Shooting, too, is wonderfully changed. Where are the high stubbles we so eagerly sought on the first of September?—gone, gone for ever. The reaping-machine cuts it off now as close as the cloth on a billiard table.
It has often been said the birds are wilder at present than they were: admitting this to be the case, the cause probably is the high state of cultivation, and nothing more. There is not the cover there was formerly to hold them, and therefore they are more difficult to get at. Turnips are now sown in drills, and not broadcast, as grain usually was. If you work down the drills, the birds see you, and are off the other end: the only way is to take them across. Yet there are thousands of places where the cover is good and plentiful; and where this is the case the birds lie as well as ever.
Game is scarcer than it was, except on manors that are highly preserved: it must be remembered that where there was one shooter formerly, there are twenty now. It is a difficult matter at present to rent a shooting, for directly there is anything good in the market it is snatched up at once.
The general style of shooting of the present day is odious—large bags are "the go." In some countries it has done away with the noble pointer and setter altogether; nothing but retrievers are used. The guns, beaters, and keepers are all in a line: a gun, then a keeper with a retriever, a beater, another gun, and so on. The word is given, and away they go, taking a field in a beat. As you fire—possibly there are two or three guns popping at the same bird—a keeper falls out, and finds it with his retriever, whilst you are going on. Can this be called sport? It is nothing more than pot-hunting, wholesale butchery. Give me my brace of pointers and setters, and let me shoot my game to points; there is some pleasure in that. What can be a more beautiful sight to the shooting man than to see a brace of well-bred dogs, ranging and quartering their ground like clockwork, backing and standing like rocks, steady before and behind, and dropping to fur and wing, as if they were shot? Working to hand, and obeying your slightest word—beautiful, intelligent creatures—there is some pleasure in shooting over such animals as these.
Then driving is another pot-hunting system, and does no end of harm; and so those who practise it will find out before many years are over. More game is wounded and left to pine away and die than many have an idea of—a more cruel and unsportsmanlike system has never been thought of, and I much regret it has its votaries. A heavy hot luncheon from a Norwegian kitchener is now the correct thing—heavy eating and drinking must form a prominent feature in the day's programme, otherwise it is not sport.
A few men are still content with their sherry-flask and sandwich, and I would back these to beat the others into fits in a day's sport. One does not go out to eat, but to shoot, and a man that has laid in a heavy luncheon can neither walk well up to his dogs nor shoot straight after it.
Great improvements have been made in guns. The old flint that took half an hour to load was a bore; the flint had every now and then to be chipped and renewed, the pans fresh steeled, the touch-hole pricked, powder put in the pan, and even then there were constant misfires and disappointments. The flint in time gave way to the percussion, a great improvement; but there are many inconveniences with this; unless the nipples are kept clean, and the gun washed each time after using, constant misfires are the consequence. Then, in cold weather it is no end of trouble to get the caps on. With half-frozen fingers it is a difficult job; but this has been remedied by a cap-holder, which sends the caps up with a spring as you want them. With both flint and percussion there were great inconveniences in loading; the spring of your powder or shot flask might break, and then you had to judge your charge till they were repaired. All this trouble was put an end to by the introduction of the breech-loader, which has not half the danger, is ten times quicker, and much more convenient in every way; the ammunition more easily carried, and there are very few misfires. The gun wants no washing, merely a rag passed through, and it is clean. But I am not going into the subject of guns and all their improvements; I have merely mentioned these to show the great stride that has been made in the last fifty years in shot guns.
Steeplechasing and racing I must touch on, and the little I have to say will not be in its favour.
The hateful passion of betting is slowly but surely ruining the turf; for there are not the same class of men on it that there were thirty years ago.
Where do you see fine old sportsmen like the late Sir Gilbert Heathcote? He raced for the pleasure of racing, and so did many others who never betted a shilling; but it is all altered now, and not for the better.