Bailey’s Magazine initiated an interest-provoking scheme when it set its readers to work to solve the difficult problem of which twelve men were the most expert in each branch of sport. It started with polo, in an article by Mr. Buckmaster, wherein the play of each man was reviewed in the true impartial spirit of criticism. The names had just then almost been officially given to the world in the Hurlingham “recent form” list; and this the readers of Bailey confirmed. In one article the twelve best fishermen were voted for; and fly fishing, unlike polo, is a private sport; unlike shooting, it is not even carried out in private parties, and really there was nothing to go upon except the literary efforts of the fishermen voted upon. Because a man can write and can interest fishermen, he need not necessarily be a clever angler. Francis Francis was the one; by all accounts he was very far from the other. Consequently, the voting for anglers of highest form was on a totally different basis from that of the less private as well as the wholly public sports. Had we set the ballot-box going for crack marksmen (exclusive of riflemen and pigeon shots) sixty years ago, the man who must have come to the top was Colonel Hawker. He would have been there by right of the story he told to young shooters, for whether he was the superb marksman suggested by his writings or not, there was nobody to challenge it—no one who had shown that he knew woodcraft and watercraft half as well. Probably there has never been anyone since who could hold a candle to the Colonel for a complete knowledge of the latter art and science (for gunnery was as much a concern of his as the habits of fowl). Had we voted, we must inevitably have placed him top of the tree; because game shooting then was not a thing to be conducted in large parties, but was a concern only of my friend, my pointer, and myself. There were no spectators except the beaters, who were up the trees to mark, and the gamekeeper, who carried a game-bag, and perhaps rode a shooting pony.

Pigeon shooting did a little, a very little indeed, to make for publicity years afterwards; and there were occasional matches shot at partridges, but these were sometimes more by way of testing the game capacity of estates than the shooting skill of the marksmen. Thus on one occasion there was a match shot in the south-west corner of Scotland and in Norfolk on the same day, and although Norfolk won by a little, the bags were near enough together to prove that the two districts were then very equal as natural partridge country. That they are very unequal now only proves that the more care has been bestowed upon game in the Eastern Counties.

But had there been any voting for crack marksmen in those days, it is certain that, after Hawker, the men who were most talked of (the match makers) would have come out next. They alone were heard of by all sportsmen, and the sporting magazines had chronicled their prowess. Other shooters were “born to flush unseen, and waste their powder on the desert hare”—to misquote to fit the occasion.

In these times in a sense it is different. Men do see each other shoot in parties up to fourteen. But it is clear that when parties, even half as big, are constantly changing, and meeting fresh guns every time, that the form of any individual amongst them soon gets to be known as accurately as that of any race-horse in training at headquarters. This is how it happens that it has been possible to select a dozen men of mark and marksmanship difficult to displace in the consensus of opinion of the men they meet and shoot with.

But just as the majority were never heard of when George Osbaldeston, Lord Kennedy, Horatio Ross, Coke of Norfolk, Colonel Anson, and the rest, were shooting matches, so it may very well be that the best shots of our day never shoot in big parties, and are not known as good shots at all. There are still large numbers of shooters so much sportsmen that they think of woodcraft and sportsmanship first, and only of marksmanship as a secondary and necessary accomplishment.

What, after all, is putting a bullet into the heart of a stag at 100 or 150 yards distant? Any gun-maker’s assistant could make sure of doing it at the standing deer, provided he did not happen to suffer from buck fever, and unless he was a sportsman at heart he would not. But to stalk that stag is a problem of a very different character. The novice will probably make a mess of the simple business of following the heels of his stalker—he who carries his rifle, finds the stag, stalks him, puts “his gentleman” in position, places the rifle in his hand, and tells him when to fire. When the latter can do all that without the stalker’s assistance, he may, and will, flatter himself that the mere shooting straight was quite an elementary stage in the art of woodcraft, and that marksmanship counts for very little indeed in the most fashionable and most sporting use of firearms in Britain. Besides this, stalking is as private as fishing with the dry fly; and again, had our ancestors had to select a stalker for premier position, it would have been Scrope first and the rest nowhere, just on the same grounds as before: Scrope had described his splendid sport in his book.

Then, obviously, the shooters of grouse over dogs are barred also; because, two being company and three none, it would be impossible to take a consensus of opinion. If it were possible, what principle would choice be made upon? The mere shooting straight is very little of the work to be done. Surely the man who can handle his own brace of pointers or setters, a retriever also, and shoot as well, is a step above him who can only shoot. Then the man who can walk for ten hours is far and away better than he who is beaten in five.

In the old partridge shooting matches it was the pace that killed and the pace that won, and there are few men who can walk fast all day and shoot straight; still fewer whom people would name as the best, because they would not have seen them. Then there is the big-game hunter, who must be judged, though probably wrongly, on the size of his bag. He, too, does not perform in public. And all these sportsmen have to be left out of count in such selections as the readers of Bailey have made. Their verdicts, as a matter of course, have gone to the men who can best deal with streams of game by means of three ejector guns and a couple of loaders. It is not so much a question of shooting straight as shooting straightish and often. The man who kills two out of four in one unit of time is better than he who kills three out of four in twice the time. At the end of the day the former’s bag will be the bigger, he will have had more sport, and, as the late Prince Duleep Singh advised his sons, “Cartridges are made to be let off.”

There is good reason why the driving of all kinds of game should be the most popular sport with the greatest numbers. The days when the squire shot game every day in the week, and no faster than he could eat it, have long ago departed; this is not because the “hunting” of a pheasant with gun and dog is not as good sport as ever it was, for the pheasant is at least as interesting to hunt to his lair before he is flushed and shot, as is the hare to hunt until she can move no more. In both cases the individual gives vastly more sport than when it is shot as one amongst hundreds. But the “leisured class,” as Americans call it, are constantly finding more work to do, more that must be done; and we shall soon, like the Americans, have no leisured class but the unemployed, just as they have none except the telegraph-boys. That is the reason sport has to be taken in junks. It does not make for a knowledge of woodcraft; but there is little woodcraft necessary in ordering the beating of coverts crowded with pheasants. Then, although the single driven bird may be a particularly easy shot to the shooter, difficulty increases precisely in the same ratio as numbers. The excellent shot who can kill 10 pheasants quickly and consecutively cannot necessarily kill 30, much less 100, in three and ten times the period. To do it, he must be in condition of the best—at least his arms must. There are crack shots like Lord de Grey, who in his prime was in a class by himself in the butts, but would not have held his own with Lord Walsingham in a stiff day’s walking up game. Some of the crack shots have not been above shooting-school practice at streams of clay birds, sent over them in order to get the arms used to working each gun fairly, quickly, and accurately, and without the man becoming demoralised by suddenly asking too much of his muscles. The writer has found his arms aching under the work as if with rheumatism.

The voting placed Lord de Grey still at the top of the tree; one shooter remarking that he was quite in a class by himself. Lord de Grey uses hammer ejector guns, and he can always shoot slowly, and on his day (and they are mostly his days) he is said to be just as quick as the chances occur; some of his greatest admirers declare that you can never tell by the interval when he changes guns. Mr. R. Rimington Wilson and Lord Walsingham are bracketed for second place: the latter does less shooting than he used to, and the former more. Most of the modern generation have gone to school to Lord Walsingham, and Mr. Wilson is described as the best grouse shot in the world. The Prince of Wales takes rank amongst the twelve best, and it is said, to the credit of the Royal sportsman, that he would always draw for places if he were allowed to do so. His keenness is beyond question, and his experience abroad as well as in this country is well known. As a shot he is very quick. Prince Victor Duleep Singh is remarkably quick too, and as accurate as can be. Low flying pheasants he can kill regularly without hitting them elsewhere than in the head and neck, but then he went to school to his father at ten years old. Amongst the men who have come to have great credit as shots of late years is Mr. J. F. Mason, who now has Drumour, long shot over by the late Barclay Field. Mr. Mason can kill wild pigeons as well as game, the former with results never exceeded. The Hon. H. Stonor is another gunner selected by the voting for the twelve cracks; he is particularly good at high pheasants, and is built for shooting. Mr. Wykeham Martin and Mr. E. de C. Oakley are said to be quite exceptional performers in a high wind. Lord Falconer, whose shooting with the late Baron Hirsch in Hungary was a revelation, and Lord Ashburton, who gave us all a lead in partridge preserving, are noted for being graceful shots, and as effective as any; and Mr. Fryer of Newmarket is, with a 6¼ lb. gun and 1 oz. shot, as deadly as any man living, on driven partridges. Mr. Arthur Blyth, one of our greatest partridge preservers, and Mr. Heatley Noble are both included in the marksmen twelve. It will be noted with interest that several of these gunners use hammer guns, and most of them guns of full weight and a light charge of shot.

It is very likely that Bailey’s scheme found severe critics, but after all it is a better plan than that which allowed Hawker and Scrope to write themselves into fame, and it will certainly go to make the History of Sport.