The Complete English Wing Shot

by George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell

The object of this plan is that if the bird is killed, or is made to give up sitting by bad weather, the eggs are nevertheless not injured, but are merely passed on to be divided amongst other birds.

It has been said that there is no advantage in this plan, but one cannot help thinking that only lazy keepers and their friends who sell game foods would say so.

The argument is that the nests are not in danger from foxes until just at the time of hatching. It is said that the birds lose their scent when incubating, and that only when the chicks break the shell is there any scent from the nests. As a matter of fact there is very little scent from breeding birds whether they are sitting or laying, but to say there is none, and that foxes cannot find them, is a total mistake.

Nests are taken by dogs and foxes, and by hedgehogs and rats, at all times of the incubating period. If the birds gave out as much scent as they do at other periods, there would be no nests left in a fox country. But nature and the birds, between them, do defeat the foxes and the vermin in a fair proportion of cases. It has been affirmed that incubating alters their system, and that the scent that before passed out through the skin passes out with the excreta when the birds incubate. That is to say, that there is a total change of system brought about by the change of instinct. The stronger scent from the excreta of sitting birds has been advanced as a proof of this. The author will not discuss this theory or deny it, but he is certain that the whole loss of scent can be accounted for in another way. There is perhaps a change of scent in breeding creatures. To explain this, in a doubtful way, it has been affirmed that in gestation the superfluous essence of a beast finds a use in being drained by the blood to the embryo.

In birds, however, if they are discovered off the nest, your pointer will frequently point them, but will not be able to do so when they are upon their eggs. The pointer is not a close hunter like the fox, the terrier, or the sheep-dog, all of which occasionally find too many sitting birds. But that which most negatives the change of system theory in birds are two facts. One, that off the nests to feed the birds have scent; and the other is, that at any time of the year the birds have power to withhold their scent by merely crouching tight to mother earth, holding in their feathers and remaining motionless. The author has been one of a party when the best dogs then in existence totally failed to find a wounded grouse. Then it was resolved to lunch, and dogs were dropped or coupled up where they were. Towards the end of lunch, one of the dogs was observed to be pointing downwards with its nose not 6 inches from the ground upon which lay the wounded grouse. That is to say, it had remained immovable and scentless within a yard of these crack dogs for more than half an hour. These dogs were the very best amongst the most successful field trial winners of the time, and to doubt that they had remarkable noses would seem absurd if their names were mentioned. Some of them had won by finding game 100 yards over the backs of their competitors. But there was absolutely no scent from that bird until it became exhausted. Nor is this unusual. A falcon generally, and an artificial kite sometimes, will make unwounded birds crouch like this, and they too will often give out no scent whatever. At other times dogs will be only able to detect the foot scents made before the birds were scared into close lying. If there could be any doubt about the noses of the dogs the author has shot over, he would not dare to write like this; but the best dog men of the present time will, he knows, support him when he says there never have been better nosed ones. Consequently, it is affirmed that birds can not only reduce their scent at will, but wholly suppress it, for a time at any rate. They can only do this when motionless, and this seems a sufficient explanation of why all birds are not found on the nests by foxes and vermin. The greater difficulty seems to be to discover why so many are found; but as even Jove sometimes nods, it may be that the partridge and the pheasant does so too, and the slightest movement appears to be fatal when scent means death. One thing it is difficult to explain: How is it that the breath does not betray the presence of the game? The otter can be hunted down the river by the bubbles of breath that rise from him. The submerged moorhen and wounded duck can be unerringly found by the dog in the same way and by the same means. Is it possible that birds can subsist without breathing for periods that would be fatal to ourselves? The author expresses no opinion, but there is a total absence of scent upon occasion to account for; this entire absence is rare either during incubation or at other times.

Those who think there is no advantage to be derived from removing the eggs into safety during incubation, say that there is no danger because there is no scent. Yet one of them at least, namely Mr. Millard, advises the use of Renardine to prevent the danger which scent causes.

Mr. Alington, the author of Partridge Driving, describes how Renardine, the preparation in which Mr. Millard is interested, was effective in keeping off foxes from the partridges’ nests one year, but was actually the attraction to them the next. Mr. Holland Hibbert had a similar experience. Mr. J. Geddies, of Collin, Dumfries, wrote to one of the papers recounting similar misfortunes. There have been plenty of letters written by keepers giving contrary views, but probably the papers have exercised a wise discretion in not publishing them. It would be unusual if the makers could not get testimonials from a number of their clients, and they certainly would not ask those to state their opinions who were dissatisfied.

We have to remember that Messrs. Gilbertson & Pages’ representative would not be commercial if he were impartial, and that the spread of what is called the Euston system would obviate the necessity at once for Renardine and for the more important and more useful game foods sold by the firm named above.

Another objection to protecting nests by evil-smelling substances or liquids is, that men can smell them too, and if it took a fox a year to know that a peculiar sensation to his olfactory nerves meant partridge, it would not take a reasoning being a day to do so. Indeed, with this guide to nests, the stealing of eggs could be conducted by night as well as it is now by day. Another so-called prevention of foxes consists in small pieces of metal covered with luminous paint, but this again is open to precisely the same human objection as the other.

Scent is very little understood, but there is no reason why a non-smelling volatile substance should not be discovered some day that will combine with the volatile essence of game and neutralise it, just as the scent of ozone is neutralised in the presence of carbonic acid gas. Ozone is only oxygen in a peculiar molecular form. When one atom amalgamates with the carbonic acid, the others become simple oxygen again, and as part of the air have no scent. An essence that will act in some such way towards the scent of sitting birds appears to be desirable in the interests of game and foxes. But even if it were discovered, it would do nothing to save the nests in heavy rain, when every depression in the ground is flooded, and when partridges, grouse, and pheasants are forced to abandon incubation.