"Battue shooting, I grant, is tame work; but partridge shooting, after
the middle of October, is infinitely wilder, requiring more exertion and
more toil than quail shooting. Even the pheasant--the tamest of our
English game--is infinitely bolder on the wing than the ruffed grouse,
or New York partridge; while about snipe and woodcock there exists no
comparison--since by my own observation, confirmed by the opinion of old
sportsmen, I am convinced that nine-tenths of the snipe and cock bagged
in the States, are killed between fifteen and twenty paces; while I can
safely say, I never saw a full snipe rise in England within that average
distance. Quail even, the hardest bird to kill, the swiftest and the
boldest on the wing, are very rarely killed further than twenty-five to
thirty, whereas you may shoot from daylight to sunset in England, after
October, and not pick up a single partridge within the farthest, as a
minimum distance."
"Well! that's all true, I grant," said Forester, "yet even you allow
that it is harder to kill game here than at home; and if I do not err, I
have heard you admit that the best shot in all England could be beat
easily by the crack shots on this side; how does all this agree!"
"Why very easily, I think," Harry replied, "though to the last remark, I
added in his first season here! Now that American field sports are
wilder in one sense, I grant readily; with the exception of
snipe-shooting here, and grouse-shooting in Scotland, the former being
tamer, in all senses, than any English--the latter wilder in all senses
than any American--field-sport.
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