In short, field sports here have a richer range, are much
more various, wilder--"
"Hold there, Frank; hold hard there; I cannot concede the wilder, not
the really wilder--seemingly they are wilder; for, as you say, the
scenery is wilder--and all the game, with the exception of the English
snipe, being wood-haunters, you are led into rougher districts. But oh!
no, no!--the field sports are not really wilder--in the Atlantic States
at least--nor half so wild as those of England!"
"I should like to hear you prove that, Archer," answered Frank, "for I
am constantly beset with the superiority of American field sports to
tame English preserve shooting!"
"Pooh! pooh! that is only by people who know nothing about either; by
people who fancy that a preserve means a park full of tame birds,
instead of a range, perhaps, of many thousand acres, of the very
wildest, barest moorland, stocked with the wariest and shyest of the
feathered race, the red grouse. But what I mean to say, is this, that
every English game-bird--to use an American phrase--is warier and wilder
than its compeer in the United States. Who, for instance, ever saw in
England, Ireland, or Scotland, eighteen or twenty snipe or woodcock,
lying within a space of twelve yards square, two or three dogs pointing
in the midst of them, and the birds rising one by one, the gunshots
rattling over them, till ten or twelve are on the ground before there is
time to bag one.
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