Part 47

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.

They cannot be forced, or even encouraged, to migrate to this country. Instinct once lost cannot be re-created by any act of ours. The King tried turning out a lot of quail at Sandringham, where they bred, but being spared they migrated, and not one of them came back. Still, although His Majesty is not likely to try this experiment again, it seems to the author to have proved the possibility of success, provided ambition does not soar too high. It shows that if we had quail leagues in the various counties, we might greatly add to our sport by buying up the imported live quail and releasing them. If we could get Hungarian partridges at ninepence or a shilling each, who would not buy them? The quail is quite as fertile of sport and breeds as freely, and after being turned down in the spring wanders no more before breeding than the partridge that has also been turned down, but in the autumn. Consequently, although it does not always pay a single estate to turn out either, it would pay the sporting interest of a county to do it. Quail lay from 10 to 20 eggs, rear most of their young, and 10,000 of these birds can be had in the spring for about £400. That is not much for an addition of 10,000 game birds to a county in a time when each head killed costs from 3s. 6d. to 5s.; but when the chances of the breeding of these 10,000 are taken into account, it becomes a likely 50,000 and a possible 100,000 extra game birds. What does it matter that those not shot are lost to the county? They will be re-imported from Africa and Italy another season, and can be again bought alive, instead of being killed for the London hotels and clubs. We are fond of deploring the extermination of these migrants, but the receiver is as bad as the catcher, especially when he eats in the breeding season that which he professes to wish to preserve. Even on the lowest ground of self-interest, a quail turned out in England is worth many dead ones.

The scientific name of the quail is Coturnix communis, and this migrant is not to be confused with the non-migratory “Virginian Colin,” “Bob-white,” or more truly partridge, the scientific name of which is Ortyx virginianus.

Quail are beautiful birds to shoot over dogs, and although they will not drive, the shooting of them over dogs can be indulged without doing any injury to partridge driving.

THE LANDRAIL

There is no better bird for the table than the landrail, but he is hardly a sporting bird. His flight is very slow, but he is sometimes missed by quick shots who have been shooting rapid rising partridges and shoot too quickly at these slow flying birds. The landrail has from 7 to 10 eggs, breeds successfully in insect-breeding seasons, and has been shot in large numbers in a single field. A little more than a quarter of a century ago, Mr. Farrer, Mr. C. W. Digby, and Alex. M. Luckham shot 24½ or 25½ couple of landrail in a field of clover-heads at the end of Nine Barrow Down, Purbeck; and in 1905 there were 26½ couple killed in the day about two miles west of this field. Sparrow hawks used to be trained especially for taking landrails, as mentioned in Chafin’s History of Cranbourne Chace, dated 1818. In 1880 there were 211 landrails shot at Acryse Park, Folkestone, and 35 birds in one day by two guns in two clover-fields. The landrail, or corncrake, is known as Crex pratensis.

TEAL

The teal breeds freely in this country, and only requires to be less often shot in the early days of the shooting season to multiply rapidly. In those early days it affords no sport, but becomes a wonderful flyer when full feathered. It has from 8 to 15 eggs. No captured teal can be made use of for breeding, but their eggs are easily dealt with, just as those of the wild duck are treated. It is possible to introduce teal to a new place by placing their eggs in the nests of moorhens. The scientific name of the common teal is Querquedula crecca.

THE GOLDEN PLOVER

This beautiful bird lays 4 eggs; it breeds on all suitable moorlands in this country, but the majority of the golden plover found in winter are migrants. When they first arrive, the shooter may boldly advance to a flock upon the ground, which will often not move until within range; but the bird soon gets wild, although after a successful shot the flock will often return to see what is the matter with its disabled or dead comrades. Its scientific name is Charadrius pluvialis.

ROE DEER

Too frequently the roe deer is killed in August, whereas then he is never in condition. In driving Scotch woodlands for these little deer, a very few good beaters are better than a great crowd of noisy boys. Shouting and talking leads to the deer breaking back, for they are less afraid of a crowded line of yelling boys than of the silent unknown enemy which gives but an occasional tap together of two sticks. This is a more effectual plan than tapping the tree trunks. Six beaters in this way can be effective in a beat half a mile wide, and will send the deer forward, where forty shouting boys will cause all the deer to break away at the flanks, or to lie still until the line has passed, and then to “break back.” The reason is probably that when the path of each boy is accurately to be gauged by the sound made, the deer know whether they will have to move or not long before the line approaches near, and consequently act just in that way which is best to avoid a known danger. But the few beaters, with the occasional tap of a stick, is something quite unknown, and the nerves of the deer cannot stand it. They are up and off long before the line approaches near, and they flee not to the flanks or back, but straight ahead.

Roe deer are as easily killed with shot guns as hares—indeed, more easily. The writer has known one to be killed with No. 6 shot at 60 yards range, and instantaneously dead, too. It seems to be causing unnecessary danger to take out high velocity or express rifles for these deer drives; and besides, with them it is impossible to make a bag of winged game at the same time. A rabbit rifle is hardly powerful enough to avoid wounding and losing deer, unless the vitals are hit with an expanding bullet, and as the roe is generally shot running, the author is not inclined to condemn the use of the shot gun as unsportsmanlike. No. 4 shot are equally useful for roe deer and capercailzie and black game, or the three principal occupants of the Scotch woodlands. Pheasants also can be equally well killed with No. 4 shot as with No. 6, and will be the better for the table by reason of the change. If a rifle of any kind is used, an expanding bullet is by far the best to avoid wounded beasts getting away. Roe deer are often condemned as inferior to mutton, but the writer is not of that opinion. Half the mutton is spoilt in flavour by the “dressings,” or rather “dips,” used for the protection from or cure of sheep scab—a horrible disease with a filthy cure.

THE PTARMIGAN