Shooting.
I have touched upon hunting; let us now consider the twin-sport of shooting, and let us first consider it in its most favourable aspect. How well do I remember those bright September evenings, long ago, when the rays of the westering sun, striking obliquely on the ruddy clover-heads, bathed them in the rosy light of a summer that still lingered on “the happy autumn fields”! Youth, health, and hope were ours then—youth, health, and hope, and friends! Life lay all before us; and, what was more to the purpose for the present moment, before us, too, were the partridges—a covey scattered among those smiling clover-heads. We go forward to beat them up with all the joy and excitement of that golden time when life has not yet been saddened by the pale cast of thought. The birds rise before us, singly, or in twos. The last shots are fired. The old retriever picks up the fallen game. Then we turn homewards, just as the glorious sun sinks at last behind the high Hampshire hills, and “barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day.” Were we then guilty of cruelty? I answer “No,” because the moral qualities of an act exist only in the mind of the agent,
“For there is nothing either good or bad
But thinking makes it so;”
and it had never occurred to us to question the morality of a sport which gave us such days of happiness, such nights of unbroken repose.
And truly, if we admit, for the sake of argument, at any rate, and making no assumption as against the vegetarian, that it is legitimate for man to use birds and beasts for his food, I see not much that can be justly said in condemnation of shooting such as this. If birds may be used for food, how better can they be killed than by the gun? And thus it appears that it is that much-maligned and much-ridiculed individual the “pot-hunter” who is the best justified of all the shooting confraternity!
Again, if rabbits must be kept under for the sake of agriculture (a proposition which few will be found to dispute), it is certainly far better that they should be shot than be taken by that hideous instrument of torture, the steel trap, or the hardly less cruel contrivance known as “the wire.”
But when we come to the shooting of artificially reared and carefully preserved pheasants, and especially to what is known as “battue shooting,” very different considerations arise. Let us take an instance.
The short December day has drawn to a close. There has been warm work in the coverts. A thousand head of game—pheasants, hares, and rabbits—have been brought to bag. In fact, we have had, not indeed a tremendous battue, as these things are reckoned nowadays, but simply “a jolly day’s covert-shooting.” But now darkness—thick, gloomy, winter darkness—has settled down like a pall upon the woods. There is some snow upon the ground, and with the night has come a sharper frost and a bitter, piercing wind. But what is that to us as we gather together in the warm dining-room, where the lamps are so bright, where the logs burn so keenly, and where thick curtains ward off the draughts of that nipping, eager air, and deaden the sound of the gusts moaning fitfully without? How delightful a festive dinner like this after our day of woodland sport! And yet, as I have raised the first glass of champagne to my lips, a thought has sometimes come to me which has gone nigh to spoil my pleasure. It is the thought of that cover where the fun was so fast and furious, and which literally seemed to swarm with game. I picture it as it is now under the darkness of night. There, within sight of the bright lights around which we are so joyously gathered, there are scores—hundreds may be—of miserable creatures with mangled limbs and bleeding wounds; some with hind-legs broken, dragging themselves piteously over the frosty ground; some writhing in agony which death comes all too slowly to relieve. Ah, if that wounded hare could speak, as she looks at the line of light streaming from our dining-room windows, what a curse might she not breathe against the cruel savages within! What a contrast! Here, light, warmth, and pleasure; there, darkness, cold, and pain unspeakable! Are not these considerations which should give us pause?
And can it be denied that the man who has learnt to stand at “a warm corner” unmoved while wounded beasts and birds are struggling or piteously crawling in agony all around him, who can listen unmoved to the terrible cry of the wounded hare—a cry like that of a child in pain—can it be denied that that man, who has so deadened his susceptibility to the sufferings of his humble and helpless kindred of the animal world, has himself suffered grievous injury to that which is best in human nature—that sacred instinct of compassion, wherein some thinkers of no mean order have thought they discerned the origin and the very basis of morality?
And what a curse to our country is this selfish mania for the preservation of game—preservation for the purpose of destruction! For this are the country-folk warned off from the quiet woodland ways; for this are the children prohibited from entering the copses to gather wild-flowers; for this are enclosures made, barbed-wire fences erected, footpaths and commons filched from the public, and the landless still further excluded from the land; for this must temptation be constantly set before the eyes of the labourer; for this must the offender against the game laws be called up for sentence before a tribunal of game-preservers; for this must the woods and the country-side be denuded of their most delightful inhabitants—the jay and the magpie, with their lustrous plumage and wild cries; the squirrel, embodiment of life and graceful activity, with his curious winning ways; the quaint, harmless, and interesting little hedgehog; the owl, with its long-drawn melancholy note, as it hawks in the summer moonlight—for this must wood-sides be disfigured by impudent notice-boards, telling us, in the arrogant language of the rich Philistine, that “All trespassers will be prosecuted, all dogs destroyed”; for this must millions of innocent creatures be pitilessly condemned to shocking mutilations and atrocious agonies, long drawn out. Such is “Merry England” under the rule of the game-preserver!
“Strange that where Nature loved to trace
As if for gods a dwelling-place,
There man, enamoured of distress,
Should mar it into wilderness.”
I have now briefly considered those blood-sports which are generally spoken of as “legitimate” sports—namely, hunting and shooting. “But,” someone will ask me, “what of hare-hunting, and coursing, and otter-hunting—are not these ‘legitimate’ sports also?”
Well, over these I care not to delay; a few words will suffice for each.