The Grouse Season: Ample Birds Everywhere: A Satisfied Sportsman-Farmer: Rabbits in the Cornfield: Boy Scouts' Camps: Home Truths for Chinese By Hare.
sewenat. C. D. Bruce, 'August used to seo, the first of the Somewhere about the end, of autumn snipe settling down in the Yangtze Valley. Round Hangchow, way" had its attractions of old, Dut now, like most things in China, perhaps' we have changed that? Is the game as unruly, one' wonders, as the students? Hardly, for there is noone to unadulterated anti-foreign poison! machine is into the ears—of pheasants short-tailed deer. The first autumn pheasant is still) waiting to be shot by the houseboat enthusiast, but here in the Old Country we have already begun.
"J, 0, P." once quoted "in his. immortal "House-boat Days'
"Is a man a hopeless heathen if he dreams of one fait day When, with spirit free from shadows IAO heeood old dogs before him In this grouse season in this year of grace "1926 the dream would have come doubly true, for there are ample birds almost where from Derbyshire, to Caithn Any foreigner' home this season from the Far Bast on shooting bent has struck it lucky.' Forty-three brace over dogs to three guns on the 12th is all a man need wish for. This in Sutherlandshire. Record bags have very little inter for the newcomer to the game. grouse plutocrat who has rented fa castle, But there is good fun to be had in these August days without going all the way to Scotland, A Satisfied Farmer Here in the Old Country the harvest is nearly over and. many of the fields cleared. A near neigh. dour, a Scotch farmer lately come south to try his hand and fortune on Essex clays, has expressed himself as well satisfy One is apt to imagine farms never being satisfied. Like keepers, farmers are generally terribly hard to please. But when this farmer friend owned to its being list grand harvest' there was no more to be said, Being a sportsman as well as an exceedingly hard-working farmer he, the writer, and one of the younger generation completing his shooting education have had some very sporting even lately with rabbits out of the half-cut corn.
There are, of course, various ways of finishing off the bunnies in the corn. Some are rather brutal Others give our ubiquitous friend every chance. Sticks in the hands of yokels or wildly excited boys alb yelling together is one of the former. But our way is fair enough} and this is how we played the game, If the main charm of all sport ligs in its uncertainty, you have it to the full in the variety of shots bunnies bolting from the standing corn give, If, as some say, the charm lies chiefly in the surround ings, what scene can appeal more to the exile abroad than that of "English harvest fields while the, corn is being gathered in? Overhead, for once, is the cloudless blue of an August summer day at home. This summer one can almost catch a Shanghai murmur of "Oh, d—n these cloudless days of August." But we like them at home. They} 30 very seldom come our way. A during sun which has already lyed the harvesters brick-red down to the very edge of their turned-back shirts. The wheat-ears brown-td, too, by a spell of kindly hot, ary sunshine are falling fast as the cutter and binder passes. over them. The machine with—whirling] arms pulled by its three stout Shire horses much worried as to nose and eyes by the flies. The w of the blades and the metallic dany of the machine as it bumps and rolls over the sun-baked clay stubble are sights and sounds entirely characteristic of English aryest fields.
Rabbits in the Cornfield we guns take up position one at each of three corners of the fast-narrowing strip of corn. The longest side—some 150 yards—tfaces a low, thick, overgrown spring' as these spinneys are called in Essex. They are as fine rabbit-covert as any dives into the standing corn. Her hurried track -is marked by a pour, gently-waving furrow. While the! still circulating the fun begins. Slowly at first, but if a favourite feeding field of the bunnies, soon livening up. Sitting half-asleep on one's shooting stick on the close-cut stubble the edge lof the cornfield suddenly moves. Out peeps a furry head, just to have a look round. First you think of downing him there and then, for the farmer wants his rabbits killed right down. Then for quite a minute you sit absolutely motionless, as- does bunny. Why he can't focus you at five and 30 yards as you can him is presumably because of the different ways your eyes and his are set in the head. So hearing no sound -lexcept the cutter which he understands, he quietly emerges, making slow silly jumps of a foot or two, and at the end of half a dozen such sitting up to look round, Very carefully the gun is raised. "If he. is such a half-hearted corn-stealer as that,' one thinks, he deserves to get it in the neck.'....He does. and the ecstatic Cocker who has! sat shivering with excitement all the time beside one's shooting. stick, gallops in to retrieve If, on the other hand, the first sight of your temporary enemy 'a low-crouching lump of grey fur and white sent doing any m.p.h. you like to call it across that narrow strip of open stubble to gain the of the protecting spring,' and if you get kim fair in the head; at 40 yards dead as a stone, there is a certain distinct satisfaction' to you, and he owes you no grudge. In spite of what the faddists may say, is this sharp swift end not better than being trapped, or caught and eaten by mother fox' and her cubs? As the last acre of corn begins to fall the fun grows quite exciting. On all three sides old bunnies are bolting. Te boom of the farmer's black powder echoes across the field: he himself is temporarily: almost obscured, which. accounts, let us hope, for the rasping whip of shot on the stubble from the gun of the—younger generation, rather too close to the farmer tobe quite safe, Then came the real excitement of the evening. With 16-bore upraised one sat watching the outer edge of the corn waving. Tt must be have! Something pulled up sudden. ly, but still hidden inside the corn, Then, with cary laid back, evidently angry at being disturbed out shot a beautifully clean, full-grown fox-cub to canter, in full view, half. annoyed, half-frightened, across the open field. ing the spring' the cub made for and dived overgrown hedge. Why is it that an Englishman's blood is stirred at the sight of a fox? Foreigners shoot. We stand and hollow our immortal souls out. But then few of them have ever heard a fox found ind roused by the chorus of hounds: in covert, or have listened to the most soul-stirring music on earth, the gone away' of a whipper-in, himself grinning all over his red tanned face.
Thirty-four rabbits, two hai und _a pigeon was the bag from one cornfield. Forty-seven rabbits and an owl yet another evening's fun. No one enjoyed the sport more than a friend of the farmer's. He did not shoot. He was working at harvesting, a brother Scot. 'The Doctor' we called him, was a nice looking, not too robust young fellow who boarded with and worked for his friend like any labourer. Nor was that all. 'The Doctor' was at the time studying at Edinburgh Uni for his medical degree. That is during term-time. During the long vacation, so that he could save what he had, 'The Doctor' accepted board and lodging—free from his friend, and gave "of his
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.