Part 46

It might be thought that something should be said on the ethics of pigeon shooting, since the exigencies of polo have abolished it at Hurlingham, and the screeching brigade have rendered this as a moral victory in the press.

The author has bred pigeons in Lincolnshire dovecotes for this sport, and is not a bit ashamed of the fact. Moreover, as Edward VII. was at that time shooting them, the company is good enough.

THE WILD ROCK PIGEON

This bird generally has to be shot from a boat, and usually on a sea not as steady as it might be. The pigeons live in the cliff caves, and disturbance causes them to dash out with a speed and a twist that is highly productive of sport that is not very fatal to the birds.

It is clear that there are limits to the appreciation of difficulty in shooting, otherwise these cave rock pigeons would attract all those shooters who can never get pheasants high enough or fast enough for them. But they do not. There is certainly a chance of mingling the pleasures of sport with the pains of sea-sickness, and so an excuse of a kind for leaving the wild rock pigeon severely alone.

THE WOOD PIGEON

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.

A SCOTTISH DEER HEAD OF UNUSUALLY HEAVY BEAM—A THIRTEEN POINTER ]

A FINE WILDLY TYPICAL NINE POINT SCOTTISH HEAD OF 38 INCH SPAN ]

A TYPICAL SCOTTISH RED DEER HEAD, THIRTEEN POINTS

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MRS. SMITHSON ]

A TYPICAL NEW ZEALAND ROYAL HEAD ]

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.

TYPICAL STAG OF TEN POINTS, SHOT IN KASHMIR BY COL. SMITHSON ]

A STAG OF THIRTEEN POINTS, SHOT IN KASHMIR BY MRS. SMITHSON ]

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.