shot in the world, here is another very good proof of alignment being the correct thing.

Mr. Arthur Blyth has accounted for 64 partridges in one drive, and is considered a brilliant shot.

Mr. E. de C. Oakley is probably the best shot in North Wales; he is especially good in a gale of wind, at hard feathered game, and meets the difficulty with a big charge.

Lord Ashburton is said by several of the voters to be a most graceful shot, and his accuracy is beyond dispute.

Mr. Fryer complains that he gets older while the partridges do not; other people think he uses a 6¼ lb. gun and 1 oz. shot in a way to prevent them getting older.

MR. B. J. WARWICK’S COMPTON PRIDE. A POINTER WHICH TWICE WON THE FIELD TRIAL CHAMPION STAKE ]

CAPT. H. HEYWOOD LONSDALE’S IGHTFIELD DUFFER. THE CELEBRATED FIELD TRIAL WINNING SETTER. ]

POINTERS AND SETTERS

Twenty-five years ago the fashion was to decry driving game, and to hold up, as the good old sporting plan, the use of gun-dogs in the pursuit of partridges and grouse. But this was only a fashion of the fashionless. Shooters were not so childish as to decline to shoot in one method because they could not do it in the other, and half the grouse moors and three-quarters of the partridge ground then, as now, could not be worked with pointers and setters without sacrifice of a large portion of the game. Either it was driven away for wiser neighbours to bag, or else it died of old age after doing as much harm to its successors as any early Hanoverian king of England—that is, as much as possible. The reasons for the growth of wildness are many, but in dealing with dogs it is only necessary to take the birds as we find them, and to get them in the most sporting fashion that is left open to us.

At the same time, it may be remarked that the Press changed completely round after the publication of the Badminton shooting books, and it became as unfashionable to write of shooting over dogs as it had been to write of driving.

But the views expressed in the Badminton books were drawn from Yorkshire and Norfolk, and the result was that this time both sportsmen and the Press attempted to force an imitation of those methods that in those counties had only been adopted as a choice of two evils, when birds became so wild that it was a question of driving or no game. This fashion has made the act of shooting take rank above the all-embracing “sportsmanship” in the minds of those who have grasped at and acquired the first-named part without aiming at the whole. But this view is not likely to last longer than the mechanical part of shooting remains a difficulty. It is little likely to do so for long, with so many shooting schools, where clay birds can be sent over the gun in streams at all angles and all speeds. Here the management of two, three, or four guns can be learnt, ambition can be served, and after that a decline in keenness will generally set in. One of the greatest and best shooters of the seventies and eighties, one who carried most weight in the Badminton book, seems to have almost given up, and it may fairly be assumed that when the mechanical part of shooting is once gained to perfection, it leaves no room for further ambition.

But this is far from being true of shooting over dogs. There is so much more to learn than the mere mechanical part of shooting. Whether one breeds dogs, breaks them, works them, or has them worked by others, they are a constant source of anticipation, and anticipation in sport is of far greater interest than realisation.

Possibly one does no good to the interest of anticipation by attempting to assist sportsmen to the choice or breaking of better dogs. Those the author began with were his ideals until he knew of better, and a super-ideal would be useless were it not impossible. But when a poor team of dogs may lead to the abandonment of canine assistance in shooting, it is another matter, and everybody who knows the pleasure given by dogs should strive to improve the race.