Guns and Game

By Evan G. Mackenzie

"Guns and Game" is a comprehensive and timeless handbook on hunting with a gun, with chapters on everything from how to go about learning how to shoot, to breeding game, ethics, and beyond. This fantastic volume will appeal to those with a practical interest in rural sports of this ilk, and it would make for a worthy addition to collections of allied literature. Contents include: "Shouting Or Fishing", "The Best Way Of Learning How To Shoot", "The Teaching Of Shooting", "A Modern Shooting School", "Gun-fitting", "The Shooter's Walk", "Style In Shooting", "Form In The Field", "Science And Shooting", "Technical Knowledge In Shooting", "Sporting Ammunition", "The Standard Cartridge", "The Best Cartridge", "Accidents To Guns", etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality addition complete with the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Country Books
• Release date: Sep 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473344273

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attained.

GUNS AND GAME

CHAPTER I

SHOOTING OR FISHING

IS the pleasure given by the use of the gun greater than that afforded by the rod? This question is often discussed by sportsmen as they smoke their last cigars round the gun-room fires, and on other similar occasions meet for the free exchange of views on sporting topics; but we have never yet found opinion unanimous either way upon the subject. So much, in truth, depends upon the point of view of each speaker that it would, perhaps, be too much to expect unanimity in opinions, or even in the grounds on which these opinions are supported. The crack shot is invariably a keen shooter, and, of course, thinks that no other sport can come up to his favourite one. We can excuse him his enthusiasm; and, in fact, would be surprised if it did not exist. For though shooting skill may have largely increased within the last decade or so, really crack marksmen are still, by a long way, in the minority of shooters, the majority being composed of the fairly respectable shots; the absolutely bad ones, in these days of shooting schools and clay-bird practice, forming the smallest of the three classes into which we think present-day gunners may be divided. On the whole, perhaps, the greatest shooting enthusiasts of all are the last class: those who miss many more birds than they hit, but nevertheless enthusiastically persevere through good times and bad in endeavouring to improve their form in the shooting field. The middle and largest class, in many cases, take their shooting leisurely, almost as leisurely and philosophically as they take their fishing: never, perhaps, waxing enthusiastic about either, but enjoying both in a quiet, modest way, excelling in neither, but able to appreciate both rod and gun. They are of those who keep the balance of opinion fairly level, even in gun-room discussions, as to the respective merits and advantages of the two branches of sport.

It is difficult to say whether there are more enthusiasts among anglers than there are in the ranks of gunners. A good deal depends, we dare say, on one’s surroundings and circumstances. If we include all the members of angling clubs in the ranks of enthusiasts, there is a numerous band, even though their enthusiasm, to judge by their meeting places, may be sometimes akin to Dutch courage. But the sport in their blood finds an outlet, rod in hand, on the river bank; an outlet which their circumstances, it may be, prevent their changing into the use of their guns in the field. Fishing they find the cheaper of the two sports, and the keeping down of expense is to them a prime object that tips over the scales in favour of the rod as against the gun. It would be useless to speculate whether they could become equally devoted to shooting as to fishing, if the means of enjoying the former were available to them. The expense of shooting is beyond their purses, and, therefore, fishing has a walk over, so far as they are concerned. They are, therefore, scarcely free and unbiassed witnesses in the case between the rod and the gun. We are at liberty to believe that they would be shooters rather than fishers if they had the choice.

Such choice, the present writer cannot forget, was freely offered to him in his youth. The house in which he passed the first thirty years of his life was surrounded by the best shooting and fishing that could well be desired. Within half a mile of it on one side was a good salmon river, in parts of which he was free to angle; and, on the other, a rocky mountain burn continuously flowing, in which sea and other trout could be caught. From one window of that house one could look over hundreds of acres of partridge and pheasant ground at the rolling sea that beat half a mile away upon the shore, and yielded excellent sea-fishing, while half an hour’s walk up the hills could bring him to the banks of various hill lochs that yielded good baskets of fish to the skilful angler. But if there were all kinds of fishing there was also every kind of shooting. The sea mentioned merged into the estuary of the salmon river, and every variety of wild fowl, from wild geese to teal, were there to be seen in large numbers; while, further out on the sand-banks, at low tide were hundreds of seals watching for the salmon, wary and wild as the stags on the deer forests further inland, but well within sight of the windows referred to which almost looked out upon good grouse moors, extending with the forests into tens of thousands of acres of heathered hill and valley. It would be untrue to state that all these gifts of the gods were always, and at all times, at the disposal of the present writer, but owing to kindly feelings that he appreciates the more the older he gets he had his share of enjoyment of them all: fishing and shooting, that were each first rate of its kind—in fact, unsurpassed in these islands.

But it was to the shooting that he preferred to devote all his leisure time, as preferable in his mind to the fishing, good though the latter also undoubtedly happened to be. And it is thought that his choice would be that of most youngsters similarly placed as he was, with the best of sport offered them both in shooting and fishing. And yet Mr Sydney Buxton believes that the pleasure of hooking and playing a good fish is like nothing else in the world. By his delightful volume on Fishing and Shooting it seems plain that though the author likes shooting much, he loves fishing more. Though he admits the peculiar charms of bringing down driven grouse, or a right and left at partridges, or the crumpling up of rocketing pheasants, he thinks there is somewhat of a sameness in that form of sport, each game bird bagged being very much like another and the shooting of them being very much the same day after day, with more or less certainty on the part of a skilled shooter. But he tells us very frankly that there is no end to the variety in catching and landing fish, each fish rising differently every time, each differently hooked and played, each different in weight, size, condition, and beauty, as it is placed in the angler’s basket. There is much in this argument in favour of fishing; the excitement of anticipation is keener perhaps than that felt in shooting, which has less of uncertainty in the making of a day’s bag, one knowing beforehand, in the case of the shot-gun, what is likely to be reduced into possession, or nearly so, during a day’s shooting sport in the field. Mr Buxton puts his best foot foremost in sounding the praises of fishing; it is clear he is among those who are fishermen first and shooters after, able to enjoy the pleasures of both sports, but of the two, give them the rod before the gun, especially the rod on a good salmon river at the proper season of the salmon year.

Salmon-fishing, we may admit, is the champagne of sport with the rod, as deer-stalking is of sport with the rifle. The veteran deer-stalker can well shake hands with the old salmon-angler, for both are equally devoted to their favourite sport, never so happy as when they are enjoying it, even though limbs may be stiff with old age, making the whipping of a good salmon stream, or the skilful stalking of an extensive deer-forest equally hard work if equally fascinating to its devotees. Both deer-stalking and salmon-fishing are solitary sports, and almost selfish are their devotees in their love of them, which gets all the more absorbing apparently the older they become. There is no certainty in either, while of variety there is ample in both. Hence the joys of anticipation are keener in them than in either ordinary fishing or shooting, from which it may almost be said they are very far removed. We may well put them both out of court, therefore, in attempting to estimate the fascinations and pleasures of shooting and fishing; they may be regarded as balancing each other, leaving the real point at issue to be decided by the claims of other and more common sport with gun and rod.

Let us take grouse-shooting, for instance, which is so often let along with river and loch fishing, affording a fair choice of sport at all times during the autumn to large parties of sportsmen. Out of such parties how often can it be seen that a day has been taken from shooting and devoted to fishing? Very seldom indeed we consider, in fact fishing in such circumstances is almost always regarded as unpermissible, except possibly for the few days before grouse-shooting begins, when there is little else one can do. True, it may happen that the autumn fishing on loch or river is not first-rate, but enthusiastic piscators would find it sufficiently attractive did they not prefer to employ their time, gun in hand, on the heather, getting sport which they regard as much more enjoyable and pleasurable than that yielded by the rod, always keeping good salmon fishing out of the realms of discussion. No; we think Mr Sydney Buxton would find it hard to show as matter of fact that when shooting and fishing come into real and active competition the former is ever allowed to go to the wall. On the contrary, it would be found that where both offered themselves, in nineteen cases out of twenty, or oftener, fishing has to give way to shooting in the choice of the great majority of sportsmen who know them both and are able to weigh them both in the scales of sporting experience.

CHAPTER II

THE BEST WAY OF LEARNING HOW TO SHOOT

EVERY year there are thousands of young men entering the ranks of shooters. Every season, therefore, there must be thousands of inquiries made by novices and beginners in shooting as to the best course for them to take in learning how their guns should be used and in acquiring the experience, knowledge and skill necessary for good shooting. The aim, we presume, of every tyro who takes to the gun is to be able to shoot well, if possible, to become a crack shot, and to become fully instructed in all the rules laid down by the best authorities for the guidance of shooters of all kinds, but particularly of those who begin to shoot while young. For in these days all the novices in shooting are not young men. Fortunes are now made more rapidly in all parts of the world than they used to be, the fortunate ones are able to earlier retire from business than they once were, and, having retired, they not infrequently take up shooting as a recreation in middle age, when, like youngsters in their teens, they have to begin at the beginning. What, like other novices, they want to know is, where they had best begin, how they are to continue receiving instruction and knowledge, so as to end as soon as possible as first-rate performers with the gun, and with sufficient knowledge of the laws, rules and regulations of shooting, as well as of the natural history of game to qualify them to take their part in the ranks of the best performers without being made to experience the painful feeling, after years of practice, that their sporting education has been sadly neglected.

A few hints to such men may not be out of place, if only among other things by way of directing their attention, in the first place, to the best guides for them among the large amount of shooting publications available to them, from Colonel Hawker’s immortal work down to the latest letters of Sir Ralph Payne Gallwey. The books published on shooting and the subjects connected with it are many in number, but those likely to be useful, as distinguished from merely entertaining to the young shooter, or would-be shooter, are comparatively few. And while the best practical instruction in the use of the gun can be obtained in any of the numerous shooting schools in or near London, that instruction can be of much greater benefit, and is also much more entertaining to the tyro, if he has previously given some study to the text-books that explain to him, as no shooting instructor, however skilled, can be expected to explain, the science of shooting, on which all practical teaching of the proper use of the gun is necessarily based.

There are many old classics among books on shooting that the novice may well ignore at the commencement of his shooting education. But there is one classic author that he should read, not so much because of the great amount of instruction to be found in his pages—for much of the advice there given, if not obsolete, has long been shown to have been much mistaken—but because so many quotations are made from it, and so many quaint and shrewd remarks are made in it as to sport a century ago, un-acquaintance with which among shooters argues a distinct absence of the knowledge of shooting lore. We refer, of course, to Colonel Peter Hawker, who, though he never saw a Scottish grouse moor or deer forest, nor a modern breech-loading gun, was the first sporting writer to give us information in his day as to guns and shooting of the best kind, written in clear, flowing style, the outcome of thorough knowledge of every subject he touched, not omitting even that of the construction and mechanism of his sporting weapons. As a commentary and corrective on Colonel Hawker’s advice, one might well read, to follow it, the latest edition of Mr Charles Lancaster’s work on The Art of Shooting, an excellent and easily read compendium, of the rules to be observed and the best modes in handling the modern game gun in the field.

Having carefully read these two books, one comes thereafter to the works of Mr Greener and Mr Walsh, which stand out by themselves as explaining, as no other publications known to us do, the scientific side of shooting. They are, however, rather heavy reading, but if the young shooter feels himself able to glance over them he will be in a position at least to see that there is a wide field to be explored later on in the subject he desires to become acquainted with. If, however, he does not consider himself fitted at the outset to grapple with all the technicalities and problems of shooting and gunmaking discussed and explained in the most monumental of the works of these two writers, he might at least read carefully through Mr Greener’s smallest and most popular publication, The Breech-loader, and How to use It, which will tell him much that he really should know before he begins the practice of shooting in earnest, either at a shooting school or in the shooting field.

The fair acquaintance he has now made with the scientific or technical, as well as the practical, side of shooting, permits him to take up Sir Ralph Payne Gallwey’s Letters to Young Shooters, which embodies much of the information contained in the previous volumes given in the most interesting style, but brought up to date by the more recent wide experience of the talented author in most fields of sport where the weapon used is the game gun. We would, however, advise the beginner to omit reading the chapters devoted by Sir Ralph to the subject of guns. On the subject of all-round game-shooting, Sir Ralph is probably the best living authority, but when he attempts to enlighten the young sportsman on the mechanism and choice of guns, he is clearly beyond his depth, knowing little more, so far as his writing tells us, than does any other sportsman, who may have an occasional hour’s chat with his own particular gunmaker, whoever he may happen to be. He is, therefore, a very unsafe guide to the beginner who wants to buy a gun, but, as we have said, he is an excellent guide to the use of that gun when purchased. He has the art, too, of interesting even the most careless reader in his subject, and making it a fascinating study, without technicality or verbiage that is unnecessary and can be avoided. He puts his points quickly and easily, thus making a charming tutor to his young pupils, never wearying them with tedious argument or repetition.

To young men, of course, the saving of expense in the purchase of text-books is some object, and we have avoided including in our recommendations many expensive books on shooting subjects, that, however delightful to the reader, are scarcely worth investment by the novice in shooting, measured by the amount of useful instruction they would convey to him. If unnecessary outlay need not be avoided, he might add to his library the latest work by Mr Horace Hutchinson on Shooting, which will be found to contain some of the latest hints and notes on the subject. The Badminton volumes also, of course, are expected to be seen in every sportsman’s library for reference, if not for guidance, in the art of shooting. A little volume containing many useful facts and memoranda for shooters, somewhat similar to Mr Charles Lancaster’s, and about the same very reasonable price, is the Blagdon handbook on Shooting, published by Messrs Cogswell & Harrison, the well-known gunmakers of Bond Street and the Strand. There is room, nevertheless, it seems to us, for an authoritative text-book on the technical side of the use of the shot-gun, bringing all the investigations and discoveries of Mr Walsh down to the present date. Since his death there has been as great an advance in the science of sporting ballistics as there had been in the twenty years before it. Both in the laboratory and the field, much has been made plain, that only a few years ago was quite unknown to scientists in connection with shooting, facts that even novices should have an opportunity of becoming acquainted with otherwise than by turning up the files of the sporting press. Perhaps we may one day be favoured with such an addition to the literature, available for those requiring instruction in modern shooting.

CHAPTER III

THE TEACHING OF SHOOTING

THE ideal teacher of the use of the gun in the field would be the man who knew as much of the manufacture of guns as of the proper way to use them, the man, in short, who was as good a marksman as he was a gunmaker, a combination that is very rarely found. Colonel Hawker described that famous manufacturer of guns, Joe Manton, as the best gunmaker, but the worst shot he knew; and the description would apply to many followers of the immortal Manton to the present day. And yet it is difficult to imagine a good shooting expert in these days without a good knowledge of guns and gun-making, seeing that half his skill is employed in making certain that his clients are properly suited with their gun-stocks, if not in detecting and describing where the errors or deficiencies exist, even if he may not have to undertake their rectification at the bench in the workshop. Gun-fitting, in truth, has come to be regarded as the first step in the teaching of shooting, for the best teacher or expert possible finds himself severely handicapped with a client whose gun does not fit his shoulder. To have the shape of the faulty gun-stock corrected, if it exists, is the first consideration with every shooting expert, and to do so he must know how to alter the try-gun to the required dimensions, so that his pupil may begin his lesson with a temporary gun that really does fit and suit him. In this fitting process, no doubt, an experienced gunmaker has an advantage over many mere shooting experts, but, on the other hand, in this branch there are some experts, non-gunmakers, who have the advantage of much greater experience over some gunmakers. That is perhaps the best way of pointing out that the best instructor in shooting must know something of gun-making, and the best gunmaker, on the other hand, must be a good shot himself to enable him to become the best instructor of others in the proper use of the weapons he so skilfully makes. In both, an all-round knowledge of all kinds of sport obtainable with a gun is very desirable indeed. It can be seen, then, that the perfect shooting instructor, in our view, must have had a very wide experience and training. Whether a greater proportion of his time should have been spent at the bench or in the field may be a moot point, but undoubtedly he wants some knowledge of how a gun can best be made as well as how it can best be used. It is the completeness of that double knowledge that decides his place and leads to his success as an instructor in the art of shooting. It is no wonder, then, that the number of efficient instructors in shooting is small, and that their services to-day are very much in request. But there are some such peculiarly qualified men to-day engaged in teaching shooting in the London and provincial shooting schools and grounds, though the difficulty sportsmen experience is in finding them.

It is interesting to observe the procedure of a really good instructor in shooting, thoroughly expert at his work. A client comes to him, let us assume, who may have been game shooting, every season very regularly for the previous ten years, and is still far removed from a good shot. But a good shot he desires to become, and, by the recommendation of a friend, he places himself unreservedly in the hands of our expert, whose first step is to ascertain the precise type of marksman his client comes under, and the kind of gun he has been in the habit of shooting with. He does so by requesting his client to put up his own gun to his shoulder half-a-dozen times in quick succession. That is all that is necessary with a skilled expert to inform him whether his client has shot much or little, and whether he has developed a set style and manner of his own, and whether that style is good or bad, alterable or unalterable, except with great difficulty. A mental note is made of the client’s style in the brain of the expert, who now takes his client to the clay-bird traps. He is asked to fire seven or eight cartridges at flying clays, the expert keenly watching every shot, being able to trace the flight of the pellets through the air so clearly as to come to accurate decisions as to the direction in which they went past the bird, whether to right or left, high or low. This power of seeing the shot-charge travelling in the air is not given to every expert. Facility in distinguishing where the pellets have travelled, when the clay is missed, demands strong, clear eyesight and considerable practice. But when acquired, that power dispenses with all necessity for whitewashed plating targets to tell experts where the pellets have hit, thus saving much time and trouble to the shooter, as well as to his instructor. Mr Charles Lancaster, of Bond Street, and Mr W. W. Watts, of