ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH SHOOTING.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13953, 13 July 1909, Page 2

ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH SHOOTING.

SPORT THE SALVATION OF RURAL DISTRICTS. Mr Isaac N. Ford, writing on "English and Scoqttish Shootings" in the April number of the ''Outing Magazine," gives same interesting particulars as to the cost of popular sport at Home. He says : American millionaires have been known to invest as much as £20,000 in a season's shooting with incidental entertaining and card-playing. An estate which will yield from six hundred brace of partridges upward commands a good rental for its sporting value, hut the tenant will pay twice as much for the birds in front of the guns as lie can hope to get for them in the market. A shooting is roughly expected to fetch about £3O for each stag, certainly one pound for a brace of grouse, possibly half as much for •partridges and much less for pheasants and ground game. An outing of a few days costs as much as. £IOO to £'lso, with the railway fares, outfit for guns, and largess for servants. Spurt, is helping to keep rur-d England, and Scotland alive. Millions arc expended yearly in the mainten-ance-of game preserves, shootings and bunting packs. The rentals' ol shootings, including country houses and lodges, amount annually to £700,000. A large multiple must be used tor estimating the aggregate investment in sport, when the cost of the upkeep," house'and field service, entertainment of guests and across-country .travel is added, and allowance is made for estates occupied by owners. There are also two hundred packs of hounds' in the Kingdom, and with the breeding and keeping of hunting horses, the employment ; of kennel and. stable men, and the continuous hospitality of country 'houses, each is worth not less tljan' £60,000 a year to the 'people; of the.district. An elastic calculation with a clean . slate hardly knows when to stop -in''ciphering out the money value of shooting and hunting -in a'country of declining agricultural resources. Sport has become an organised industry, with thousands of gamekeepers, gillies, beaters and outdoor men in the service of the pleasure-loving rich.