152 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



and it may be safely affirmed that when any attempt is made 

 to walk up game, dogs are out of place, except as retrievers at 

 heel. On a Scotch Highland hillside it may be a question 

 whether a party of four guns can kill most game by all walking 

 in line or by working in two parties and shooting over dogs, 

 but in the former case there is a better way that of driving the 

 game to the guns, which saves the walking, and the shooting 

 becomes more exciting because more frequent. 



But dog work is conducted in such various methods, some 

 of which are so little removed from treading up the birds, that 

 an idealist must hesitate to affirm that it is always preferable 

 to forming line and walking up the game. There is an idea 

 that the place to loose off the dogs is where game has con- 

 gregated, or been driven into good cover, so that points may 

 recur at every 10 yards. This is when the heavy shooting 

 occurs, but it is not when the dog is most indispensable. The 

 latter happens when there is no more than one covey to every 

 500 acres, and you have to find it before you have any sport. 

 Some people say that under those circumstances they would 

 prefer no sport. This, however, is a decadent view. We all of 

 us appreciate sport as its difficulty increases, and a bag that was 

 good enough for the great Duke of Wellington and for Colonel 

 Peter Hawker ought to be good enough for any of us if we desire 

 to feel ourselves sportsmen. The author has no word to urge 

 against big bags except this : they cannot form a feature of every- 

 day life for many, if for any of us, and sport can provided the 

 anxiety to make big bags because they are the fashion does not 

 destroy our love of sport for its own sake. The writer confesses 

 to being one of those selfish creatures who is supremely happy if 

 he has satisfied his own critical spirit, even in such trifles as a 

 day's unwitnessed sport over dogs, the stalking of a blackcock or 

 of a stag, the capture of a reluctant trout, or the killing of half a 

 score of driven grouse out of a pack without a miss. He is 

 well aware that either of these may be the harder to accomplish 

 according to circumstances, and his pleasure is based on the 

 absence of anything that might have been done better. Once 

 in his life he sent a stag's head to a taxidermist, and then 



