TAME SPORT.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 248, 18 October 1924, Page 39 (Supplement)

TAME SPORT.

SHOOTING IN ENGLAND. SLAUGHTER IN THE DRIVES. There is nothing arduous in the life of a keen sportsman in England. The only keenness displayed is of a social kind, in hunting for an invitation tojoin one of the shooting parties that wealthy hostesses make up every year for the shooting season, which opens on "the glorious twelfth" —not the 12th July which Orangenient celebrate, but 12th August the day on which, after the season of laying nnd hatching and the maturing of the young birds, sportsmen are allowed to shoot grouse. St. Grouse's Day it is called iv the sportsman's calendar. And such preparations! Every year, beginning about June, very presentable young gentlemen, employed by the railway companies, make the round of the West End with a view to ascertaining the requirements of Mβ Lordship and her Grace in the way of sleeping cars and dining ears; how many luggabe vans for the baggage and trucks for the ■ motors; in a word, her Grace conveys to the railway companies what is the size of her party, and the railway company does "the rest. These are no mere timetable expresses; they are "specials," dozens and scores of them, to take the cream of our sporting society and their friends to the moors of Scotland and the North of England to shoot the "little brown bird.' . It is to ')e borne in mind, of course, that this visit to the moors is also a holiday, a period of recuperation after ten weeks of dinners and dances, Tace meetings and theatre parties, receptions and at homes, which make up the London social season. Rush to the Moors. ' What happens is something like this. Thousands and thousands rush off to the moors. They are not all going to shoot grouse; there are not enough either of moors or grouse to go round. The train puts them down in the vicinity of the house, usually a mansion, where the party is to stay. Sometimes it is a mere shooting box in Scotland, but a very nice shooting box, too; seldom less than a very desirable country residence. You motor as far as the motor will tako you to the scene of combat; there you will find a convoy of ponies—a special breed, this, for shooting parties upon the moors—to save your legs for the remainder of the journey to the haunts of the game. That looks as if your legs were in for a strenuous day's work, ascending and descending the steep hillsides on the moors in pursuit of the wily, elusive little brown bird. Not a bit of it. You are going to be more tired of sitting than of walking. A very comfortable little nook has bfcen btilt on the shoulder of the hillside, wr'th a wall of turf and heather and grass, or whatever else is characteristic of the environment, so that the grouse will not know you are hiding there. So far from going out in quest of your bird, it is brought to you. It is rather like the man in that very old story who wagered to kill every rat in the inn for a square meal, and at the end of the meal aeked them to "fetch out your rats." In the old prints and the old stories there persists the old way of fetching your birds. You went out early with a gun under your arm and a couple of dogs at your heels; once in a while you "flushed" a bird, or maybe two, one for each barrel of your gun; you tramped for miles and miles, and were satisfied to bring , home your bag full of birds. In short, you took the birds as you found them; and, what is more, you gave them a sporting chance. You had to be quick with your gun, for the bird rose quickly and was off like a flash. It required a very pretty skill in the judgment of pace and distance. And that is how the weather-beaten old keepers, who hold the modern "townbred" sportsmen in such oontempt, still go after the birds, when the shooting parties have dene their worst. When the organised slaughter is finished, and the sportsmen have moved to other parts where they breed tame birds in coverts, pheasants, for dnstanee, the keepers say to themselves, "Now for a bit of real sport." And away they go in a real pursuit of the survivors; primarily; to reduce the number of old birds. A Wonder That Any Survive. It is a wonder that any survive at aIL It is no use pretending that the birds have much of a chance, which is supposed to be an element in any sport that counts. Or rather, if they have any chance, it comes from the unskilfulness of the marksman and the safety there is in numbers. Where there are so many birds coming over the guns at once, some necessarily escape in every "drive," but they are not on that account to be spared. They have lived for the next drive and the next after that, so that their chances of seeing the shooting season out are progressively diminished. When the guns have taken up their places in the "butts," each with a small armory of double-barrelled breechloaders, and a sort of armorer for an attendant to reload them as fast as they are emptied, the "boaters" get to work. Beating has been reduced to a fine art. The end to aim at is not to alarm the birds unduly, but to advance steathily and craftily, so that the birds are urged forward in a eemi-circle, and are all the while concentrating in the direction of the line of butts. When the birds are at last really scared and fly for safety away from the beaters, they come over the butts in swarms, and the object of the sportsman is to get in as many shots as he can before the birds get out of range.

To be sure, to fire like a machine gun with a succession of weapons, to pick off one bird at a time among a flock, to fire rapidly yet aim all the time, to keep your head when the air is noisy with the rushing of the birds and the flapping of wings, is not easy. The unskilful sportsman, who knows little about guns, and less about the shooting of birds on the wing, might just as well fire at a venture and shut his eyes to boot, for ho can hardly fail to bring down a bird every shot where there are so many.

When the fallen grouse are laid out in a row and counted and disposed of, it is time to organise another drive, and other birds, upon another part of the moor, arc driven over similar butts; and so it goes on, until the birds are driven and redriven, and their numbers grow continually less. It is not surprising to learn that, on one Scottish moor, in a season when the birds are plentiful, 0000 brace were brought down in a single day. In the time wlien a man went out to get hts birds, ho was considered to have dove remarkably well with a bag of thirty brace. But then, in those days, the sport was not organised slaughter. Commercialised Sport. It is much to be feared that the sport has become not a little commercialised. The beet London hotels and restaurants take a deep interest'in St. Grouse's day on the distant moors. It is to be feared also that not a little deception is practiced upon the gourmets who must have grouse to eat on the Twelfth. Tlv: best hotels annually remind those who make a. fetish of it that they may have grouse for lunch—at a price. It is understood that arrangements are made t« rush an early morning bag of grouse tv a motor, then to an aeroplane, so to London, where another motor awaits the prize and goes full speed to the West End hotel, where the chef is itching to put tile birds into the oven. For that the gourmet, or the man with money to eat, pays anything f rone a guinea to 30/— for one email, but tender, bird. Still, when you remember the cost of motors' and aeroplanes, and all the trouble of organising, all the rushing and fussing to get those birds to the table in London for'lunch on the very day that shooting season begins, "the "hotels are scarcely to be blamed. The simpler way,, favoured of some restaurants which demand a rather less price for so signal a service, is to take a few dozen brace of last year's birds out of cold storage. The_birds keep well, and who is to tell the difference in the excitement of eating grouse on the day ? It is quite two more days before they reach the poulterers' shops, and the price would be anything up to 15/ for a good bird. Another day usualH sees the price down to about 7/0 for a prime young grouse, and eventually the price drops to 5/ or 6/ a brace. He would be a rash man who guaranteed the last named to have been shot this year. It is not even certain that this year's birds served up at London hotels have all been shot, for there are devious ways of reaching grouse. The poacher has little regard for the law of property; he is not likehto be overawed by the "close season." He knows something about snaring and netting grouse. It is one of the accomplishments of the super-poacher to get his birds on the eve of St. Grouse, and deliver them on the day. He has no cold store. After Grouse, the Pheasants. After grouse come the pheasants. They are still protected, as the close season does not end until September 30. If the hard lot of the grouse is to be pitied, no words of commiseration will suffice for the fate that awaits the bigger bird. The grouse, in a sense, is a wild bird. It lives upon the open moora among the heather; it can migrate to fresh pastures; it never forgets that its natural gift is to fly. Except that the keepers do their best to make life easy for it by keeping invaders out of its feeding and breeding grounds on the moors, it lives the normal hardy life of the wild bird. But the fate of the pheasant is that of the pampered sybarite, and equally shocking. Those wealthy land owners who breed pheasants for shooting breed them in thousands, hatching them out in incubators, and boarding them out with kindly, sympathetic foster-mothers—dear old farmyard hens —who thoroughly spoil them, and 6tart them out on the path of indulgence that leads to a sad end. They are well fed—overfed, in fact—by their keepers. They are provided with comfortable quarters for protection against bad weather, and snug plantations where they may "live out" when the weather and the season are favourable. They do not exactly lose the habit of flight, but they get so fat and lazy that the fast, strong flier is the exception. So far from wanting to spread his- wings in search of a new habitation, the pheasant likes nothing better than to be left in peace, leading a life of ease and indolence, drawing his Tations regularly, and -waxing fatter and fatter. Then one day, while he is browsing sleepily in a covert with hundreds of his mates, he hears people pushing their way through the thickets. He moves on — Bo do these intruders. He keeps moving on, till he gets near the edge of the covert. Ho does not know that between this covert and the next, in an open glade, are five or six sportsmen all ready with their armories of breechloaders, and their attendants to keep them loaded. It is not that which makes him reluctant to leave his snug abodo; it is simply that he hates being disturbed. So he and his mates move on unwillingly and sluggishly. The beaters begin to beat the stems of the trees with sticks to make the birds come out and fly. The birds have to leave sooner or later, and they do it at the very laet, with the beaters almost treading on their tails. They fly across the clearing for the nearest covert, not aingly or in pairs, but in swarms, scores and hundreds at a time. This is not surprising, when it is remembered that one owner may rear Ifi.OOO birds In a season, at a cost of 20/ a head.