[It may be added that bustard are occasionally found in situations that offer no reasonable hope of a successful drive. It may then (should no others be known within the radius of action) become advisable gently to “move” the inexpugnable troop; remembering that once these birds realise that they are being “driven,” the likelihood of subsequently putting them over the guns has enormously decreased. There accrues an incidental advantage in this operation, for after “moving” them to more favouring ground, it will not be necessary to line-up the guns quite so near as is usually essential to success. For bustards possess so strong an attachment to their querencias, or individual haunts, that they may be relied upon, on being disturbed a second time, to wing a course more or less in the direction of their original position. We give a specific instance of this later.
Each pack of bustard has its own querencia, and will be found at certain hours to frequent certain places. This local knowledge, if obtainable, saves infinite time and vast distances traversed in search of game whose approximate positions, after all, may thus be ascertained beforehand.]
Now we have placed our guns in line and within that short distance of the unsuspecting game that all but assures a certain shot. We cannot, let us confess, recall many moments in life of more tense excitement than those spent thus, lying prone on the gentle slope listening with every sense on stretch for the cries of the galloping beaters as in wild career they urge the huge birds towards a fatal course. Before us rises the curving ridge, its summit sharply defined against an azure sky—azure but empty. Now the light air wafts to our ear the tumultuous pulsations of giant wings, and five seconds later that erst empty ether is crowded with two score huge forms. What a scene—and what commotion as, realising the danger, each great bird with strong and laboured wing-stroke swerves aside. One enormous barbon directly overhead receives first attention; a second, full broadside, presents no more difficulty, and ere the double thuds behind have attested the result, we realise that a third, shying off from our neighbour, is also “our meat.” This has proved one of our luckier drives, for the bandada, splitting up on the centre, offered chances to both flanks of the blockading line—chances which are not always fully exploited.
We have stated, earlier in this chapter, that among the various component factors in a bustard-drive the actual shot is of minor importance. That is so; yet truly remarkable is the frequency with which good shots constantly miss the easiest of chances at these great birds. Precisely similar failures occur with wild-geese, with swans—indeed with all big birds whose wing-action is deliberate and slow. Tardy strokes deceive the eye, and the great bulk of the bustard accentuates the deception—it seems impossible to miss them, a fatal error. As the Spanish drivers put it: “Se les llenaron el ojo de carne,” literally, “the bustards had filled your eye with meat”—the hapless marksmen saw everything bustard! Yet geese with their 40 strokes fly past ducks at 120, and the bustard’s apparently leisured movement carries him in full career as fast as whirring grouse with 200 revolutions to the minute. To kill bustard treat them on the same basis as the smaller game that appears faster but is not.
Bustards being soft-plumaged are not hard to kill. As compared with such ironclads as wild-geese, they are singularly easily killed, and with AAA shot may be dropped stone-dead at 80 and even at 100 yards. A pair of guns may thus profitably be brought into action.
Bustards seldom run, but they walk very fast, especially when alarmed. Between the inception of a drive and the moment of flushing we have known them to cover half a mile, and many drives fail owing to game having completely altered its original position. Instances have occurred of bustards walking over the dividing ridge, to the amazement of the prostrate sportsmen on the hither slope. Strange to say, when winged they do not make off, but remain where they have fallen, and an old male will usually show fight. Of course if left alone and out of sight a winged bustard will travel far.
In weight cock-bustard vary from, say, 20 to 22 lbs. in autumn, up to 28 to 30 lbs. in April. The biggest old males in spring reach 33 and 34 lbs., and one we presented to the National Collection at South Kensington scaled 37 lbs. The breast-bone of these big birds is usually quite bare, a horny callosity, owing to friction with the ground while squatting, and the heads and necks of old males usually exhibit gaps in their gorgeous spring-plumage—indicative of severe encounters among themselves. Hen-bustard seldom exceed 15 lbs. at any season.
Bustard are usually found in troops varying from half-a-dozen birds to as many as 50 or 60, and in September we have seen 200 together.
Bustard-shooting—by which we mean legitimate driving during the winter months, September to April—is necessarily uncertain in results. Some days birds may not even be seen, though this is unusual, while on others many big bands may be met with. Hence it is difficult to put down an average, though we roughly estimate a bird a gun as an excellent day’s work. A not unusual bag for six guns will be about eight head; but we have a note of two days’ shooting in April (in two consecutive years) when a party of eight guns, all well-known shots, secured 21 and 22 bustard respectively, together with a single lesser bustard on each day. This was on lands between Alcantarillas and Las Cabezas, but it is fair to add that the ground had been carefully preserved by the owner and the operation organised regardless of expense.