Winter and Rough Weather

By W. G. M. Dobie

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Mottelay Press
• Release date: Jun 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528763226

Book preview

WINTER AND ROUGH WEATHER

"Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather."

THUS did Amiens extol life in the Forest of Arden, in a song which still echoes in the hearts of country dwellers. A cynic might observe that the Duke and his friends returned to the envious court without hesitation when an opportunity came: and, bearing in mind the primitive conditions of their existence in exile, who would blame them? To us, possessed of many aids to comfort unknown to the Duke and his suite, the churlish chiding of the winter’s wind is less of an enemy and more of an exhilarating tonic. Further, to such as are addicted to wildfowling, it offers a suitable opportunity of pursuing their chilly sport.

Possibly only wildfowlers welcome the wildest of winter storms. A high wind adds to the excitement of a late grouse-drive, when it needs "a man to ca’ them doun: it increases the anxiety of the host and of his keeper and the enjoyment of his guests when partridges come swerving across the hedges, or when every pheasant that hurtles high overhead looks as though the feathers were all being blown out of his tail"—a bird to please Allan Quatermain. But when the B.B.C. issues its solemn warning to shipping, when the glass falls low as the gale rises high, when slates and chimney-pots begin to clatter down in city streets, and trees groan and rock in country woodlands, only madmen and wildfowlers (perhaps the terms are synonymous) regard the weather with complete approval.

However keen a man may be—and he must be keen, or give up wildfowling altogether—it requires some little effort of will to face the storm at its worst, just at that hour when the fireside chair looks most attractive: to wait, in the wind and the rain, as darkness falls, for ducks which may, or may not, flight to a particular area of flooded meadow: or to ambush grey geese as they fly from their feeding-grounds to the estuary. Even greater will-power is required for early morning wildfowling. Bed is warm and comfortable: outside is pitch darkness, a gust dashes hail against the window. . . . Is it worth while to face the beastliness of such weather on the chance of a shot at geese on the foreshore or at ducks returning to the loch? A keen wildfowler will take the chance: with groans and curses, it may be, but when the germ of wildfowling has entered his system, howling gales and lashing rain convey to him a promise of the sport he loves.

And what sport it can be! There will be occasions, many occasions, of disappointment: hours of acute discomfort, and no shot: but if he is hardy and persistent the day and the hour will come when he will succeed beyond his wildest dreams,—when geese, hundreds of geese, battling against the storm, will pass near him and he will shoot straight: or when all the ducks in the country will be driven to shelter near his ambush.

Apart from wildfowling, little serious shooting can be attempted in the wildest of winter weather. After the tenants of deer-forests have migrated south, stalkers turn their attention to such hind-shooting as may be necessary, and a miserably cold undertaking it can be. A storm among mountains is a storm indeed, fiercer and more intense than in the low country. In the lowlands few folk are out with the gun in weather conditions which involve too acute discomfort. The man of leisure does not shoot then: why should he? If Monday be stormy, he can be out on Tuesday or on Wednesday.

He who is engaged in some profession or business, however, can spare perhaps only one day, or even one afternoon, in a week: and, though deep depressions approach from Iceland, go he must, if only to avoid disappointing the spaniel. On a day of soaking rain, indeed, his dog is likely to be the only company he will have.

If you are impelled to shoot in such conditions, you will find a certain satisfaction in the madness: in splashing through sodden meadows, with a very fair chance of seeing, if not shooting, scores of snipe: in watching your spaniel, eager and enthusiastic in spite of the weather, bustling down a hedgerow, bolting a rabbit here, flushing a cock-pheasant there. And when the short winter afternoon is done; when, bathed and changed and fed and pleasantly tired, you draw up an armchair to the fire where the dog (allowed, on such occasions, to dry himself indoors) lies on the rug, his head down between his paws, motionless lest any movement by him should remind you of his presence there and hasten his return to the kennel,—you realise that winter and rough weather are not, under such circumstances, vindictive enemies.

WINTER IN THE NORTH

When ever-deeper snowdrifts pile

And winter tempests howl and thunder

O’er Guisachan and Fasnakyle,

Does Duncan, in the glen, I wonder,

Appreciate the spell of it,

The solemn grandeur? Deil a bit!

We welcome every silence zone,

While one of Duncan’s keenest joys is

—Among the mountains and alone—

To introduce the city’s noises,

And hear that slogan of distress—

Before the news—one S O S.

In days of plenty he would greet

His cronie, Roderick (or Roddy)

And o’er a fire of glowing peat

Concoct and sample whisky-toddy:

Weak, weak the toddy one dare mix

With usquebaugh at twelve-and-six!

And so instead, their chairs are set

Where Duncan’s hearth-fire flickers brightly

And where his four-valve superhet

Repeats—with variations—nightly

The B.B.C.’s selected news

Or weighty efforts to amuse.

When snow clouds muster overhead

And Roddy starts for home and faces

The storm, he envies us who tread

On Hore-Belisha’s crossing-places:

While I keep dreaming of that pass

Down Affaric and through Strath Glass.

COLIN FROM THE WESTERN ISLES

COLIN first came to the forest as a gillie, returning after each stalking season to his father’s croft in one of the Western Isles. Nominally he is a gillie still: but one year when a stalker was laid up, Colin was sent out as deputy, and acquitted himself so nobly that, to his great delight and to the great delight of guests who take the hill under his guidance, the experiment has been repeated.

His age I would put at twenty-eight: a great, good-natured giant of a man. Slow in speech, for he thinks in Gaelic and translates, but quick and bold in action, he has only one fault as a stalker, and that fault a lovable one,—his excessive keenness. Desperately anxious that, when under his charge, you should kill a big stag, he gravely answers your morning salutations, then seizes your rifle and starts off as if the devil pursued him. Along the level or up the steepest slope of a 3,000-feet mountain, his long stride devours the miles, while you pant along in his wake, endeavouring at least to keep him in sight. And in the near presence of deer his excitement—though he strives to conceal it—might possibly upset a beginner. When waiting for a stag to rise, and shivering with cold, I have glanced at Colin lying in the peat-hag beside me, his eyes, bright with excitement, fixed on the deer, beads of perspiration on his forehead.

If you miss, how anxious he is to assume all blame and responsibility, to assure you that there was some fault in his method of approach, and that you did not get a fair chance: but if all goes well he beams happily, becomes genial and even conversational, and is the best of good company. A day spent with him is sheer delight, though a severe test of legs, lungs and heart.

My first experience of Colin as stalker was on the sheep ground, an uncleared area adjoining the forest, which carries a large number of hinds and where, in late September and early October, many a good stag is killed. It is a degree less precipitous than the surrounding forest, and I, who had been out on four successive days to the high corries, promised myself an easy day on hearing that I was to stalk on the sheep ground. I so expressed myself to my host, and I therefore suspect him of a grim jest when he sent me out in charge of Colin.

We killed a stag, a ten-pointer, before noon. The stalk was an easy one. We walked up the course of a burn—at every bend of which one would, under other circumstances, have lingered to watch the foaming waterfalls, clear water sliding over granite boulders, the birch and rowan trees in the glen—and then, after an easy crawl, approached within fifty yards of the stag and shot him in the neck where he lay. The gillie went home to bring a deer-pony, and Colin and I ate our lunch and smoked our pipes at the burn-side, then went in search of a second stag.

With one good beast on its way to the larder, however, we were difficult to please, and we had tramped many miles before, in the late afternoon, Colin spied a stag which was big enough and old enough to kill. But he had settled with his hinds in a most unapproachable position, with the march behind him, at the head of a wide, shallow corrie, and commanding the lower ground in all directions. Colin was not to be discouraged by such apparent difficulties. We must just cra-awl. And crawl we did: not the usual hands-and-knees crawl, but in the manner of the serpent, flat on the ground,—of all methods of progress the slowest, the most painful, the most exhausting. The distance to be covered was long. We were still some four hundred yards from the deer when daylight began to fade and with it our hopes of getting within reasonable range while it was yet possible to shoot.

To add to our anxiety, a young beast approached on our flank, roaring challenges to our stag, who answered him lustily. It seemed probable that the newcomer would get our wind and spoil everything. However, his approach and Colin’s presence of mind saved the whole situation.

For a time our stag contented himself with rounding up his hinds and answering his rival’s roars: but at last he became exasperated and charged downhill to do battle.