There has always been great dispute among trap-shooters as to the best trap. The New York City Club claims that a bird released from a ground-trap, selecting his own time to rise, and mode and direction of flight, is harder to kill than one tossed heels over head from a plunge or spring-trap. But our Western brethren, who are naturally more rapid, and who have less difficulty in obtaining pigeons, are so annoyed with the waste of time occasioned by a dilatory pigeon, that they universally prefer the plunge-trap.
Probably the mesne between these two opinions is correct, or more properly a combination of them both; a single bird is undoubtedly harder to kill at a ground-trap, whereas the plunge-trap will free the two birds in double-shooting, to go off at the same moment. So that for these reasons, and to insure skill at both, they should be appropriated to these offices respectively. The best Western shot, if not the best gentleman shot in the world, who has killed his eighty-four out of ninety double birds, was terribly baulked by the ground trap, to which he had not been accustomed, when he first attempted to kill even single birds from it. But for double-shooting, as it is essential that both birds should fly together, the trap that insures this is preferable.
One of the worst features of trap-shooting is, that it has fallen mainly into the hands of professionals; and although there is no reason for not pursuing a legitimate sport because blacklegs enjoy it also, they have introduced tricks and artifices that degrade the entire amusement. The use of heavy guns is one of the mildest of these, for it is madness for the best shot in the world to match his ordinary field-gun against a number six bore single-barrelled piece; and they will put a clod of grass or even a dead bird in the same trap with the live one, and if this is a spring-trap, the adversary will be taken at a disadvantage. They deaden their own birds by squeezing them under the wings, and excite those of their opponent by plucking them or pulling their feathers, and can even give them an irregular flight. The professionals, therefore, may be expected to gain a nominal superiority, and claim to be champions, more from their cunning unscrupulousness than from their actual skill, and, by this fancied superiority, degrade the entire sport.
The rules which were adopted at a convention of the principal clubs in the State of New York, held in 1865, when the best sporting talent in the country was represented, are given in the Appendix. Although an improvement in many particulars on the former rules, they are not perfect; it is probable that they will be further amended, so as, while increasing the difficulty of killing the bird, to place all sportsmen on an equal footing, and to remove as far as possible the influence of accident.
And now, apologizing to the many sportsmen who are abler shots and have had far greater experience than himself, the author urges in extenuation of his presumption in publishing this book, that as they would not commit their experiences to paper, he felt justified in attempting it; and as the other sporting writers have utterly neglected this field of labor as beneath their notice, he could not be blamed for entering upon it and doing with it the best of which he was capable. And to those persons who follow in the track of the literary sporting men, and affect to despise the various kinds of water-fowl and bay-shooting, the author would say that he only wishes they may have such days with the geese and ducks, the marlins, yellow-legs, and dowitchers, the rail and the plover, as he has had, in the full confidence that they will be very soon converted.
APPENDIX.
The following technical descriptions are taken mainly from “Giraud’s Birds of Long Island,” a work that is now almost out of print, but which is more valuable to the student of nature than some of its more pretentious rivals; and I have interpolated such suggestions and made such alterations as my experience dictated and the purposes of this work demanded. A discourse on the wild-fowl of the Northern States hardly seemed complete without such a description of them as would enable the sportsman to distinguish one from another; and yet it was not within the purview of a work intended for sportsmen, to devote much attention or many of its pages to ornithology. This is therefore condensed into an Appendix, where it will not trouble the general reader, but will be easy of reference when the information it contains is wanted.