SHOOTING STORIES.

Franklin Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 20, 19 February 1934, Page 3

SHOOTING STORIES.

TOLD IN THE SMOKE-ROOM

GULLED FROM COLLECTION

Shooting, to the outsider, does not appear to be a particularly amusing sport, but it gives rise to some good stories. There are a number in Major G. E. Hadclyffe’s “Hound the SmokingRoom Fire.” During a shooting parly

at a house in Yorkshire a favourite . talking parrot was reported missing:— 1 Nothing was heard of it for several days, when, during a drive on the moore, a dense pack of grouse came over the guns, and suddenly a voice I was heard coming from the centre of i the pack and saying: “Ili, stop pushing, j you fellows, stop pushing!" History does not relate if the parrot was added to the bag. Major Radclyffe once heard the following conversation between two beaters. When nearing the guns at the end of a fir plantation one man shouted :

“Mark woodcock!” Upon which his next man said: “That weren’t no woodcock, Bill: ’twas a owl.” “Was it now? I thought it did vly turrilde sleepy, too.” To which Bill’s neighbour retorted: “Well, so’d you vly sleepy, wouldn’t 'ee, if you’d been vlying about all night like thic poor bird have?”

A certain sportsman, we are told, who is not a crack shot, hates to be bottom dog at any sport. So when he found himself entertaining a party of experts he told his loader to fill his pockets with birds from the gamecart before the first big drive after lunch. With these the ground near his butt was cunningly salted: — On the completion of the drive the keepers were told that there was quite a respectable pick-up to be made. One keen and intelligent young keeper, after gathering a number of birds, and not being in the row, came up to his master and said: “Beg pardon, my lord, but it’s an extraordinary thing, several of these birds I have gathered are stone cold.” The promptly reply was: “Cold! Of course they are cold, you d d fool. Don’t you know I always shoot with chilled shot?”

The Eagle’s Mistake.

Major Radclyffe says that for many years he maintained the largest establishment of trained hawks in Europe. One of his falconers trained a golden eagle to fly at hares. After weeks of patient training the pupil was given its first chance in the open. It pursued a hare into a field of high turnips, on the far side of which was a shepherd hacking up turnips for his sheep:— The eagle, on seeing this man. and probably excited by the movement of his coloured shirt-sleeves, made a beeline for the man and, coming up behind him, pounced on his stopping back. Now what that wretched man imagined had happened I don t know, but I imagine he thought the devil had come to take him before his time. Anyhow, he started to run and yell and roll on the ground in order to rid himself of the unknown peril.

He managed to beat the eagle off, and, as Major Radclyffe says, “in those days a sovereign went a long way to heal injuries.” A horse dealer once came to see Major Radclyffe’s father, and told him that he had for sLale an Irish horse that might make a good hunter. He said he would sell him cheap as he had two faults: —

On being asked what these faults were, he said: “Well, the first is if you turn him out to grass you cannot catch him.” “That does not matter to me,” said my father, “as I don’t turn horses out to grass when I use them. But what is his other fault?” “Well, squire, the other fault is, when you have caught the brute he isn’t worth a damn as a hunter.”