230 



The Country Gentleman's Mamzine. 



a person quite capable perhaps of standing 

 fire without blinking. This feeling is very 

 difficult either to analyze or to describe, 

 but it positively constitutes one of the 

 special enjoyments of sport. The feeling 

 of relief when the birds do get up and yet 

 behave creditably in accordance with the 

 opportunity presented to you, is one of the 

 most agreeable sensations imaginable. It 

 is experienced perhaps more forcibly on the 

 twelfth than later, but it always accom- 

 panies sports. That it does not accompany 

 the butchery of the battue is a proof 

 that that fashion of killing game is 

 little more e.xciting than the custom 

 of cutting the throats of domestic fowls 

 with a carver is felt to be exciting by the 

 cook. But what corresponds to this feeling 

 in pigeon shooting? The nerves are tested 

 in quite a different fashion at pigeon 

 matches to that in which they are on the 

 moors. You are engaged in a game of 

 mingled chance and skill ; you are shooting 

 for stakes more or less heavy, for private 

 bets. These things, to be sure, may throw 

 your hand out a little. Besides, there may 

 be money laid on you ; you have a reputa- 

 tion to keep up or to make. People do 

 not go to the moors to wager on their work. 

 They are not distracted when a bird is 

 fleshed at the thought that if he is missed 

 he flies off with twenty bank-notes, so to 

 speak, belonging to them. Their trepida- 

 tion, if the word can be used, is in the 

 latter instance altogether of a pleasurable 

 kind. The nerve of the pigeon shooter 

 will rot serve him much in the heather. 

 He is used to an audience, to spectators, 

 to a crowd. He finds {&\v or none on the 

 moors. He has no time to adjust himself 

 into his old slaughtering position when the 

 rattle and rustle of the strong wings startle 

 him uncomfortably. If the keeper would 

 net so many birds, trap them, and haul a 

 string, the pigeon shooter might be highly 

 successful in bringing them down, but he is, 

 in the natural condition of sports, almost as 

 unprepared to make a large bag of birds as a 

 mere punt fisher would be to fill a basket of 

 trout with a fly in clear water. On the 



contrary, a good game shot very soon gets 

 into the knack of pigeon shooting if he can 

 only overcome the feeling about shooting 

 almost on a stage. He is at first liable to be 

 too fast or too slow, not knowing the flying 

 habits of the so-called blue-cock, which the 

 experts learn soon enough. But he does not 

 discover, after a season at the traps, that he 

 can exceed his old average on the moors. He 

 shoots neither better nor worse at the grouse 

 than he did before he took to joining the dove 

 tournaments. It is then plain enough that the 

 recreation, or whatever it may be called, of 

 pigeon shooting cannot claim an alliance even 

 of a distant sort with grouse shooting. If we 

 come toother game — snipe or woodcock, for 

 example — the separation between pigeon 

 shooting and wild-fowl shooting becomes ab- 

 solutely so great that there is nothing in com- 

 mon between the two but powder and shot. 

 It may be noted here that the very guns em- 

 ployed at the pigeon matches are not the guns 

 that men will use by choice at the moors. The 

 muzzle-loaders will not be so favoured, we 

 expect, as weapons against the grouse as they 

 are as weapons against the pigeons ; this, 

 however, may be from reasons unconnected 

 with our special point. Learning to shoot 

 game by learning to shoot pigeons is like trying 

 to acquire the art of swimming by practising it 

 in a feather bed. You may learn to shoot 

 pigeons as you may the useful art of simulating 

 natation, but when the grouse get up before you 

 you are almost as helpless on the moor with 

 your knowledge of traps as you would be in the 

 sea without being able to keep afloat. Swal- 

 lows and martins are better practice for game 

 shooting than pigeons, not that they either will 

 be found of much advantage as preparatory for 

 grouse or partridge. An honest novitiate on 

 the hill-side and the moor is the best training 

 a sportsman can possibly have. He must, 

 perhaps, necessarily put past him so many 

 misses, but we must all pay for experience 

 in everything ; and, without dwelling on the 

 point, it may be finally observed that experi- 

 ence, such as is to be derived from member- 

 ship in a gun club, is, perhaps, less economical 

 than what may be servicably had in a far more 

 wholesome and efficient manner. 



