Shall I be deemed presumptuous if I say that the period has at last arrived when I feel myself entitled to claim the reversal of the weighty opinions I have quoted, and, for the first time during my career of over twenty years as a practical falconer, to pronounce that the impossibility no longer exists?
Things are wonderfully changed since the time I speak of. Ten years ago there was no Gun License Act. Ten years ago there was no Wild Birds Preservation Act. Naturally enough, the country literally swarmed with hedge-poppers. Now, to a falconer, gamekeepers are quite bad enough; still it is possible to come to an amicable understanding with them. I have never failed to do so; and, finding they have nothing to fear from my hawks, many of them become my warm supporters. In twenty years I have done but one piece of mischief—in April, 1876, an unlucky Partridge got accidentally knocked over by a falcon of mine named "Tigress." With hedge-poppers, on the contrary, it was never possible to deal, and the destruction, by a charge of shot, of every trained Peregrine was accordingly a dead certainty, sooner or later. Between the two Acts I have mentioned hedge-popping is, thank goodness, nearly extinct, at any rate during the spring, the best hawking season; though how long such will continue to be the case, if Sir Alexander Gordon gets his way, it is not easy to say. Ornithologists, sportsmen, and gamekeepers alike should have a keen eye, before it is too late, to the Bill for the so-called "Amendment" of the Gun License Act, which Sir Alexander has now before Parliament, and which, by allowing the carrying of an unlicensed gun for the destruction of hares, rabbits, and "vermin," will, if it becomes law, practically destroy the effect of the Gun License Act, or limit its restrictive operation to legitimate sportsmen only.
As all the animals specified can be much more easily and effectively "destroyed" by other means, such as trapping, netting or ferreting, than by shooting, it is clear that the Bill is simply a sop to the smaller tenant farmers and cotters, by providing their sons with a cheap excuse for poaching their landlord's and their neighbour's game, instead of attending to their proper work. Of course the gun will only be carried (and it will be carried habitually), ostensibly for the "destruction of vermin." We ought to know what that means by this time!
Legitimate game-preservers and sportsmen will be the great
