The Complete English Wing Shot

by George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell

How far a pheasant should come in order to get its best impetus is rather a difficult question. Clearly it must not be so far as to make the bird begin to look out for a place to alight. That is to say, it must be under 600 yards in most cases; but that does not assist very much. Probably the best distance from the rise always alters with circumstances, but there seems to be no reason for extending it beyond the midway distance between the first two “sailing” periods.

The pheasants, in common with grouse and partridges, seem to object to meeting more than a certain air resistance. When they have got up to a speed at which the air resistance becomes unpleasant, they hold their wings out still, and sail or float for some distance before renewing their wing vibrations. If they are shot before this floating occurs for the first time, they have not come to their full speed. If after, they probably have come to it. If game is making up hill, the floating occurs much later for the first time than it does when the direction is horizontal or down hill. It is possible then that, speaking strictly, a pheasant does not become a rocketer until it has passed the first floating stage of its flight. It may be that when going up wind it will not be able to float at all, but if the wind is as high as this implies, there is, again, the question whether the pheasant is entitled to be called a rocketer. The term, however, has been so much abused by misapplication that it has almost gone out of use, and people speak more frequently of high or tall birds and of fast ones, of curling and sailing pheasants.

Although pace is in great request by the pheasant shooter, he does not generally appreciate the greater difficulty of shooting through foliage at his birds. There is excuse for this. The shot does not do the trees any good, and besides there is a distinct tendency to shoot to a “gallery,” which in cover is limited by the surroundings. It unquestionably enhances the pleasure of covert shooting to be able to see what all one’s fellow-guns do. There are times when no birds come except in one way, and this is apt to be dull for those not then “engaged,” unless they can see the wings of the battle line. Nevertheless, speaking of our best English sporting spirit, if we can satisfy our own critical sense, we desire no other appreciation. But we like to appreciate others and to criticise mentally their performances, therefore we want to see them. The author, however, has pleased himself more by success in killing pheasants between tall trees that he could not see through than by any other kind of shooting. However, he would not say that this is really the more difficult in practice, although in theory it looks to be infinitely the more taxing. The author has missed more easy game than any others, he supposes by mere laziness. If there is anything special to be done, one is never late for breakfast; but on a day off one often is late, and it seems to be the same in shooting. If there is only just time, then the nerves are alive to take the smallest chance, whereas, given ample time, the author at any rate can often take just too long.

In bringing pheasants to the guns, it is often necessary to discriminate between the wild and tame bred. The former are much more upon the alert than the latter, and it is often impossible to drive them out of a cover, for the very simple reason that they cannot be got to go into and remain in it long enough to be driven out. Then pheasant driving becomes beating a country, very much like grouse or partridge driving. Wild birds are also much more apt to take wing before they are wanted to, and to fly out at the flanks of the beats over the heads of the stops. But provided the wild birds can be kept upon their legs, they will answer to the control of the woodcraftsman just as well as tame bred pheasants. Probably there is no difference in the speed at which tame and wild pheasants travel, and one is as easy to shoot as the other when brought to the gun, but the wild bred bird is not as easy to bring there as the other. If he cannot fly faster—and the author agrees with the Marquis of Granby that he does not—he can at least fly farther, and probably he is more likely in hill country, where he is mostly in evidence, to take an up-hill course. Both of these characteristics are apt to carry him well out of range of guns that are posted as experience of hand-bred pheasants suggests to be best.

Pheasants will rarely fly away to ground they do not know, but they can be made to run there. The principle of driving them is to leave one end open and close three sides by means of beaters or stops. But the birds have a natural tendency to cling to cover as they run, not necessarily woods, but any cover that can hide them; turnips and gorse, broom and ferns, they particularly like to run in. But in driving pheasants along narrow strips of covert side stops have to be well back from the plantation, otherwise by becoming aware of stops far ahead the birds may believe themselves to be pounded, and then they will fly at once, and usually towards their homes—that is, in the opposite direction to that in which they are wanted to go. At Holkham, for the reason stated, a good deal of this shooting of “pheasants back” is prohibited; but in many places it is the most appreciated of all, for those that fly back over the heads of the advancing line in covert are sure to be high 100 yards behind the rise, whereas in the line they may give rather tame shooting.

The latest generation of pheasant shooters looks back at the sport of a hundred years ago with indifference and contempt—indifference because the birds were so few, and contempt because it believes the shooting was very easy. Some of it was very easy, no doubt; but in those days there were no rides through the woods, and some of them were so thick that leather jackets had to be worn by sportsmen, who would force through after spaniels, or try to, and often find that even then they could not do it. The gamekeeper’s change of dress from velveteen to Harris or home-spun cloth indicates the change that has taken place in the coverts. Forestry has more or less come in, and with the more thickly planted trees, blackthorn and bramble, white thorn and gorse, have been stifled by want of sun and air. The pheasant now runs in the open covert, whereas he would lie close in the bramble and gorse bushes, which often grew 8 or 9 feet high. Pheasant shooting in the “hind legs” was not child’s play; it was dreadfully hard work, and the snap shots given were often most difficult, but the difficulty was not of the same kind as that of the fast, high bird in the open, which is mostly one to overcome by cool judgment and calculating trick, but it was one requiring physical strength and snap shooting.

Often it has been said that our ancestors knew nothing of the rocketer. But the hardest pheasants the author has ever had to kill have been Welsh pheasants flushed by a team of wild spaniels, and these birds often came a couple of hundred yards before they got within range, and all down hill. That is to say, there still exists shooting done in the same way in which it was managed before the battle of Waterloo, and that shooting is infinitely more difficult than any that can be obtained in a flat country.

The author has arrived at a time of life when he has no particular ambition to enter into competition with his dead ancestors, but he believes that their skill in shooting the few birds they had was quite as great as that of their descendants. They were flight shooters, and if they could hit flighting ducks and teal in the dusk of evening, they could do anything with the shot gun, except that they knew nothing of getting off their guns at the rate of 200 shots in 20 minutes.

This is quite a demoralising rate of shooting at first, but it is attainable by everyone, now that every gun-maker has a high tower and clay birds to put over the shooter in streams.

Fashion in shooting always seems to go by contraries. That which is most difficult becomes most fashionable, and now that anyone may learn how to hit driven game and “let off” quickly, by means of the shooting schools, it is doubtful whether fashion will not turn round and favour that which is less attainable, and not to be acquired by school teaching. This sort of shooting education cannot help a man to shoot straight at the end of a long day in hot sun and over the roughest peat hags. Only practice in the thing itself will do that: there is no royal road to high form, as there is for the butts.