PREFACE xi 



will be noted that the crack pigeon shots do not generally 

 kill even their first double rise at 25 yards range, and that 

 four or five double rise kills are nearly always good enough 

 to win, as also very often is a single double rise with both birds 

 killed. Very moderate grouse drivers can do better than that, 

 and pheasants that are not very high are slain in much greater 

 proportion. The fact is that all shooting is extremely difficult 

 if one attempts to satisfy the most severe critic of all, namely 

 the man who shoots. But at my age I would much rather 

 think myself fit to do a day's hard walking than a day's hard 

 shooting. I think there are a good many people of that 

 opinion, otherwise dog moors would not make more rent per 

 brace than the Yorkshire driving moors, but they do. The 

 trouble is that places where birds will lie to dogs are limited, 

 and it is childish to drive packs of birds away for the sake 

 of thinking one is shooting over dogs when one is not 

 shooting at all, but only doing mischief. Personally, I would 

 not try to shoot over good dogs on Yorkshire grouse. Bad 

 ones would not matter; but then they would give me no 

 pleasure. 



When it was a literary fashion to abuse covert shooting as 

 butchery and grouse driving as no sport, it was not done by 

 sportsmen of the other school ; and later, when the literary 

 genius of the period was turned in the opposite direction, and 

 we were constantly being told that a walk with a gun and dog 

 was pleasant but no sport, it was only done by those who 

 were a little afraid of being out of the fashion. I have been 

 so unfashionable as to defend both by turns, and I have always 

 been of opinion that any sport which appeared to be growing 

 unpopular was worthy of the little support I could give it. It 

 will probably greatly surprise those who dare not, with 

 imaginative pens, shoot at the tail of a bird, to be told that 

 Mr. R. H. Rimington Wilson recently informed me, that if he 

 were to back himself to kill a number of shots consecutively 

 he would select driven birds in preference to walked-up game ; 

 and besides, that he preferred to be let loose on a snipe bog 

 to his own, or any other, big driving days. My opinion has 



