The Wildfowler - A Treatise on Fowling, Ancient and Modern (History of Shooting Series - Wildfowling)

H. C. Folkard

• Publisher: Read Country Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781846640087, 9781846640094
• eBook ISBN: 9781447487166
• Subtopic: Zoology

Originally published in 1859, this scarce early work on Wildfowling in all its various forms, is both expensive and hard to find in any edition. We have now republished the third and best edition of 1875, using the original text and engravings. The author was an acknowledged expert in the art of wildfowling, and this book is probably the best researched and most descriptive early title on this increasingly popular field sport. It ranks among the highest class of sporting literature. The book's substantial four hundred and thirty six pages contain numerous comprehensive chapters, including: Fowling; Ancient Methods; History of Decoys (nine chapters); Decoy Ducks; The Flight Pond; Wild Fowl Shooting; The Fowler's Dog; Language of Wild Fowl; Flight of Wild Fowl; The Gunning Punt; Punt Guns; Management of the Punt Gun; Punting by Daylight; The Sailing Punt; Night Punting; Goose Shooting; The Quarry (20 detailed chapters); Wild Swan Shooting; Shooting Yachts, Boats and Canoes; The Cripple Chase; Wild Duck Shooting; Coastal Shooting; Fenland Shooting; Methods of Capturing Woodcock; Laws Affecting Wild Fowl; Fowling Abroad (11 chapters); Rock Fowling in The Shetlands, Orkney and St. Kilda; Wildfowling Ashore by Night; Snipe and Woodcock Shooting; Etc, etc. The contents are nicely illustrated with full page steel engravings and several wood-cuts. This is a fascinating read for any dedicated shooting man, fowler, or historian of the sport, but also contains much information that is still useful and practical today.

THE WILD-FOWLER

CHAPTER I

FOWLING

‘Aucupium felix festinaquè copia præda.’

—Bargæus, de Aucupio: Anno 1566.

IN Greek this sport is termed ὀρνιθoθήρα; in Latin, aucupium, from avis, a bird; and capio, I take. It signifies the art of decoying, capturing, or killing birds ferœ naturœ, by means of decoy-ducks, dogs, guns, rapacious birds, nets, snares, bird-lime, bird-calls, or other artifice; and whether used upon land or water.[1]

The Saxon dialogue upon the Art of Fowling is thus expressed:—

Q.—How do you catch birds?

A.—I catch them many ways: sometimes with nets, sometimes with nooses, sometimes with bird-lime, sometimes by whistling, sometimes with hawks, sometimes with gins.[2]

It is one of the most ancient, as well as most natural, arts known to mankind; and in every nation has called forth the earliest cunning of the people. There are frequent allusions to it in the Scriptures; more particularly in the Old Testament, as to the ‘snares of the fowler;’ and there can be no doubt but such were used many centuries before Christ.

As different species of birds have different habits, so the method of taking them differs, in accordance with such habits. Such portions of the art as relate to the capture of wild-fowl and fen-birds are by far the most attractive, varied, and extensive, and to those particular branches our discourse will be more especially devoted.

It is a pleasant and useful diversion, abounding with varieties as attractive and instructive as they are exciting and exhilarating.[3]

There is no branch of the art of fowling possessing so great an amount of attraction, or requiring so much skill, as is necessary for proficiency in the art of capturing water-fowl; and, besides, there is no one which offers so many examples of instinet.

It appears, however, to have been a sport distasteful (because, probably, very imperfectly understood) to that earliest of writers upon sporting literature—Dame Juliana Barnes, alias Berners. That antiquated and distinguished sportswoman draws a very forlorn and miserable, though amusing, picture of an ancient fowler; showing him up, in her peculiar style of language, as the very object of pity, disappointment, and misery;[4] but her remarks can only be read as applying to taking birds with nets, gins, and such like contrivances—other portions of her work being dissertations specially in praise of hawking, as a distinct branch of the pursuit, and in which she appears to have been a proficient, and evidently familiar with the art of capturing wild-fowl with rapacious birds.

Both ancient and modern fowlers agree as to the necessity of knowing something of the haunts as well as the habits of wild-fowl, before success can be confidently looked for in any branch of the pursuit. There are certain places in the Fens preferred by wild-fowl to others; and the same is to be observed of such fowl as do not venture far inland; but, as the subject will be briefly discussed in subsequent pages, under the different heads applicable to each particular species, we only speak here in general terms as to their haunts and habits. The knowledge of this branch of the art possessed by the ancient fowler was by no means so superficial as may have been supposed: it was of the essence of his success to be well informed on this head.[5]

The favourite daily resorts of the smaller species of wild-fowl, as duck, teal, and such like, are sequestered lakes, ponds, and arms of the sea. At twilight, in the evening, they change their quarters to fens, moors, and bog-lands, where they find their best and most abundant food. The wilder and more uncultivated the country, the more it is frequented by wild-fowl; provided it be a moorish or sedgy and fertile soil. During great and heavy rains they resort to flooded meadows, delighting to dabble in shallow water, where easy access can be obtained to the bottom without immersing their whole bodies. They are particularly partial to such swamps and morasses as are intersected with small islands and mounds. Widgeon prefer saline feeding-grounds, and do not generally seek their food so far inland as ducks and teal. Brent geese confine themselves exclusively to the sea by night, and frequent saltwater rivers and bays during the day. Grey-lag geese are devotedly attached to fields of green wheat, and extensive moors and savannas.

From this mere cursory glance at the habits of wild-fowl, the variety of the diversion will be at once apparent to the reader; and it will be perceived that a familiarity with the haunts as well as the habits of the different species is of paramount importance to the wild-fowler.

Wild-fowl are by far the most subtle of all birds: it is their very nature to be so, accustomed as they are at one season of the year to wild and uninhabited regions, and at another to the incessant persecution of the fowler; but they are nevertheless the most attractive objects of the sportsman’s diversion, both physically and gastronomically. They are birds of marked discipline, flying in rank and marching in a body; and when an enemy (as a hawk or weasel) ventures to disturb their privacy, and an attack upon the intruder is contemplated, it is always made in troop. Both by night and day they have sentinels on constant duty, to give warning of the enemy’s movements; and so vigilant are they, and so awake to suspicion, that more than ordinary perseverance and ingenuity are requisite on the part of the wild-fowler to ensure success. They are fond of assembling in large numbers, particularly in cold weather: when dispersed, they appear unsettled, and less capable of taking care of themselves.

Wild-fowl, as a dietary article, were always esteemed luxuries; and by the ancient as well as the modern Apician their flesh has been considered more wholesome, and easier of digestion, than that of tame fowls. Yet in former times it would seem that the distinction between such fowl as are now classed among dainties, and such as are mere carrion, was not then observed. Swans, cranes, and curlews were priced highest.[6] Sea-gulls, as well as several other such unpalatable morsels, were deemed fit articles of food for the nobleman’s table:[7] and by way of further illustration of the extraordinary taste which prevailed in those days, it may be added that some of the most delicious birds that fly, as teal for instance, were excluded from the table when any other sort of wild-fowl could be had.[8]

The arts and contrivances for taking water-fowl alive are chiefly of very ancient origin, and some of them are most quaint and amusing. The authors who have written upon the subject are few in number, but they have left some highly instructive accounts of their ingenious arts; many branches of which have been but little used since the numbers of wild-fowl bred in this country have so considerably decreased, through the extensive drainage of their original breeding haunts, for the purpose of acquiring and fitting the land for the more profitable pursuits of agriculture.

The age when decoys were prevalent may be appropriately termed the ‘middle age’ of wild-fowling; all previous systems of taking wild-fowl by nets, snares, lime-strings, lime-twigs, lime-rods, and otherwise, sink into insignificance when compared with the peculiar ingenuities of the decoy, and the subsidiary schemes of the flight-pond. But after the mischief incurred to decoys by the ubiquitous system of land-draining, the successes of the decoyer were considerably diminished; and at the present day, the most common modes of wild-fowling, and those in greatest repute, are by means of the gunning-punt, shooting-yacht, and stanchion gun.

There cannot be a stronger proof of the unfamiliarity of the present age of sportsmen with the ancient and original art of wild-fowling, than by reference to the erroneous terms which are applied to the pursuit by many modern sportsmen; and it is only from the lips of a few ‘ancient fowlers,’ however illiterate, that we hear the correct version of sporting terms applicable to wild-fowling. Thus, modern sportsmen speak of every large number of wild-fowl as a ‘flock’ (a term chiefly appertaining to sheep), and this whether ducks, geese, widgeon, or whatever else; whereas the term ‘flock’ is improper as applied to any distinct species of wild-fowl, and should only be employed when speaking indefinitely of wild-fowl, or a mixture of wild-fowl, not knowing of what species they are. Errors of this sort are seldom made in respect of other field sports without at once bringing down a shower of ridicule by the better-informed upon the head of the more ignorant one.

To speak in the present day of a ‘flock’ of partridges, instead of a ‘covey,’ would so offend the ears of t...

Table of contents

• SHOOTING WILDFOWL
• PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
• INTRODUCTION
• THE WILD-FOWLER