Mixed And Rough Shooting - A Book For Men Of Moderate Means

By Frank Bonnett

Originally published in 1914. This early works covers most aspects of Game Shooting with much of the information still useful and practical today. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781447484097

Book preview

MIXED AND ROUGH SHOOTING.

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A BOOK FOR THE SPORTSMAN OF MODERATE MEANS.

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CHAPTER I.

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SHOOTING AND ITS DEVELOPMENT.

IT is, perhaps, sufficient evidence of the popularity of shooting at the present day to state that during the past twelve years the average number of gun and game licences issued in the United Kingdom has amounted to no less a figure than 310,000 per annum, that remarkable total comprising over 238,000 gun licences and nearly 72,000 certificates to kill game. The enormous improvement in sporting firearms and ammunition that has taken place within the past century, and more especially during the last few decades, has doubtless been chiefly responsible for the progress of a sport in which the inhabitants of this country have ever played a leading part; but at the same time the increase in the popularity of shooting as a sporting diversion is due in no small measure to the enterprise of game-preservers in general and of the game-farmer in particular.

Progress of the Sport.

A natural result of this fostering of the sporting spirit that is to be found in the composition of every true Briton has been an ever-increasing demand for shooting properties, so that to-day the value of sporting rights has much increased, and the man of moderate means who is unable to resort to artificial methods of game-preserving on a more or less lavish scale, finds it more necessary than ever to make the most of his opportunities. Of recent years shooting rents have advanced at a rate quite beyond that ever before experienced—within the memory of those who can still count themselves as belonging to the younger generation of gunners. Land which at one time of day could be obtained practically for the asking now commands a market price of considerable value, although the shooting to be obtained thereon to-day may be little or no better than it used to be. Twenty years ago, and less, it used to be possible to obtain really good rough shooting—not barren scrub or moorland with hardly a head of game to be discovered in the space of a hundred acres—for a few pence per acre; to-day such land commands anything from two to four shillings, while good partridge land, that could be rented about the same period for about a shilling an acre, is now worth in many cases five times that amount, and with no more birds upon it than before.

Rents.

At the same time, the shooting rents of the present day need not necessarily be considered unreasonably excessive, for although there must always be some exceptions, it is a fact that the majority of shootings are very much what their owners or occupiers care to make of them. And in these days shootings can be developed to a passable extent without involving those measures which are known as high preservation, so that in the end, and in spite of the enhanced value of the land for sporting purposes, they may be made very much better worth having than in the days when rents were so much more moderate. The occupier of any shooting nowadays has at his disposal the accumulated knowledge of all those who have made a special study of game-preserving during the past fifty years, and he has also the best of facilities for obtaining anything that he requires in the way of stock at a reasonable outlay. The expensive experiments that have been steadily pursued for so many years past have resulted not only in the attainment of much valuable knowledge concerning game of every kind, but also in the discovery of the most suitable and most profitable varieties of game creatures for these islands.

No one, of course, expects to make shooting pay in the strict sense of the word, but every man, whether he be what is known as a good sportsman or not, expects to get a fair return in the way of amusement for the money, be it little or much, that he expends; and there is no better opportunity than that offered at the present day for attaining that satisfactory result. Without by any means being a selfish sport, shooting may be said to give as great an amount of individual enjoyment as any other diversion of the kind to be obtained in this country; but a knowledge of the essential points in the development and maintenance of a sporting property is very necessary if the most is to be made of existing conditions and possibilities. It may be said without fear of contradiction that, in spite of all that has been done, most of the shootings in this country could still be exploited to better advantage than they very often are, and the smaller the amount of ground available, the greater the need for the attention to important detail. It may be taken for granted that any man who shoots has a few pounds per annum to spare for his amusement, and those few pounds, however limited they may be, may with care and perseverance be laid out to bring in an adequate and satisfactory return.

Preserved and Unpreserved Shoots.

The definition of the preserved as contrasted with the unpreserved shooting is a little difficult, for it is not easy to say offhand what ought and what ought not to be included under the former term. But in these days a shooting which is described as being preserved is generally held to be that on which some special measures of an essentially artificial kind are perpetually being taken, such as the hand-rearing of pheasants or partridges, or the systematic turning down of stock. Similarly, the unpreserved shooting is that which is left, for the most part, to take its chance—a place where, beyond the keeping down of vermin and the exercise of a more or less general supervision by some sort of keeper, nothing is done to increase or improve the stock, the sport being entirely dependent upon the natural efforts of the wild stock existent upon the premises. Even so, it can hardly be said—if we are to take the term preservation in its strictest sense—that such a place is actually unpreserved, for even such simple measures as these do in a sense constitute preservation. Since, however, a shoot that receives no care or supervision of any kind can hardly be termed a shoot at all, we may as well keep to the popular descriptions given above in all future references to preserved or unpreserved shootings. The thing really resolves itself into this—that on the preserved shooting methods of improvement of the active kind are perpetually pursued, while on the unpreserved shooting the measures adopted are chiefly of the negative or, rather, preventive kind.

It must ever be a matter of opinion as to whether preserved or unpreserved shooting provides the more genuine sport, for there are still plenty of persons who contend that the shooting of hand-reared birds ought not to be reckoned sport at all. But really, if sport is to be reckoned by the quality of the shooting provided, it seems absurd to contend that naturally-bred birds are able to fly better than those which have been brought up artificially in the rearing-field. Provided they are properly handled, and presented to the guns in the most sporting manner possible, hand-reared birds are just as capable of affording good and difficult shooting as wild ones, and therein lies the gist of the whole matter. He would be a clever man who could tell the difference between a tame and a wild pheasant when it was on the wing, or even after it had been added to the bag, and when one comes down to hard facts, the whole thing is simply a matter of sentiment. It is repugnant to some people to think that the birds which are being shot have been reared simply for that purpose; but since it is the destiny of nine out of every ten pheasants, hand-reared or wild, to meet their death at the instance of the shot-gun, one cannot see that it matters very much to the bird as to what its origin may have been. One supposes that it hurts a tame pheasant to be killed no more than it does a wild one, and it may be remarked that so far as the actual manner of shooting is concerned, it is usually just as easy to subject wild birds to unfair treatment as it is tame ones. It is possible for birds of either kind to be huddled up into the corner of a covert and driven out to the guns at close quarters, so that they are downed before they have time to show their paces properly—the whole thing, in fact, rests not so much on the nature or origin of the birds as on the manner in which they are treated.

Plate I.

Typical Rough Shooting.

Some Good Partridge Ground.

At the same time, it must be admitted that there is a certain amount of satisfaction to be derived from the knowledge that the whole of the birds figuring in a day’s sport are naturally-bred, and, of course, were the pheasant better able to manage its domestic affairs, no one would go to all the trouble and expense incurred by hand-rearing. As it is, the wild bird is seldom able to fulfil the requirements of modern sport, and so we are obliged to make up the deficiency by recourse to artificial or semi-artificial methods. We live in an age that is much more ambitious than that which our forefathers knew, but that is by no means the only reason why the few wild birds that sufficed for their pleasure do not satisfy the requirements of the modern gunner. Shooting has become a much more sociable amusement than it used to be, and while the rearing of birds in unlimited quantities just for the sake of making huge bags is to be condemned, there is really no valid objection to moderate preservation. When we go shooting, we want something for everybody to shoot—the half-dozen or so pheasants that served to keep the old-time single-handed gunner amused all day, are no good to the present-day party of six or eight guns. And it may further be urged in defence of preservation that, had it not been for hand-rearing, the pheasant would long ago have become extinct. There is nothing to be said against the methods of those who even to-day are content to go out as their forefathers were wont to do, and come home in the evening with a pocketful of game picked up in the small spinneys or about the hedgerows, for such shooting may be productive of very good diversion; but, on the other hand, the man who likes more birds for himself and his companions, and who beats out his coverts with an army of men and stop-boys, may be just as good a sportsman as his more easily satisfied companion. There is a great deal to be said in favour of each kind of shooting, but the sport to be obtained on the so-called rough shooting, where preservation is carried out on moderate lines, is often better than either, for it supplies a happy medium that can bring enjoyment both to the humble and the ambitious gunner. A shoot that can furnish a dozen or even half-a-dozen fair days’ sport in the course of the season is the one that the majority of us like to own.

Originally, of course, the rough shoot was simply a tract of ground upon which no system of preservation of any kind was attempted; but in recent years the term has come to mean something more than that, so that the rough shoot may now be held to describe any reasonably good sporting property other than that upon which more or less elaborate methods of game-rearing and preservation are pursued. Thus a certain amount of preservation may be carried on upon a property without bringing it under the head of a strictly preserved shooting. It will be still, to all intents and purposes, an all-round shoot, for upon it one may meet with almost any kind of game, but with none in very large numbers. It is this sort of shooting that may be best exploited by the man of moderate means possessed of ordinary ambition, and who, provided he gets a fair amount of sport for himself and his friends during the season, has no desire to exploit one kind of game at the expense of another. One of the chief reasons why this kind of shooting is so popular is that it affords a great amount of variety, which in shooting, as in other things, adds much to the zest of the proceedings.

Cost of Game-Preserving.

Before we go further, it may be as well, perhaps, to take this opportunity of trying to remove some of the false impressions as to the cost of game-preserving which still so largely prevail. The all-round gunner is not concerned with game-preservation of the intensive kind, but the mere mention of the matter, in view of the extraordinary opinions as to the expense of game-preserving still entertained in some quarters, may sometimes be sufficient to frighten many from taking a shoot at all, or, at any rate, from making any attempt to improve it. Such men are apt to fear that, unless they adopt the methods of the stricter school of game-preservers, they will be unable to get sufficient value from their investment in some little sporting property to make it worth while even to consider the taking of it, while others may be afraid that once they attempt preservation of any kind, they may be tempted to embark upon measures calculated to reduce them very speedily to bankruptcy, or at least may unwittingly be drawn into such expenses as they can ill afford to meet. Let it be said, then, at once that provided a man will be content to go steadily, and will refrain from embarking too largely in any one direction until he has formed a definite idea as to the capabilities of his property, there is no reason why he should find himself getting out of his depth, though there will be certain precautions, to be named hereafter, that it will be necessary for him to bear in mind.

Most shooting men will be familiar with the old joke anent the cost of pheasant-raising contained in the humorous sentence. Up gets a sovereign, bang goes a penny, and down tumbles half-a-crown, the sovereign, of course, representing the supposed cost to its owner of the rising pheasant, the penny the value of the cartridge that brings it down, and the half-crown the amount that the bird’s carcase may be expected to fetch. It is conceivable, perhaps, that certain hand-reared pheasants have on rare occasions cost their owners the sum indicated by the time they were put into the bag; but if this has ever been the case, then one can only say that there was some very bad management somewhere, if nothing worse. One supposes that if pheasant-rearing really cost so much as that, it would hardly have become so popular, and one fancies also that very few game-keepers of the present generation would care to have it said of them that they could not rear birds at a very much cheaper rate. There is no occasion here to go minutely into the cost of bringing up pheasants by hand, but it may be said that where the facilities are good, there is nothing to be alarmed at in the attempt to raise a few birds in this manner, though on the shooting of moderate size it will usually be found more economical and more conducive to the end in view to adopt in preference one or other of the methods described hereafter in the chapter on Pheasants. At the same time, a man who lives at home, and has the necessary amount of time to spare, may very well supplement the number of birds on his shooting obtained by other means, by doing a little hand-rearing, and at no great cost. It is the labour, to say nothing of the possible waste in feeding, that runs away with the money when birds are reared by hand; but when this item can be written off in the manner indicated, birds can be raised up to the time when they are fit to turn away in covert at a cost not exceeding half-a-crown to three shillings a head—provided one has moderately good luck with them. The expense, of course, does not end there, and it will usually be found that the few pheasants which the gunner of moderate means desires to rear can be bought as poults just as cheaply as he can rear them for himself, some allowance, of course, being made for labour incurred. The game-farmer, by reason of the large number of birds he rears, is naturally in a much better position to do the thing on economical principles than the private individual.

CHAPTER II.

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THE IMPROVEMENT OF ROUGH SHOOTINGS.

How much it may be possible to do by way of improving a rough shooting must depend mainly upon two things—first, the amount of money available for the purpose; and, second, the nature of the land. It may be that the country to be dealt with is one that is well suited to the development of partridge shooting; on the other hand, the ground may be of such a nature, that it would be mere waste of time and money to try and turn it into a shoot of that description. Similarly, there might be so little in the way of natural advantages from a pheasant-shooting point of view, that it would not be worth while to study that bird’s interests to any considerable extent, though in many cases where partridges would have but a poor chance of thriving, pheasants might very likely do well. On some shoots both birds may be encouraged to the fullest possible extent, and the results in one case might be quite as satisfactory as in the other. Happy is the man who finds himself in the possession of a tract of land that is capable of being developed into an all-round shooting of this description.

Possibilities.

As a general rule, it is better to concentrate one’s attention first of all on the improvement of a shooting in one direction, and to start off with that project which seems likely to turn out the more profitable. If it seems probable that partridges will respond most readily to the efforts made to protect and encourage them, then they should be considered first. The pheasants will do later on, but it may be remarked that a good deal of the labour expended on the partridges will count for something when the pheasants are taken in hand. But whatever plan one decides to adopt, it is a great mistake to attempt too much at the outset. A man may be just as fond of partridge shooting as of pheasant shooting; but on taking a new property with a view to developing it, it is far better to do one thing thoroughly well than to attempt to do two things only moderately. We may take it that on the average rough shoot of anything up to 500 or 600 acres, or perhaps more, only one keeper will be employed*; and though keepers differ very greatly—some being able to look after almost twice as much ground as others—the acreage named will often be quite as much as a single-handed man can effectually manage. Here, again, much must depend upon the nature of the land, as also upon the condition it is in when a new tenant enters into occupation. In any case, it is pretty certain that there will be a great deal to be done during the first year or so, especially if the shoot has been let down, so that vermin have become thick upon the ground, and poaching, possibly, has been allowed to go on unchecked. It is only when land is of the very roughest description—including, perhaps, a considerable acreage of heath or common or downland—that a keeper can be expected to tend a great deal of it. Such land requires less supervision than good sound woodland or cultivated ground, for the simple reason that it is never likely to support much in the way of game beyond hares and rabbits. These, of course, require some looking after, but any land coming within the confines of the shoot—no matter whether it be productive or otherwise so far as game is concerned—will require supervision of some description, chiefly as regards the suppression of vermin, and perhaps also of poaching.

Surveying the Ground.

The first thing to do, then, on taking a rough shooting—indeed, the thing that must be done when one first contemplates the renting of it—is to survey the ground very thoroughly with a view to judging its capabilities. Not every prospective shooting tenant is able to do this on his own initiative, for though he may have a rough idea of the kind of place he wants, he is not unlikely to overlook many points of importance—favourable or otherwise—that would be patent enough to a practised eye. If anyone doubts his capabilities in this direction, let him take some disinterested person with him to view the shoot very thoroughly. Let everything that can be learnt about the history of the place be acquired, for such knowledge may be useful, though not too much importance must be attached to the nature or size of the bags that have been obtained in bygone seasons. Such particulars as these may be useful enough in the case of a shoot that has never been preserved in the strict sense of the term, and which is situated in a country where its yield of game is not dependent in great measure upon the kind of preservation that goes on around; but particulars of bags whose proportions are due almost entirely to the efforts of some previous proprietor towards obtaining an annual bag, are generally not only useless, but misleading. A shooting that has been conducted on the quick returns principle, i.e., where the ground has been heavily stocked each year simply for the sake of the sport to be obtained in that particular season, may be quite unsuitable to the purpose of anyone wishing to conduct it on sounder and more permanent principles.

When inspecting a shooting with a view to renting, it must be borne in mind that appearances are apt sometimes to be deceptive. There are times when even a really well-stocked place appears to be devoid of all kinds of game—on a rough and cold day, for example, most of the partridges will get away into the hedgerows and spinneys, and hardly a bird will be seen in the course of a walk round the property. Pheasants, too, will be much less in evidence on a dull day than when the sun is shining, while, after rain, rabbits will be mostly aground and hares will be hiding in covert immediately after a spell of rough weather. Evidence of game about a place may, however, be forthcoming, even though but little is actually seen of the game itself. A look-out should be kept for places where partridges are likely to roost—i.e., in the meadows and on the stubbles—an ear should be kept open for the calling of pheasants towards evening, and banks and hedges should be examined with a view to ascertaining what sort of show there may be of the runs of hares or rabbits, or of the buries of the latter. Some of these signs will be noticeable at any season of the year, but the prospective tenant of a shooting will, of course, see less of everything in the height of summer, when crops are on the land and the leaf is thick in covert, than at other seasons.

It is, however, to the general possibilities of a shooting that most attention should be paid. Light land, with good farming and plenty of corn or other crops known to be attractive to game, is almost certain to hold a number of partridges, whether they are actually in evidence or not, and if there are good hedgerows and coverts as well, these conditions will also imply the presence of pheasants. Owing to hard shooting or bad management, the stocks of either of these birds or of the ground game may have fallen to a low ebb, but places which, on the face of them, possess attractive features are those upon which a fresh stock will be most easily and economically worked up. If it be possible, by all means take a shooting upon which a fair head of game is already in evidence; if not, take that which at least possesses certain natural advantages. A better head of partridges will always be forthcoming on land which is under good cultivation than on that which is largely or entirely neglected, and while pheasants may thrive fairly well amid rough and wild surroundings, a certain amount of cultivated land is desirable in their case as well. Pheasants, however, can be so much more easily encouraged by artificial means that, provided one has good places for them to nest in and good coverts to resort to later on, any shortcomings can be largely remedied. Food and water can be readily supplied at all times, and even coverts that are only moderately attractive can be much improved by judicious management in the matter of cutting the underwood, the making of rides, and—if it be worth one’s while to do it—by planting.

Preliminary Preparations.

Having decided, after noting carefully its good and bad points, that the shoot he has inspected is likely to suit his purpose, the new tenant will lose no time in laying his plans with a view to exploiting its possibilities. And here it may be mentioned that if it is intended to do much the first year, one cannot begin too early in making preparations. Most places to let come into the market at the beginning of February, but if it is possible to view and agree to take a shoot before that date, so much the better.* One’s occupation will probably not begin until February 2nd (the day after the expiration of the previous season’s tenancy), but to have it in one’s hands at this early date will be a great advantage. One then has plenty of time to lay one’s plans and to have everything cut and dried before the birds begin to nest, and the keeper who is installed will have a much better opportunity of making a clear start with his season’s operations. One must now decide whether partridges or pheasants are to come first under consideration, but in either case the first thing to see to will be the state of the stock already existent upon the ground. If no artificial rearing is to be undertaken, one’s first object will be to encourage and protect in every way possible any birds that may be upon the place. The killing of vermin, which is a subject that must be treated by itself and will be found in another chapter, will be one of the first things to be seen to; but besides this, it will have to be considered what feeding is necessary; what facilities for nesting may be in existence, and how they may be improved upon; what parts of the property will need special supervision in regard to poaching, and so on. It will further be necessary to see that anything required to be done in the woods, such as the trimming of rides (if these have been neglected, as is so often the case when a shoot is about to change hands), the mending of fences round coverts, the repairing of hedges, the construction of small bridges in covert, the digging of ditches, etc., is all seen to some time before the birds are likely to begin to nest, in order that there may be no disturbance of the woods or hedgerows during that important period.

An ideal bit of Rough Shooting—a place likely to hold almost anything.

Social Amenities

At this point it may