More than once it has been my good fortune to secure a clipping run for a sporting field by keeping a clear look-out upon the matter at issue, and nothing else, when a long series of covers drawn blank, and such dampers, have sent one-half of the morning’s muster home, while the other had taken to the dernier ressort of cigars and gossip. As an instance of this, several years ago, with the Shropshire, when Mr. Cresset Pelham had them, we had been at it from the hour of meeting till past three, in November too, and no luck. Having trotted on to our last hope for the day, it was tried, and pronounced—blank! Already twilight had commenced, the huntsman outside the cover was blowing his horn, the pack mustered, and home was the order of march. I had watched the gathering with care; and, as we were already trotting from the side of the spinny, it struck me that an old and favourite bitch was missing. I called the huntsman’s attention to it. There was a pause—a faint wimple was heard in the still valley—anon it opened into a cry, “Hark to it!”—the pack flew to the challenge—there was a mighty crash: in a minute a fox broke away in sight of every man who had had the patience to await the last throw on the dice. A burst of twenty minutes was the result, without a pull from best pace; and we turned him up in the open just as the parish lantern gave us notice to look out for squalls.
There exists, in some masters of hounds, a disposition to keep back such men as, when hounds are in chase, follow them through the covers they take in their line. It is not my desire to inculcate disobedience to the powers that be; but certainly I cannot second that principle, either with reference to those who adopt it, or those to whom it is intended to apply. When a hunted fox has reached a cover, not only is it the best way to cheer hounds to him, that they should not feel themselves alone, but also the noise made by men following them is the most likely way to make a fresh fox break, without any of the stragglers getting on him. I have seen a fox crawl into cover dead beat, and already in the mouths of the pack. The huntsman and a whip followed them—the “whoo-whoop” was given—the master and the rest of the field waited on the outside. They remained in patience till ten minutes had elapsed. “Surely,” said an old hand at last, “they are doing more than baying him with all that cry. Hark! it has got to the opposite side of the wood:—by heavens! they’re away with a fresh fox.” And so they were; and they killed him at the end of forty minutes without a check, and without a sight of them ever being caught, save by the servants, who had followed to lift the fox that had crawled dead beat into the cover.
I have thus attempted to sketch, for the young disciple of the “noble science,” a slight code of maxims of general application. For the principles of practice to direct him in the constantly occurring cases, which admit of no rule save that arising out of individual circumstances, he must rely upon himself. Under this general head of Hunting, I have not thought it necessary to enter upon any varieties of the chase, save those of the fox and the hare. Stag-hunting, as a rural sport, is limited to a very few districts; and for its pursuit requires only a knowledge of horsemanship, and a quick eye to a country. Fox-hunting and hare-hunting I have treated with reference only to the points of practice which apply to the convenience of those who select them as appliances of recreation. This work, in its nature, is rudimentary, it professes to deal with the elements of our manly exercises, and so far to treat of our national sports of Racing, Hunting, and Shooting. Its office is to instruct the beginner, leaving the higher classes to volumes of more pretension. With this view of its purpose, I have brought the subject of the Chase to the limit which I designed for it. It is a truly manly—a noble sport. Long may it be cherished and fostered in our land! The qualities which it calls into action are those which confer honour on manhood,—courage, promptness, activity, and decision. Surely these are rare properties in which to exercise a youth, and these the Chase will engender and nourish: while to such as require that a moral attach to every occupation of life, it has this to recommend it, that, in riding to hounds, this great truth is hourly inculcated—“Honesty is the best policy.”
SHOOTING.
It is my purpose, in the present chapter, as in the two preceding, to offer, as companion to the system of exercises described in the first part of this work, certain practical rules upon another of those popular field sports, a knowledge of which has in all ages been considered, in this country, part of a gentleman’s education. The perfection to which we have attained in the manufacture of all the implements connected with this branch of sporting, would make a dissertation on the materiel of shooting a piece of useless information to those for whose service these notices are intended. Instead, therefore, of filling these pages with elaborate instructions for selecting his guns, gun-cases, flasks, belts, and the whole catalogue of shooting gear, I present my reader with one solitary golden maxim, which will ensure to him the possession of a perfect apparatus, and that eventually on the most economical terms: Let him go, for every article of his equipment, to the most celebrated artist in the item of which he has need. It is true that, compared with the scale of prices in the provinces, the charges of the first-rate London gunmakers are startling things upon paper, and so are those made by coachmakers of the same class. Indeed, the same may be said of the rate of demand common to the leading dealers of the metropolis; but he will find that finis coronat opus. An economical friend of mine, who was recently quartered in Ireland, ordered, of one of the most respectable firms in Dublin, a travelling chariot, the price, with the usual et ceteras, being two hundred and fifty pounds: here it would have cost him three hundred, or three hundred and twenty. Just as it was completed, he was ordered home; and his new bargain broke down with him fourteen times between Liverpool and London. As a contrast to this: An old sporting associate, never particularly distinguished for his thrift, recently showed me a pair of shooting shoes, for which he paid Hoby two guineas, that he has had in constant work for sixteen years! No record has been preserved of the number of times they have had new bottoms. The only perishable portions of these cordwaining phenomena, however, are their soles: their bodies appear to be immortal.
To return to the appointments of the young aspirant to the honours of the trigger. Although I set out with supposing him equipped with the best double detonator that money can procure from a maker of known character, and all other mechanical appliances for the field, a proper management and judicious arrangement of them is by no means to be similarly obtained. Upon the condition of those mechanical aids his success depends, quite as much as the adroitness to which he may arrive in the use of them. Whether that department be in the hands of a gamekeeper fully competent to all its details, or there be an actual necessity for the master’s eye to direct it, a knowledge of the most approved means will be found equally essential. Proficiency in any art or science requires an intimacy with the whole machinery of its economy. It was this conviction that made an emperor a labourer in a dockyard, and should induce every sportsman to acquaint himself with the minutest particulars bearing upon his craft. To this end I will give a few rules, derived as well from personal experience as from some of the most approved authorities on the subject that have appeared in print.