A delightful maxim was quoted the other day in The
Field. It represented the advice of an old and old-fashioned sportsmen to a beginner. " First shoot what you want to give away. 'then what you want to eat. Then stop." It represents, of course, an impossible ideal at this date ; but it is, I think, quite unquestionable that the continuous demand for bigger and bigger bags is utterly spoiling both the spirit and technique of sport. The ideal is wrong. Ability to get off four barrels more quickly than other people comes too high in the canons of the art. The necessity of the loader, whom guests must take and the host entertain, makes sport a plutocracy which boasts as many " climbers " as the most snobbish society.
" What is it steels the sportsman's heart ? It is his conscious pride of art."
But now the art itself is conventionalized. Even the dogs suffer. They can sit still and only fetch when told. Whether they are good finders of game, good limiters, becomes quite a secondary question.
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