THE NEW SPORTSMAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 164, 13 July 1929, Page 8

THE NEW SPORTSMAN.

Mr. David McDougall's speech in the House has led us to expect something bright and original from the land of the Scots, and certainly the latest idea hailing from the Scottish moors lacks nothing in the way of brightness and originality. It is that motor tractors of the caterpillar type shall be used on the moors instead of mountain ponies for transport purposes. This idea is obviously borrowed from the autumn manoeuvres of the military, and the sportsman must long have felt that his own autumn manoeuvres lacked something of the true spirit of attack. The grouse will now bo introduced to the latest developments in civilised warfare. Probably this development was inevitable. We have had a mechanised quarry in the electric hare, and it seems only right that we should suppoi-t this tradition by supplying a. more or less mechanised hunter. A former billiard champion invented a machine for teaching billiards. He did not live long enough to invent a machine for playing the game.- But-the living players did their best. They developed the spot stroke to - such a pitch, of. mechanical perfection tbat v they rivalled the unerring accuracy of machinery. When this stroke was barred they did the same for the losing hazard, and now we have the mechanical perfection of the nursery cannon. Modern batsmanship of the defensive type is becoming largely mechanical. Perhaps the day may come when all our games will be played by actual instead of merely animated inachines. But it is to be hoped in the interests of sport that the adoption of motor tractors instead of mountain ponies will, not be followed too far in Scotland. There is something a little unsportsmanlike in the idea of shooting even flying grouse from a sitting tank with a machine gun. It may be merely oldfashioned prejudice that makes one prefer the older type of sportsmanship, or it may be an over-sentimentality. But even from the point of view of sport it is doubtful whether it would be advisable to go deer stalking in a caterpillar. It has always been felt that the stag is a sensitive animal and the noise of an approaching armoured car would probably arouse some suspicion in its breast, even if the car were camouflaged with the tartans of the district. However, we live in -an age of mechanised music, mechanised drama, and, to a large extent, mechanised art. We have a mechanised army in whicli tanks and armoured cars have largely taken the place, of cavalry. So why not a mechanised sportsman shooting his grouse from a caterpillar crawling up and down the Scottish highlands? It would be at least as sportsmanlike as the spectacle of a stag at bay in a l-iver with the "sportsman" waiting to. drag it out and knife it. —W.M.