Wildfowl Shooting - Containing Chapters on: Swan and Wild Geese Shooting

By Ralph P. Gallwey

This vintage book contains a concise guide to wildfowl shooting, with chapters on swan and wild geese shooting. Including a wealth of information on hunting a variety of wildfowl, this little handbook is ideal for shooting enthusiasts, and is not to be missed by collectors of antiquarian literature of this ilk. The chapters of this book include: “Wildfowl Shooting”, “Swans”, “Whooper”, “Bewick’s Swan”, “Mute Swan”, “Polish Swan”, “Wild Geese”, “Barnacle Goose”, “Bean Goose”, “White-Fronted Goose”, and “Pink-Footed Goose”. Many antiquarian books such as this are increasingly hard to come by and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high quality edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on shooting wildfowl.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781446548684

Book preview

SHOOTING

Sir Ralph P. Gallwey in fowling costume.

WILDFOWL SHOOTING.

Of all amusements dear to a sportsman who loves to use a gun on wild birds in wild places, none is so absorbing as wildfowl shooting. This is especially the case if the gunner is even slightly an observer of nature, and takes an interest in noting the habits and plumage of the numerous tribe of wildfowl he will have a chance of seeing and shooting during a fairly hard winter. Those severe seasons of frost and snow and bitter winds that now and then occur in England gladden a fowler’s heart, and he goes out in what is to him favourable weather, whilst other men are sighing over unexercised hunters, or putting by their guns in rack or case till fields and woods are, from their point of view, fit places for sport. A fowler well knows that the more severe a frost may be, and the more biting the north and east winds, the better it is for him, for then are his fowl to be found, and under such conditions will he do well to seek them.

Wildfowl generally come with a rush, and, what is more remarkable, go in a hurry too. Here to-day, gone—no one knows whither—tomorrow.

The hunting man has his horses, the landlord his pheasants and partridges, the angler his river; their sport is more or less secure; they know where to seek it: but not so with the fowler.

All of a sudden, however, his chance appears. The oft-scanned thermometer falls to below freezing point; the weathercock veers round from south-west to due east; the opportunity has arrived and must be made the most of while it lasts.