. Unexplored Spain. Hunting; Natural history. 252 Unexplored Spain commotion as, realising the danger, each great bird with strong and laboured wing-stroke swerves aside. One enormous hcn-hon directly overhead receives first attention ; a second, full broadside, presents no more difficulty, and ere the double thuds behind have attested the result, we realise that a third, shying off from our neighbour, is also "our ; This has proved one of our luckier drives, for the handada, splitting up on the centre, offered chances to both flanks of the blockading line—chances which are not
. Unexplored Spain. Hunting; Natural history. 252 Unexplored Spain commotion as, realising the danger, each great bird with strong and laboured wing-stroke swerves aside. One enormous hcn-hon directly overhead receives first attention ; a second, full broadside, presents no more difficulty, and ere the double thuds behind have attested the result, we realise that a third, shying off from our neighbour, is also "our ; This has proved one of our luckier drives, for the handada, splitting up on the centre, offered chances to both flanks of the blockading line—chances which are not always fully exploited. We have stated, earlier in this chapter, that among the various component factors in a bustard-drive the actual shot is. SWERVE ASIDE TO RIGHT AND LEFT of minor importance. That is so ; yet truly remarkable is the frequency with which good shots constantly miss the easiest of chances at these great birds. Precisely similar failures occur with wild-geese, with swans—indeed with all big birds whose wing-action is deliberate and slow. Tardy strokes deceive the eye, and the great bulk of the bustard accentuates the deception —it seems impossible to miss them, a fatal error. As the Spanish drivers put it: " Se les Uenaron el ojo de carne," literally, "the bustards had filled your eye with meat '—the hapless marksmen saw everything bustard ! Yet geese with their 40 strokes fly past ducks at 120, and the bustard's apparently leisured movement carries him in full career as fast as whirring grouse with 200 revolutions to the minute. To kill bustard treat them on the same basis as the smaller game that appears faster but is not. Bustards being soft-plumaged are not hard to kill. As compared with such ironclads as wild-geese, they are singularly. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resembl
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, booksubjecthunting, booksubjectnaturalhistory
