Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-11-09
WITH GUN AND DOGS.
ALI of England Takes to the Field
on the Twelfth of August.
THE ANNUAL GROUSE SHOOTING.
Etiquette, Courtesies and Language Of thu
Chase in Britain.
METHODS THATAREsT sPoRfsMAsLlKE
rooHnrsroNprNcn or the p1srAroH,

GLEN AFFABIC, Scotland, October 26.-
| IF $40, 600, 900 is annually expended by Brit
ish sportsmen in hunting and fishing in
Scotland, it may be easily understood that,
of the three great British popular days,
"Derby Day." which is movable sporting
day, Bankers Holiday. on which day every
! British subject feels entitled to his ease and
sport, and the statutory feast DAY Of the 18th
of August, the latter, which is the annual
dsv adicated to slaughter of grouse. is al
way>fiie with the most intense thrills of
anticipatory pleasure.
The pent-up yearnings of an army of
British Nimrodu explode on this day. The
very mention of the glorious 18th at any
other season of the year fills their whole
beings with flashes and quivers of hunger
for the moors and fields. 1t would be ma
| tional crisis indeed that would compel Par
lament to hold over this initial epoch of
he seasons outdoor sport.
PUT ON NEW FACES.
There is now an enthusiasm, heartiness,
! geniality; and hilariousness about the
British man that makes you feel you have
misjudged him. He is no longer stone. He
is radiant, generous human. In justice,
this will even apply to the grave and austere
Scotch. High-lows and CATERS, balmorals
and Tam O'Shanters, corduroys and collar
less necks, endless fap-pockets and sug-
gestions of TASKS, show this British man Of
the hunting season off to good advantage
besides. His language is honest and
hearty, his laughter has, l am sorry to
say, more integrity than the American
laugh, which always seems to be begging
pardon or casting a challenge, and his face
ia y hod in
world seems good to him, and anybody where
he is. And therefore, if he spends $40, 900, 900
instead of $40, ,090, 600 for the thing which
makes him for even a brief period of the
year pright-faced instead of bear-faced
Briton, he has not done amiss.
After all, the beggarly brace of grouse,
ptarmigan or pheasants, or the trembling
kneed and skinny deer he has knocked over
with his expensive fowling-pieee. is not so
much the yearly motive which impels him
to Immense expense and labor. Whether or
not himself conscious, the impalpable unde-
finable witcheries Of that sweet nature ever
calling to man Co be bettered, is what draws
him On.
NATUnE DELIGHTS HIM.
The wide, free moorlands odorous with
countless flowers and vagrant weeds; the
glorious sides OF mountains endless pano-
ramas of scene and color as the shine and
cloud chase each other across them; the
white wings OF mountain mist softly flap
ping the grim old peaks; the purple heather;
the rocky glens; the stupendous straths; the
feathery waterfalls; the whipping burns;
and above all the deep and dreamful lochs
| of Scotland; these are the British sports
mans real quarry after all.
For month before the 18th all kinds
of preparations are making. The first II
al,
of the gathering of an army of militia, and
on the day itself, and, indeed, for week be-
| fore, the stations present most animated
scenes. All other passenger traffic gives
way to the hunter hosts. Horses and heavy
| luggage have been sent on by the goods
| trains" in advance, but the platforms are
massed with hampers, pouches, cases of
| fowling- pieces, dogs, boxes of dogs food and
countless paraphernalia of hunting, while
excited groups of kennel-keepers, masters,
| servants, '1oaders," old hunters, who are
clad in the roughest and greasiest of gar
ments, and excited amateurs dressed to pro-
claim their destination, jostle each other in
| good-natured desperation in extraordinary
efforts to monopolize the attentions of por-
ters, guards and trainmen.
ON THE SHOOTING GROUNDS.
From 6 to Is hours bring them all to their
| journeys end; for there is no shooting" in
the remotest portion of Scotland which can.
not be reached in the latter time from Lon
don. The moorland cabin and the High-
land sheeling. which were formerly the
abode of the British sportsmen, have given
way to the modern shooting box" which
is never less than a handsome cottage, and
the "lodge," which is often as grand as the
magnificent palace. Aside from these ex-
| elusive conveniences for sportsmen, it is be-
coming more and more the custom on the
| part of titled owners of large northern es-
tates, who retain possession Of their own
! "shootings," or who lease them to others
with privilege OF themselves and q certain
number of guests shooting over their own
| preserves, to discharge many of their London
social obligations by entertaining their city
friends with "a few days shooting"
| We Americans have no comprehension of
the universally of the sportsman instinct
and education in Great Britain. Reading
| English fiction, and particularly Kingsley's
novels, gives an insight into the importance
of hunting and shooting to every English
bred man. SO that the greater the man be
| socially, politically or financially in En-
! gland, the more likely it is that he Is bred
| from youth, though always living in Lon
| don, to following the hounds and shooting
grouse on the moors, or pheasants within
the bounds" walls of great demesnes.
If you were pilgriming afoot and alone in
Scotland and should suddenly come upon
one of these hunting parties, whether beat
| ing the moorland for grouse, or in mad
| gallop after the hounds for fox or deer, you
could never make an error in Judgment as
| to whether you were basking in the sun
shine OF nobility, or merely having the dust
flung in your eyes by a parcel OF common
mortals. The latter, every year comprising
greater number of our own countrymen
who have graduated from the thrilling
diversion of chasing anise-seed bags across
the moors of New Jersey, the sage-brush
sand chasms of Long Island or the rocky
businesses of Westchester county, are ac-
coutred like band of "show" Gipsies or
the lords and ladies of medieval pageant.
The old pale blue blood of Britain scorns
these trapplngs. Your true British noble
man follows the hounds or beats the moors
in raiment shining with gun grease and the
] friction of ages, and as odorous of the chase
| as Galway fish-wife's braideen or a Not
| tingham butchers smock of her or his voca-
ton. But TO either parvenu or nobleman.
the etiquette Of the British sportsmen is
sacred and inviolable.
LANGUAGE OF THE CHASE,
A hunter is invariably ''gun." A cer
tain Americanism defining ancestry NAV
have had this remote origin. The dogs are
always "hounds." You must say "shoot-
ing." and never cunning" You 'look"
for hare or spick it up," and cannot
track it; and the tail of fox is modestly
''brush." To head fox, to halloa at a
fox, or to utter any cry of approval, advice
or exultation in the field would prove NOR
| tai offense to the master of houndr apd a