STRENUOUS DOGS AND SPORT IN 

 AMERICA 



IN all the countries in Europe pointers and setters are used, 

 but there are districts in Hungary and Bohemia where 

 partridges are so plentiful that this canine assistance is neither 

 required nor employed. The style of shooting in these districts 

 would make the use of any dogs except retrievers absurd, and 

 the writer never has been able to detect the sportsmanship in 

 employing dogs when they are in the way and hinder sport. 

 The truest pleasure is to be derived from getting shots by 

 means of dogs that one could have got in no other way. 

 This feeling for and fellowship with pointers and setters is 

 to be found in the wild Highlands and Islands of the west 

 and extreme north of Scotland, and also in the greater part 

 of the mountains of Ireland. To a great extent it is also felt 

 in pursuit of the rype of Scandinavia, and of the partridge, 

 wherever that bird is scarce enough to require much rinding 

 before it is shot. But throughout Europe there is more or less 

 preservation, more or less boundary to be protected, with the 

 growing demands for artificial methods first, and then, a little 

 later, the substitution of men for dogs. There is also a kind 

 of bastard shooting over dogs, in which a line of guns is formed 

 as if for walking up the game, and then one or a brace of dogs 

 is allowed to run down wind, or up, according to the require- 

 ments of the line of guns, and with no thought as to possibility 

 of the wind serving the dogs. But under such circumstances 

 canine assistance is in a false position, and it is distressing to 

 see what happens. A pair of dogs could not adequately serve 

 a line of guns, even if they had all the advantage of the wind, 



151, 



