ROUNDABOUT READINGS.
Relieved for a space by my own decree from the mere labour of searching for topics in the newspaper press of the United Kingdom, I have been seeking recreation in the pursuit, how often unavailing, of the partridge. "Come down on Thursday next," wrote my friend, Hartey, "for four or five days. We are going to shoot our outsides." This was sufficiently alarming, but it was obviously better than shooting our insides, and accordingly on the appointed day the county of Norfolk received me.
Would that it were sufficient on these occasions merely to arouse the primitive sporting instinct of man, to revert to the fringe of barbarism and to sally out, scantily clothed, with sling or bow or snare, in quest of game. But alas, the curse of civilisation cannot be got rid of; one has to think of cartridges, cartridge-bags, caps, boots, gaiters, stockings, and heaven knows what besides. And in the end the odds are quite ten to one that you forget your cartridge-magazine, or that your beautiful new pair of patent hammerless ejector guns get left under the seat of the railway-carriage and become for a day or two the sport of station-masters and porters on the Great Eastern Railway.
"Shooting the outsides" is a sport by itself. Your one desire is to keep the birds off the land of your neighbours; the one desire of the birds is to seek that land. Your best covey gets up and pops comfortably into a lovely root-field a couple of hundred yards away, but you cannot go after it, for the field belongs to another property, and the derisive birds can chirp and run at their ease, while you tramp on, shotless, under a broiling sun. However, the outsides have to be made good, and now and then a slice of luck rewards you. For instance, if a neighbouring vicar has given notice that after a certain date he means to shoot over his own glebe, your delight is all the keener when you all but annihilate a large covey of birds whose home is on the glebe.
There is much humour in dogs. Your own retriever, whom you have broken yourself, is of course the quietest and best-behaved dog in the world. He also possesses the surest nose and the softest mouth. Why, then, does he choose a moment when everybody is looking to run in wildly and disturb every bird in the field? Or why, when you have sent him in pursuit of a runner, does he lie down and pant, while the keeper's dog, a tangled door-mat of the poodle species, solidly, and without ostentation, tracks down the wounded bird, and finally deposits it at the keeper's feet, just as you are assuring everybody that there is not a vestige of scent, and that no dog could possibly be expected to work in such weather.
Then, again, I want to know this about partridges. How is that, when they are driven to the guns, they always select a novice and unanimously fly over his head? There is an unerring instinct about them. Your novice may disguise himself in all the sport-stained paraphernalia of a veteran shooter. Bless his simple heart, he can't deceive the birds. They come to him and court the death that never comes with a heroic persistency. When he has attained to the status of a veteran, and the birds about him are scarcer, he will look back with a fond regret to the days of his bird-frequented novitiate.
The long and the short of it is that partridges possess a cunning amounting to genius. Under a soft and guileless exterior the partridge hides a store of deceitful wiles that might put Sherlock Holmes or any of his countless imitators to shame. His one object is not to be killed, and this he pursues with a ferocious pertinacity against which keepers, beaters, dogs and guns match themselves in vain. Here, then, is a ballad of the cunning partridge.
The partridge is a cunning bird.
He likes not those who bring him down:
From age to age he has preferred
The shots who blaze into the brown,
Whose stocks come never shoulder-high,
Who never pause to pick and choose,
But on whose biceps you descry
The black, the blue, the tell-tale bruise.
Or should a stubborn cartridge swell,
And jam, as it may chance, your gun,
The sly old partridge knows it well,
"Great Scott!" he seems to chirp "here's fun."
He gathers all his feathered tribe,
They leave the stubble or the grass,
And with one wild and whirling gibe
Above your silent muzzles pass.
Your scheme you carefully contrive,
And, while each beater waves his flag,
Your fancy, as they duly drive,
Already sees a record bag.
But, lo, they baulk your keen desire,
For, though with birds the sky grows black,
Not one of them will face the fire,
And every blessed bird goes back.
For partridges I'll try no more;
Why should I waste in grim despair?
Take me to far Albania's shore,
And let me bag the woodcock there.
Or on the Susquehanna's stream
I'll shoot with every chance of luck
The gourmet's glory and his dream,
The canvas-back, that juicy duck.
Yea, any other bird I'll shoot,
But not again with toil and pain
I'll tramp the stubble or the root,
Nor wait behind a fence in vain.
For of all birds you hit or miss
(I've tried it out by every test),
Again I say with emphasis
The partridge is the cunningest.
So much for the partridge. Before many weeks are over it is quite possible that I may have to promote the pheasant to the top rank of cunning. And this I know full well about my friend the pheasant, that, although he is a large bird and seems to fly slowly, he is a very hard bird to hit, as he ought to be hit. And most of us find it much easier to hit the immeasurable space by which every bird on the wing is surrounded.