Читать книгу The Complete English Wing Shot онлайн

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It would be necessary also to repudiate the mistake that “foot scent” is something exuding from the pad of an animal and left upon the ground by the contact of the feet. It would be necessary to affirm that fat from the adder is not the best cure for the poison when dog or man is bitten, but that raw whisky taken inwardly in large doses is; and as dogs will sometimes point these vipers, it might be well to affirm that these creatures do not swallow their young, as is commonly supposed. It would be necessary also to state that when partridges “tower” they are not necessarily, but only sometimes, hit in the lungs, but have often received a rap on the head just not enough to render them totally unconscious; and a case has lately been reported where two unshot-at partridges in one covey “towered” and fell, and were caught alive, grew stronger, and upon one of them being killed it was found to be badly attacked by enteritis, and not by lung disease. And consequently the myth about “towered” partridges always falling dead and on their backs does not require dealing with, as might have been the case a quarter of a century ago, when nevertheless the phenomenon was only misunderstood in the laboratory, and not in the field of sport.