It has been said that coverts devoted to pheasants save the lives of many ’cock, but it is also said that these birds do not like coverts in which there are many pheasants. It is suggested that the pheasants eat all the food, such as insects and worms, to be found under the dead leaves. There appears to be very little in this contention. A woodcock in covert is generally a woodcock asleep and not feeding. When flushed he is as foolish as a daylight owl. But in hard weather, when he has been unable to get enough food by night, and is compelled to feed in the daytime also, and when you find him on the brook-side, he is no fool then, and can fly as quickly as a snipe, and is as much on the alert. The difference in manner proves that the woodcocks are very rarely feeding when flushed by the beaters. In Ireland and the west of Scotland the warm heather-clad hills hold the woodcock more than the coverts do, until the birds are driven by snow or hail to the woods. Rain and mist will afterwards drive the ’cock out of the coverts and back to the hills, but it is thought that at Ashford fewer go back to the heather on each occasion, so that the longer shooting is delayed in January the more birds there are in those coverts.
Woodcocks lay four eggs; they pair, probably have two broods each season, and they are in the habit of carrying the young birds out to the feeding-grounds. They hold them by various methods: sometimes they clasp them to the breast by the pressure of the bill, sometimes they clasp them between the legs or thigh. One woodcock has been seen to carry two young birds together, one by each of the methods described.
Probably no bird gives a more easy shot than a woodcock, and at the same time none is so often missed. The reason may be that shooters are inclined to shoot at twice the distance (at what they consider the “come-by-chance”) that they fire at the game bred on and by the estate. They are also frequently a little excited by the cry of ’cock, and besides this, the birds have a queer habit of twisting round any tree trunk or bush that happens to be near. These side darts are made with a good deal of pace, even by birds that have been flying like owls. They seem to be the outcome of sudden impulse; it would not be correct to call them sudden resolutions, because whatever they are due to they are liable to constant change. These twists are often at right angles to the previous flight. The birds seldom go far in one direction, but have often been known to take a flight of half a mile, with several of these right-angle turns in it, and to settle after all within a few yards of the place whence they were flushed.
The shooting of the woodcocks over setters or spaniels in the heather is extremely pretty work, but only a dog experienced on this kind of game is of much use. In covert the woodcock is rarely shot to spaniels, except in South Wales. The usual plan is a party of guns and beaters, and Lord Ardilaun hardly ever uses canine retrievers. The rocks make marking essential, and it is found that good markers are preferable to good dogs in ground so rough as to be difficult for the latter.
Bags of woodcock at Lord Ardilaun’s place have very frequently been misstated. Possibly the most “authoritative” mistake is in The Snipe and Woodcock, by Mr. L. H. de Visme Shaw, who says that in one day 508 ’cock were obtained at Ashford. That is not so. Lord Ardilaun very kindly informed the author that 205 ’cock was his best, but he explained that he was away from his game book at the time he wrote, and it is very likely, therefore, that Mr. R. J. Ussher is right in giving 209 ’cock as the record for one day there. The 205 ’cock were killed in January 1895, and at that time there were 508 ’cock killed in six days by seven guns. The big day was January 25th. Although not in a day, in a season, more ’cock have been killed at Muckross, near Killarney, than even at Ashford, or than anywhere else in the United Kingdom.
Several people besides the artist Chantrey have accidentally killed two woodcocks at a shot. Possibly it was never done by design.
Probably the best single day’s bag in England was that of 101 birds in Swanton Wood, on Lord Hastings’ Norfolk estate.
BLACK GAME
The season for these birds opens in the North on 20th August, and in the South on 1st September. They have been lately exterminated in the New Forest and in Norfolk, and have long since disappeared in most of the counties south-east of Staffordshire. In Salop and Wales there are a few of them, as there are also in Devonshire and Somersetshire and in all the northern counties. They are and always have been absent from Ireland, but are found throughout the Highlands and the border counties, and are far more numerous in Dumfriesshire and Selkirkshire than elsewhere. Probably the species is decreasing in numbers everywhere, except in isolated patches of country where they are especially preserved. They are found throughout North Europe and North Asia, but in the Caucasus there is a second and only other species, which is smaller, and in which the cocks are blacker, than in our species. A peculiarity of black game is that the cocks do not acquire the lyre tails until the third year, although the hens are said to be fertile in the second year. The white under the tail of the black cocks is flecked with black until the bird grows old, when the black gradually disappears. It is not at all uncommon to see beautiful word painting detailing the glories of the lyre tail, amongst other beauties, on 20th August, but this is not painting from nature, for neither old nor young birds have the lyre tail at that time. The old birds are then in full moult, and although they can fly as well as ever, they lie to dogs then as at no other time of the year, except in July and the earlier days of August. No one would wish these old stagers to be shot then, where they are numerous enough to afford driving later in the season. But where they are scarce, and that is nearly everywhere, they are liable to become more so by the inability of sportsmen to kill them at the only time of year they can be approached. The man who shoots them during the first seven days of grouse shooting breaks the law, but assists to save the race; for too many cocks there always are, and the majority of them are too old, and interfere with their younger relations in the breeding season. This cannot be avoided as long as sportsmen make a practice of killing the young birds over dogs during grouse shooting. Until after 1st September the birds of the year lie close and to their sorrow rise singly, so that one has but to find a brood and exterminate it. The old cock will not be with the chicks, and probably the grey hen will get shot; but she is more likely to escape than any of the young ones. Consequently, where the birds are not separately driven later in the season, the preservation and shooting of this fine game bird proceeds upon the principle of killing all the young ones and leaving all the old. That is exactly opposite to the principle adopted for all other game, and we cannot wonder that the race decreases in numbers. Another reason for the decrease is that moorlands are being more drained than they formerly were, and this destroys the rushes, upon the seeds of which young black game mostly live in their early period. They do not breed in the woods, but prefer to have their chicks on the lower moors, where they can find rushes, heather, and bracken. Whether they eat bracken in its early stages of growth, as pheasants have been known to do, the author is not aware, but upon the moorlands around St. Mary’s Loch, where there are no coverts, there used to be large numbers of black game, and in hunting the moors they were rarely to be found elsewhere than in the rushes and the ferns. Probably, therefore, ferns as well as rushes are useful in some way to them, although it may be because ferns are a great resort of flies. The way that every young bird has to be found separately, and each gives the dog a point (whereas the grouse in most counties rise in broods), makes the keepers treasure the black game for the dog-breaking facilities they offer. They teach dogs to believe that there is always another in the heather, until they are sure there is not. But black game offer very easy shots, and consequently sportsmen rather despise them in this early stage. Then, on a sudden, a total change comes over the young birds, as it were in a night, and they are transformed into birds as wary as wild geese, and sit up on the hillocks to watch for danger. After that they must be stalked, driven, or left alone.
Stalking black game with a rook rifle is nice sport—infinitely more difficult than stalking red deer. With the shot gun it is still harder, because of the necessity of a nearer approach. But difficult as it is, the author once knew of a most extraordinary stalk. Two guns, unknown to each other, both stalked from different directions the same black cock on his fir tree; both, by luck or judgment, got up to the game; each fired at the same instant, and when the game fell, each unaware that the other had shot, claimed the bird. If that sort of thing can be done, it cannot be very difficult. But probably it never happened before or since, and as a matter of fact it is difficult to stalk black game.