Battue

Battue (from Fr. battre, 'to beat'), a word less used by real sportsmen than by writers on sport. The battue is a method of killing game on a great scale, by causing animals to be driven forward to a point where a number of guns are posted. The driving is effected by beating the bushes; hence the term battue. The phrase, 'a grand battu,' occurs in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1816; but, according to Cobden, the battue was unknown in 1790. Certainly, as it is practised to-day, it is quite modern; though a plan of killing deer by driving them forward in herds in an ever-narrowing circle to a place where they are to be shot is an old usage in the Highlands, where it is called the tinchel (Gael. timchioll, 'circuit'). Some people regard the battue as at best a mean and butcherly amusement, but Mr Henry Stevenson, author of the Birds of Norfolk, in defence of the heavy shooting common to Norfolk and Suffolk, says there is certainly not much bodily fatigue, but the sportsman must always be on the alert; there is every opportunity for good and bad shooting, and he is no ordinary shot who can account for one in every three of his empty cartridges. It is practised chiefly in extensive preserves of pheasants and hares during the autumn and winter months, when country gentlemen invite acquaintances to their houses for the sake of field-sports. The battue takes place early in the day; the number of men is usually eight or ten, each provided with at least two guns, which are loaded by an assistant as soon as they are discharged. When the guns are stationed at safe distances from each other, and ready to commence work, the beaters begin theirs by driving the game before them. Sometimes, however, pheasants will run a long way before taking to the wing, and to make them rise on approaching the guns, a low net is occasionally stretched across their path. It should be stated, however, that in the battue, hares, rabbits, &c. are shot as readily as pheasants; and at length the ground is covered with slain, like a field of battle. Big bags date from 1860, the first to startle the shooting world in this respect being the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, then of Elveden Hall, Suffolk. A thousand pheasants in a single day, or even 2000, is nothing unusual; the annual total for the United Kingdom has been estimated at 335,000. One of the earliest large bags on record was made at Bradgate Park, the seat of Lord Stamford, Leicestershire, in 1864, when 14 guns in four days killed 8900 head of game. At Croxteth, in 1883, a week's shooting resulted in 7691 head of game. Such big days cheapen game, as in November 1885 cock pheasants could be bought at 2s. apiece in London; in ordinary circumstances they might have been a guinea a brace. The profits derived from this species of stock amounts on some estates to no inconsiderable sum annually. For an account of battue-shooting, we refer to Shooting, by Lord Walsingham and Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey (2 vols. 1886).