 | THE MORNING'S SPORT. The Warwick woodlands, or, Things as they were there, ten years ago |  |
2. THE MORNING'S SPORT.
It was not yet broad daylight when Harry Archer, who had, as
was usual with him on his sporting tours, arisen with the lark, was
sitting in the little parlor I have before described, close to the chimney
corner, where a bright lively fire was already burning, and
spreading a warm cheerful glow through the apartment.
The large round table, drawn up close to the hearth, was covered
with a clean though coarse white cloth, and laid for breakfast, with
two cups and saucers, flanked by as many plates and egg-cups,
although as yet no further preparations for the morning meal, except
the presence of a huge home-made loaf and a large roll of rich
golden-hued butter, had been made by the neat-handed Phillis of the
country inn. Two candles were lighted, for though the day had
broken, the sun was not yet high enough to cast his rays into that
deep and rock-walled valley, and by their light Archer was busy
with the game-bag, the front of which he had finished netting on
the previous night.
Frank Forester had not as yet made his appearance; and still,
while the gigantic copper kettle bubbled and steamed away upon
the hearth, discoursing eloquent music, and servant after servant
bustled in, one with a cold quail-pie, another with a quart jug of
cream, and fresh eggs ready to be boiled by the fastidious epicures
in person, he steadily worked on, housewife and saddler's silk, and
wax and scissors ready to his hand; and when at last the door flew
open, and the delinquent comrade entered, he flung his finished job
upon the chair, and gathered up his implements, with,
“Now, Frank, let's lose no time, but get our breakfasts. Halloa!
Tim, bring the rockingham and the tea-chest; do you hear?”
“Well, Harry, so you've done the game-bag,” exclaimed the
other, as he lifted it up and eyed it somewhat superciliously—
“Well, it is a good one certainly; but you are the d—dest fellow I
ever met, to give yourself unnecessary trouble. Here you have
been three days about this bag, hard all; and when it's done, it is
not half as good a one as you can buy at Cooper's for a dollar, with
all this new-fangled machinery of loops and buttons, and I do n't
know what.”
“And you, Master Frank,” retorted Harry, nothing daunted—
“to be a good shot and a good sportsman—which, with some few
exceptions, I must confess you are—are the most culpably and wilfully
careless about your appointments I ever met. I do n't call a
man half a sportsman, who has not every thing he wants at hand
for an emergency, at half a minute's notice. Now it so happens
that you cannot get, in New York at all, anything like a decent
game bag—a little fancy-worked French or German jigmaree machine
you can get anywhere, I grant, that will do well enough for
a fellow to carry on his own shoulders, who goes out robin-gunning,
fresh, and unmutilated. Now, these loops and buttons, at which
you laugh, will make the difference of a week at least in the bird's
keeping, if every hour or so you empty your pockets—wherein I
take it for granted you put your birds as fast as you bag them—
smooth down their plumage gently, stretch their legs out, and hang
them by the heads, running the button down close to the neck of each.
In this way this bag, which is, as you see, half a yard long, by a quarter
and half a quarter deep, made double, one bag of fustian with
a net front, which makes two pockets—will carry fifty-one quail or
woodcock, no one of them pressing upon, or interfering with, another,
and it would carry sixty-eight if I had put another row of loops in
the inner bag; which I did not, that I might have the bottom vacant
to carry a few spare articles, such as a bag of Westley Richards'
caps, and a couple of dozen of Ely's cartridges.”
“Oh! that's all very well,” said Frank, “but who the deuce can
be at the bore of it?”
“Why be at the bore of shooting at all, for that matter?” replied
Harry—“I, for one, think that if a thing is worth doing at all, it is
worth doing well—and I can't bear to kill a hundred or a hundred
and fifty birds, as our party almost always do out here, and then be
obliged to throw them away, just for want of a little care. Why, I
was shooting summer cock one July day two years ago—there had
been heavy rain in the early morning, and the grass and bushes
were very wet—Jem Blake was with me, and we had great sport,
and he laughed at me like the deuce for taking my birds out of my
pocket at the end of every hour's sport, and making Timothy smooth
them down carefully, and bag them all after my fashion. Egad I
had the laugh though, when we got home at night!”
“How so,” asked Frank, “in what way had you the laugh?”
“Simply in this—a good many of the birds were very hard shot,
as is always the case in summer shooting, and all of them got more
or less wet, as did the pockets of Jem's shooting jacket, wherein he
persisted in carrying his birds all day—the end was, that when we
got home at night, it having been a close, hot, steamy day, he had
not one bird which was not more or less tainted[1]
—and, as you know
of course, when taint has once begun, nothing can check it.”
“Ay! ay! well that indeed's a reason; if you can't buy such a
bag, especially!”
“Well, you cannot then, I can tell you! and I'm glad you're
convinced for once; and here comes breakfast—so now let us to
work, that we may get on our ground as early as may be. For quail
you cannot be too early; for if you don't find them while they are
rambling on their feeding ground, it is a great chance if you find
them at all.”
“But, after all, you can only use up one or two bevies or so; and,
that done, you must hunt for them in the basking time of day, after
somewhat paradoxically given that morning.
“Not at all, Frank, not at all,” answered Harry—“that is if you
know your ground; and know it to be well stocked; and have a
good marker with you.”
“Oh! this is something new of yours—some strange device fantastical—let's
have it, pray.”
“Certainly you shall; you shall have it now in precept, and in
an hour or two in practice. You see those stubbles on the hill—in
those seven or eight fields there are, or at least should be, some five
bevies; there is good covert, good easy covert all about, and we
can mark our birds down easily; now, when I find one bevy, I shall
get as many barrels into it as I can, mark it down as correctly as
possible, and then go and look for another.”
“What! and not follow it up? Now, Harry, that's mere stuff;
wait till the scent's gone cold, and till the dogs cann't find them?
'Gad, that's clever, any way!”
“Exactly the reverse, friend Frank; exactly the reverse. If you
follow up a bevy, of quail mark you, on the instant, it's ten to one
almost that you don't spring them. If, on the contrary, you wait
for half an hour, you are sure of them. How it is, I cannot precisely
tell you. I have sometimes thought that quail have the
power of holding in their scent, whether purposely or naturally—
from the effect of fear perhaps contracting the pores, and hindering
the escape of the effluvia—I know not, but I am far from being convinced
even now that it is not so. A very good sportsman, and true
friend of mine, insists upon it that birds give out no scent except
from the feet, and that, consequently, if they squat without running
they cannot be found. I do not, however, believe the theory, and
hold it to be disproved by the fact that dead birds do give out scent.
I have generally observed that there is no difficulty in retrieving
dead quail, but that, wounded, they are constantly lost. But, be that
as it may, the birds pitch down, each into the best bit of covert he
can find, and squat there like so many stones, leaving no trail or
taint upon the grass or bushes, and being of course proportionally
hard to find; in half an hour they will begin, if not disturbed, to
call and travel, and you can hunt them up, without the slightest
trouble. If you have a very large tract of country to beat, and
birds are very scarce, of course it would not answer to pass on; nor
ever, even if they are plentiful, in wild or windy weather, or in
large open woods; but where you have fair ground, lots of birds,
and fine weather, I would always beat on in a circuit, for the reason
I have given you. In the first place, every bevy you flush flies
from its feeding to its basking ground, so that you get over all the
first early, and know where to look afterward; instead of killing off
one bevy, and then going blundering on, at blind guess work, and
finding nothing. In the second place, you have a chance of driving
two or three bevies into one brake, and of getting sport proportionate;
and in the third place, as I have told you, you are much surer
of finding marked birds after an hour's lapse, than on the moment.”
“I will do you the justice to say,” Forester replied, “that you
always make a tolerably good fight in support of your opinions; and
so you have done now, but I want to hear something more about this
matter of holding scent—facts! facts! and let me judge for myself.”
“Well, Frank, give me a bit more of that pie in the mean time,
andI will tell you the strongest case in point I ever witnessed. I
was shooting near Stamford, in Connecticut, three years ago, with
C— K—, and another friend; we had three as good dogs out,
as ever had a trigger drawn over them. My little imported yellow
and white setter, Chase, after which this old rascal is called—which
Mike Sandford considered the best-nosed dog he had ever broken—
a capital young pointer dog of K—'s, which has since turned out,
as I hear, superlative, and P—'s old and stanch setter Count. It
was the middle of a fine autumn day, and the scenting was very
uncommonly good. One of our beaters flushed a bevy of quail very
wide of us, and they came over our heads down a steep hill-side,
and all lighted in a small circular hollow, without a bit of underbrush
or even grass, full of tall thrifty oak trees, of perhaps twenty-five
years' growth. They were not much out of gun-shot, and we
all three distinctly saw them light; and I observed them flap and
fold their wings as they settled. We walked straight to the spot,
and beat it five or six times over, not one of our dogs ever drawing,
and not one bird rising. We could not make it out; my friends
thought they had treed, and laughed at me when I expressed my
belief that they were still before us, under our very noses. The
ground was covered only by a deep bed of sere decaying oak leaves.
Well, we went on, and beat all round the neighborhood within a
quarter of a mile, and did not find a bird, when lo! at the end of
perhaps half an hour, we heard them calling—followed the cry back
to that very hollow; the instant we entered it, all the three dogs
made game, drawing upon three several birds, roaded them up, and
pointed steady, and we had half an hour's good sport, and we were
all convinced that the birds had been there all the time. I have
seen many instances of the same kind, and more particularly with
wing-tipped birds, but none I think so tangible as this!”
“Well, I am not a convert, Harry; but, as the Chancellor said,
I doubt.”
“And that I consider not a little, from such a positive wretch as
you are; but come, we have done breakfast, and it's broad daylight.
Come, Timothy, on with the bag and belts; he breakfasted before
we had got up, and gave the dogs a bite.”
“Which dogs do you take, Harry; and do you use cartridge?”
“Oh! the setters for the morning; they are the only fellows for
the stubble; we should be all day with the cockers; even setters,
as we must break them here for wood shooting, have not enough of
speed or dash for the open. Cartridges? yes! I shall use a loose
charge in my right, and a blue cartridge in my left; later in the
season I use a blue in my right and a red in my left. It just makes
the difference between killing with both, or with one barrel. The
than loose shot; and they kill clean!”
“Yet many good sportsmen dislike them,” Frank replied; “they
say they ball!”
“They do not now, if you load with them properly; formerly
they would do so at times, but that defect is now rectified—with
the blue and red cartridges at least—the green, which are only fit
for wild-fowl, or deer-shooting, will do so sometimes, but very rarely;
and they will execute surprisingly. For a bad or uncertain
rifle-shot, the green cartridge, with SG shot is the thing—twelve
good-sized slugs, propelled with force enough to go through an inch
plank, at eighty yards, within a compass of three feet—but no wad
must be used, either upon the cartridge, or between that and the
powder; the small end must be inserted downward, and the cartridge
must be chosen so that the wad at the top shall fit the gun,
the case being two sizes less than the calibre. With these directions
no man need make a mistake; and, if he can cover a bird
fairly, and is cool enough not to fire within twenty yards, he will
never complain of cartridges, after a single trial. Remember, too,
that vice versâ to the rule of a loose charge, the heavier you load
with powder, the closer will your cartridge carry. The men who
do not like cartridges are—you may rely upon it—of the class
which prefers scattering guns. I always use them, except in July
shooting, and I shall even put a few red in my pockets, in case the
wind should get up in the afternoon. Besides which, I always take
along two buckshot cartridges, in case of happening, as Timothy
would say, on some big varmint. I have four pockets in my shooting
waistcoat, each stitched off into four compartments—each of
which holds, erect, one cartridge—you cannot carry them loose in
your pocket, as they are very apt to break. Another advantage of
this is, that in no way can you carry shot with so little inconvenience,
as to weight; beside which, you load one third quicker, and
your gun never leads!”
“Well!” I believe I will take some to-day—but don't you wait
for the Commodore?”
“No! He drives up, as I told you, from Nyack, where he lands
from his yacht, and will be here at twelve o'clock to luncheon; if
he had been coming for the morning shooting, he would have been
here ere this. By that time we shall have bagged twenty-five or
thirty quail, and a ruffed grouse or two; beside driving two or three
bevies down into the meadows and the alder bushes by the stream,
which are quite full of woodcock. After luncheon, with the Commodore's
aid, we will pick up these stragglers, and all the timber-doodles!”
In another moment the setters were unchained, and came careering,
at the top of their speed, into the breakfast room, where Harry
stood before the fire, loading his double gun, while Timothy was
buttoning on his left leggin. Frank, meanwhile, had taken up his
gun, and quietly sneaked out of the door, two flat irregular reports
explaining, half a moment after, the purport of his absence.
“Well, now, Frank, that is”—expostulated Harry—“that is just
the most snobbish thing I ever saw you do; aint you ashamed of
yourself now, you genuine cockney?”
“Not a bit—my gun has not been used these three months, and
something might have got into the chamber!”
“Something might not, if when you cleaned it last you had laid
a wad in the centre of a bit of greased rag three inches square and
rammed it about an inch down the barrel, leaving the ends of the
linen hanging out. And by running your rod down you could have
ascertained the fact, without unnecessarily fouling your piece. A
gun has no right ever to miss fire now; and never does, if you use
Westley Richards' caps, and diamond gunpowder—putting the
caps on the last thing—which has the further advantage of being
much the safer plan, and seeing that the powder is up to the cones
before you do so. If it is not so, let your hammer down, and give a
smart tap to the under side of the breech, holding it uppermost, and
you will never need a picker; or at least almost never. Remember,
too, that the best picker in the world is a strong needle headed
with sealing wax. And now that you have finished loading, and I
lecturing, just jump over the fence to your right; and that footpath
will bring us to the stepping-stones across the Ramapo. By Jove,
but we shall have a lovely morning.”
He did so, and away they went, with the dogs following steadily
at the heel, crossed the small river dry-shod, climbed up the wooded
bank by dint of hand and foot, and reached the broad brown corn
stubble. Harry, however, did not wave his dogs to the right hand
and left, but calling them in, quietly plodded along the headland,
and climbed another fence, and crossed a buckwheat stubble, still
without beating or disturbing any ground, and then another field
full of long bents and ragwort, an old deserted pasture, and Frank
began to grumble, but just then a pair of bars gave access to a wide
fifty acre lot, which had been wheat, the stubble standing still knee
deep, and yielding a rare covert.
“Now we are at the far end of our beat, and we have got the
wind too in the dogs' noses, Master Frank—and so hold up, good
lads,” said Harry. And off the setters shot like lightning, crossing
and quartering their ground superbly.
“There! there! well done, old Chase—a dead stiff point already,
and Shot backing him as steady as a rail. Step up, Frank, step up
quietly, and let us keep the hill of them.”
They came up close, quite close to the stanch dog, and then,
but not till then, he feathered and drew on, and Shot came crawling
up till his nose was but a few inches in the rear of Chase's,
whose point he never thought of taking from him. Now they are
both upon the game. See how they frown and slaver, the birds are
close below their noses.
Whirr—r—r! “There they go—a glorious bevy!” exclaimed
Harry, as he cocked his right barrel and cut down the old cock bird,
which had risen rather to his right hand, with his loose charge—
“blaze away, Frank!” Bang—bang!—and two more birds came
and sent the cartridge after the now distant bevy, and to Frank's
admiration a fourth bird was keeled over most beautifully, and clean
killed, while crossing to the right, at forty-six yards, as they paced
it afterward.
“Now mark! mark, Timothy—mark, Frank!” And shading
their eyes from the level sunbeams, the three stood gazing steadily
after the rapid bevy. They cross the pasture, skim very low over
the brush fence of the cornfield—they disappear behind it—they are
down! no! no! not yet—they are just skirting the summit of the
topped maize stalks—now they are down indeed, just by that old
ruined hovel, where the cat-briers and sumach have overspread its
cellar and foundation with thick underwood. And all the while the
sturdy dogs are crouching at their feet unmoving.
“Will you not follow those, Harry?” Forester inquired—“there
are at least sixteen of them!”
“Not I,” said Archer, “not I, indeed, till I have beat this field—
I expect to put up another bevy among those little crags there in
the corner, where the red cedars grow—and if we do, they will
strike down the fence of the buckweat stubble—that stubble we
must make good, and the rye beside it, and drive, if possible, all
that we find before us to the corn field. Don't be impatient, and
you'll see in time that I am in the right.”
No more words were now wasted; the four birds were bagged
without trouble, and the sportsmen being in the open were handed
over on the spot to Tim; who stroked their freckled breasts, and
beautifully mottled wing coverts and backs, with a caressing touch,
as though he loved them; and finally, in true Jack Ketch style,
tucked them up severally by the neck. Archer was not mistaken
in his prognostics—another bevy had run into the dwarf cedars from
the stubble at the sound of the firing, and were roaded up in right
good style, first one dog, and then the other, leading; but without
any jealousy or haste.
They had, however, run so far, that they had got wild, and, as
there was no bottom covert on the crags, had traversed them quite
over to the open, on the far side—and, just as Archer was in the act
of warning Forester to hurry softly round and head them, they
flushed at thirty yards, and had flown some five more before they
were in sight, the feathery evergreens for a while cutting off the
view—the dogs stood dead at the sound of their wings. Then, as
they came in sight, Harry discharged both barrels very quickly—
the loose shot first, which evidently took effect, for one bird cowered
and seemed about to fall, but gathered wing again, and went
on for the present—the cartridge, which went next, although the
bevy had flown ten yards further, did its work clean, and stopped
its bird. Frank fired but once, and killed, using his cartridge first,
and thinking it in vain to fire the loose shot. The remaining birds
skimmed down the hill, and lighted in the thick bushy hedge-row,
as Archer had foreseen.
“So much for Ely!” exclaimed Harry—“had we both used two
one which we shall not get; a thing that I most particularly hate.”
“That bird will rise again,” said Frank.
“Never!” replied the other, “he has one, if not two, shot in
him, well forward—if I am not much mistaken, before the wing—
he is dead now! but let us on. These we must follow, for they are
on our line; you keep this side the fence, and I will cross it with
the dogs—come with me, Timothy.”
In a few minutes more there was a dead point at the hedge-row.
“Look to, Frank!”
“Ay! ay!” “Poke them out, Tim;” then followed sundry
bumps and threshings of the briers, and out with a noisy flutter
burst two birds under Forester's nose. Bang! bang!
“The first shot too quick, altogether,” muttered Archer; “Ay,
he has missed one; mark it, Tim—there he goes down in the corn,
by jingo—you've got that bird, Frank? That's well! Hold up
Shot”—another point within five yards. “Look out again, Frank.”
But this time vainly did Tim poke, and thresh, and peer into the
bushes—yet still Shot stood, stiff as a marble statue—then Chase
drew up and snuffed about, and pushed his head and fore-legs into
the matted briers, and thereupon a muzzling noise ensued, and
forth with out he came, mouthing a dead bird, warm still, and bleeding
from the neck and breast.
“Frank, he has got my bird—and shot, just as I told you, through
the neck and near the great wing joint—good dog! good dog!”
“The devil!”
“Yes, the devil! but look out man, here is yet one more point;”
and this time ten or twelve birds flushed upon Archer's side; he
slew, as usual, his brace, and as they crossed, at long distance,
Frank knocked down one more—the rest flew to the corn-field.
In the middle of the buckwheat they flushed another, and, in the
rye, another bevy, both of which crossed the stream, and settled
down among the alders. They reached the corn field, and picked
up their birds there, quite as fast as Frank himself desired—three
ruffed grouse they had bagged, and four rabbits, in a small dingle
full of thorns, before they reached the corn; and just as the tin
horns were sounding for noon and dinner from many a neighboring
farm, they bagged their thirty-fourth quail. At the same moment,
the rattle of a distant wagon on the hard road, and a loud cheer replying
to the last shot, announced the Commodore; who pulled up at
the tavern door just as they crossed the stepping-stones, having
made a right good morning's work, with a dead certainty of better
sport in the afternoon, since they had marked two untouched bevies,
thirty-five birds at least, beside some ten or twelve more stragglers
into the alder brakes, which Harry knew to hold—moreover,
thirty woodcock, as he said, at the fewest.
“Well! Harry,” exclaimed Frank, as he set down his gun, and
sat down to the table, “I must for once knock under—your practice
has borne out your precepts.”
| THE MORNING'S SPORT. The Warwick woodlands, or, Things as they were there, ten years ago | |