AS IT IS IN IRELAND.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 15 May 1912, Page 2

AS IT IS IN IRELAND.

The cost of game shooting privileges in England is known everywhere to be high, but when actual figures are set out, the expense of the sport is little short of amazing. Tha London correspondent of the Sydney Sun tells how he fell into talk with a small tenant farmer, who held 134 acres of indifferent grazing land reclaimed from the moor, tor which he paid 16s an acre. He ran 117 sheep and 30 head of cattle, cut a bit of meadow hay for winter feeding and worked hard and lived frugally to keep what little capital he possessed. The Australian learnt that the: land they were tramping over was a rather peculiar "common, as one man owned one half of it and had in addition the manor rights, so that he held for himself all the shooting. The surrounding tenants had grazing rights. To the visitor it fell into the class of "wouldn't-feed-a-rabbit," but perhaps it was better in the summer than when he saw it. "In my innocence I asked him if he could shoot on it. The grouse rose suddenly and flew swiftly, and would, one thought, be some, compensation for'the high rents and hopelessness of progression beyond teAaiicy. He smiled. 'I sometimes do a bit of beating,' he said, 'for the man who rents it. He comes from Manchester once a year for a few days with five or six friends. The rent? It works out at £2 a brace. He pays £450 for the shooting over louO acres, and is limited to 450 birds.' " Shelters built up of grass-covered turf were scattered across the moor in lines about sixty yards ayart, in each of them a little seat for the sportsmen. The grouse, used to fiving over them all the early season are driven past by beaters, to die glorious'v before the shot of some luxurious sportsman. In the same neighborhood s man of title had backed himself to shoot one thousand grouse in a day, and had won his wager with fifty to spare. "I've seen him start on four birds flying close together, and drop the lot; singly, of course: it isn't sport to fire into a bunch," said the farmer. Presuming that the noble lord could have let his moor on the basis of £2 a brace, he had a somewhat expensive day. The antithesis of his happy time lay with the farmer who was left lonely without his two sons, one gone to Australia and one to Canada; he sent them away because he knew well that the grazing would never keep them. And for himself he lamented that he was too old to emigrate.