The stalking-horse, originally, was a horse trained for the purpose and covered with trappings, so as to conceal the sportsman from the game. It was particularly useful to the archer by enabling him to approach the birds, without being seen by them, near enough to reach them with his arrows. As it was not always convenient to use a real horse for this purpose, the fowler had recourse to an artificial one, made of stuffed canvas and painted like a horse, but light enough to be moved with one hand. Hence stalking-horse came to be used figuratively for anything put forward to conceal a more important object, or to mask one's real intention. Thus an old writer describes a hypocrite as one "that makes religion his stalking-horse."
In the Midsummer-Night's Dream (iii, 2. 20) Puck, describing the fright of the clowns when Bottom makes his appearance with the ass's head on his shoulders, says:—
"Anon his Thisbe must be answered,
And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,
As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun's report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
So at his sight away his fellows fly."
In 1 Henry IV. (iv. 2. 21) Falstaff says that his recruits are "such as fear the report of a caliver [musket] worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild-duck." And in Much Ado (ii. 1. 209) Benedick says of Claudio, who runs away from his friend's bantering: "Alas, poor hurt fowl! now will he creep into sedges"; that is, he will go and brood over his vexation in solitude.