LAND AND WATER 
October lo, 1914 
SHOOTING OVER DOGS 
From an Old Print 
WALKING UP 
By GUY C. POLLOCK 
THIS is indeed, by the irony of fate, a wonderful 
year for partridges, and I have lately had some 
actual and extremely heating proof of this. 
Three of us have been spending three days in 
walking up the birds on the Little Shoot, and, 
since all three have undertaken such duties as the State can 
find for us, and these three days represent the whole holiday 
of busy men, I am not in a mood to apologise too much for 
carrying on peaceful sport while the country is at war. If 
excuse were needed it might be found in the local lamentations 
of the village over the abandonment to a very great extent 
of shooting and hunting, and in the frantic persuasions made 
in vain to us to fill the gaps caused in the local shooting 
world by the war. It does the village harm and not good 
tiiat shooting should be abandoned, while the ramified 
interests of various trades and tlieir dependents are also 
injured. 
These, however, are brave words, and I am bound to 
say that one goes about this business of shooting partridges 
in war time with an uneasy mind, and that every Territorial 
sentry with his rifle seems to shame the man with a shot-gun 
on his shoulder, however clear he may have his patriotic 
conscience. Troops pass along the roads by day, and one's 
night's rest, filled with its inevitable dreams of war, is broken 
by the hoarse sounds of challenges upon the bridges. You 
cannot get away from the war by walking after partridges in 
a home county. You cannot really feel that the duty of 
" carrying on," laudable and harmless as it may be for those 
who are not permitted to render military aid, is satisfactory 
or ennobling. 
These thoughts were too keenly present with us all to 
allow the shooting to be good. They weighed especially 
with the ex-officer who, still hoping for active re-employment, 
found his usually accurate aim greatly diverted by the 
thrusts of a disquieted spirit. Besides, we came down three 
pale, wan, overworked wretches on whom a day's walking 
under a blazing September sun over stubbles and grass fields 
baked to a desert dryness and roots languishing with tired 
leaves had an uncommonly exhausting effect. Thus it 
befell that for the first two days, when the coveys were 
young and foolish, we shot extremely badly. And I do not 
think that the ineradicable loquacity of the chief beater, 
partly induced by the fact that he had a brother at the 
front and had been himself rejected for the Army on account 
of faulty eyesight, really helped us much. Even the black 
dog, the indefatigable, seemed to feel the influence of these 
days — so much so that, brought to one supposed runner in 
the turnips, she just lay down and said very plainly : " I 
don't believe there's no sich person." When the man of 
affairs had found the bird for her she could hardly be per- 
suaded to make a full and frank apology. 
For my own part, I had during the first two days an 
excellent excuse for poor marksmanship. Accident had 
deprived me of the use of my cherished weapon, and I was 
reduced to a spare gun which never did suit me well, and 
with which I have become thoroughly unfamiliar. I did 
not hesitate to impress upon the others and upon the chief 
beater, when he bemoaned the poverty of my aim, the fact 
of this misfortune. But I will confess that when the right 
gun turned up the discomforting thought came that, unless 
the aim were very sensibly improved, the excuses made for 
failure would make me look unusually foolish. Fortune, 
however, was kind enough to put me, on the last day, in a 
mood to shoot as well as I can. It was, for me, one of those 
days on which one goes out not caring particularly whether 
one hits or misses. Either the intense heat or the war, or 
both, brought an indifference of spirit, and such indifference, 
quelling the tumult of over-eager " nerves," is just what one 
wants for shooting. Anyhow, the last day and the new gun 
were tolerably successful. 
On the last day, moreover, by a freak of nature, the 
coveys sat extremely tight. On the first day, when the 
noise and the effect of guns were presumably strange to them, 
the birds rose in a surprising hurry, and showed how strong 
and forward they were by going off like rockets. On the 
second day they were obviously perturbed. On the third — a 
day of rest having intervened — they lay and waited for us to 
kick them up. And they waited on one occasion in cabbages 
— an unusual incident, accounted for, no doubt, by the 
excessive drought and by the fact that such moisture as 
remained from an early morning mist was there to be found. 
The man of affairs bemoaned the impatience which took 
several coveys up at some distance, and expressed a preference 
for the shower of birds which suddenly bursts all round one's 
progress across the drills of a root field. But that seems to 
me a mistaken preference. Whenever a covey of partridges 
gets up in, the course of a day's walking it is almost bound to 
surprise the gun. But when the sudden whirr fills all the air 
with accountable birds I am myself reduced to a deplorable 
indecision. The first bird is easily picked, though one is apt 
to fire at too close a range. The second, being found, is too 
often abandoned for what may seem a more suitable chance 
at a bird rising after the first lot are well on the wing. And 
this second bird is apt to prove a less hardy and well-grown 
specimen than one would select in a perfectly calm moment. 
The perversity of coveys, of course, adds to the very 
real enjoyment of walking up on a limited acreage, where 
half the sport is the effort to push the birds in the right 
direction and to keep them within the boundaries. One such 
covey defeated us very handsomely. We pursued it with 
admirable craft and guile over four fields, and imagined that 
we had it fixed, with all its twelve well-grown members, in a 
convenient strip of swedes and turnips. To make doubly 
sure we took a wide and hurried sweep over an adjacent 
stubble towards the roots. Inevitably, therefore, we dis- 
turbed our covey on the stubble, to which it must have run 
out of the roots, and then it finally defeated all our efforts by 
flying right out of oiir ground. As I watched it go I said to 
the chief beater : " We shall never get one of that lot," and 
he answered : " No, sir, I don't believe we ever shall." 
These are, however, the misfortunes which lend charm 
and variety to sport. I expect, if we are still able to pursue 
our partridges before all the cover is gone, that we shall have 
great fun trying to outflank that covey. If all else fails, 
thfise twelve cratty birds will play games with us and keep 
us walking and manoeuvring if out shooting. It would be a 
pity to shoot them. Their loss would spoil much genuine 
sport. They are better out of the bag , at all events, it is 
better for us to regard them in that light, for they will remain 
out of it. 
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