QUIET PARTRIDGE-SHOOTING 



On the other hand, the number of men taking out 

 licences to kill game was absurdly small, and the areas 

 shot over by the gunners were immense. My own 

 grandfather, who shot in quite a quiet way, had, with 

 a neighbouring friend, besides their own property, 

 the whole of the shooting for twelve miles in a crow's 

 line, in the counties of Warwick and Northampton. 

 They were the only gunners of their particular neigh- 

 bourhood, and, with their old-fashioned early English 

 pointers, they ranged through quite a host of parishes. 

 And in those days, be it remembered, they paid 

 nothing for their sport, beyond giving away a certain 

 percentage of their birds to the farmers whose land 

 they shot over. In the first quarter of the nineteenth 

 century the men who handled guns and shot birds 

 flying were few and far between, and the taking out of 

 a game licence was quite a solemn performance. Now, 

 everybody must shoot, and to the plethora of gunners, 

 undoubtedly, much of the decay of the older and 

 quieter — and, we may say, perhaps, more enjoyable — 

 form of sport is to be attributed. Modern farming and 

 lack of covert has of course a good deal to do with the 

 exile of sporting dogs from the field, but driving and 

 walking up on a large scale owe their origin not a 

 little to the increase in numbers and to the more 

 busy habits and even the impatience of the modern 

 sportsman. 



And yet, what a wonderful charm there was and still 

 is in quiet places in shooting over dogs, and steadily 

 pursuing the partridge through golden stubble, tender 

 clover, and lush fields of roots, dripping with autumn 

 moisture ! The very pleasure of seeing a well-broken 

 pointer or setter, or still better a brace of them, work 

 is worth many a big bag obtained by the somewhat 

 mechanical processes of modern walking up in line or 



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