. Game birds and shooting-sketches : illustrating the habits, modes of capture, stages of plumage and the hybirds & varieties which occur amongst them . such delicatelittle creatures as they are. They are also subject tonumerous other dano-ers, and beino- hatched o-enerallv onrough and swampy ground, they frequently end theirshort existence by tumbling into peat-holes and drainsfrom which they are unable to extricate , sportsmen must hope for the Ijest, for many aone would be sorry to miss from the mixed bag theaddition of the Blackcock, certainly one of the handsomestbirds o
. Game birds and shooting-sketches : illustrating the habits, modes of capture, stages of plumage and the hybirds & varieties which occur amongst them . such delicatelittle creatures as they are. They are also subject tonumerous other dano-ers, and beino- hatched o-enerallv onrough and swampy ground, they frequently end theirshort existence by tumbling into peat-holes and drainsfrom which they are unable to extricate , sportsmen must hope for the Ijest, for many aone would be sorry to miss from the mixed bag theaddition of the Blackcock, certainly one of the handsomestbirds of the chase we at present possess. The best districts in Scotland for Blackgame are Dum-friesshire, Roxburgh, and parts of Perthshire, Inverness, 60 GAME BIRDS AND SHOOTING-SKETCHES and Aberdeenshire; and in England, Westmoreland,Cumberland, and Northumberland — though they arefound here and there in almost every county in bothEngland and Scotland, having been shot in every countyfrom Caithness to Cornwall. I once saw near Aldershot aBlackcock and a hansom cab within sio^lit at the sametime, and remember Ijeing rather amused at the A GLEN IN WINTER, as one naturally associates the former with blue mountainsand silvery birch-w^oods, and the emblem of all that iswild and free, whilst the latter goes wdth Piccadilly andmodern civilisation. Formerly, and up to a recent date,good bags were made on Exmoor and the neighbouringhills in Somersetshire. In that county a friend of minewith another gun, on 1st September 1884, killed twenty-seven brace; but since that time there has been a markedchange for the worse in point of numbers. The New BLACKGAME 61 Forest, AYoolmer Forest, and parts of StafFordsliire andDartmoor used also to be good, but there are only a fewstragglers now left. Like the Capercaillie, Blackgame showno permanent attachment to places where they have beenintroduced, and will not stay any length of time in somedistricts even where conditions are favouraljl
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjecthunting, bookyear1894
