Book Review

This time I'll report on a handsome coffee-table volume on woodcock, a fascinating history of an English gunmaker and an authoritative work on rifles for dangerous game-books that provide enjoyable reading and are top-flight sources of information as well. The Woodcock: Artists' Impressions By Simon Gudgeon, et al. (Swan Hill Press; distributed by Stackpole Books, 800-732-3669, www.stackpolebooks.com; 2006) 147 pp. $49.95. The Eurasian woodcock (Scolopax rusticola) has a barred head and intricately camouflaged plumage, as does the American woodcock (Scolopax minor), but the Eurasian species is half again as large as our woodcock and, at least in Britain, represents an even more compelling quarry.

Artist Simon Gudgeon describes the woodcock as "a prize above all others on any shooting day" and notes of these crepuscular fliers-which are both breeding residents and non-breeding winter migrants in the British Isles-"They are a bird to be savoured." The Woodcock: Artists' Impressions is a savory book, indeed. It starts with a brief natural history, explaining that most woodcock found in Britain during winter have migrated from Scandinavia and the Baltic. As the weather gets colder and snowier, the birds travel southward and eventually may end up in Southwest England, "where large numbers can congregate in harsh winters." This informative section is followed by eight chapters, each featuring one artist's written reflections on woodcock along with a sampling of the artist's work as he has tried to capture the essence of this elusive gamebird. The artists include Keith Sykes, Simon Gudgeon, Ben Hoskyns, Terence Lambert, Rodger McPhail, Alastair Proud, Jonathan Sainsbury and Owen Williams. Sykes presents scratchboard portraits of sporting dogs (his black cocker carrying a downed woodcock is magnificent); Gudgeon follows with a selection of superb bronze sculptures. The remaining artists contribute works done in watercolor, pencil, sepia, oil and acryl-ic. There are scenes of male woodcock "roding" (conducting mating flights) as well as birds probing for food, taking off and landing, flying through woods and brush, and reposing in cover, where their subtle colors blend them into different natural backgrounds. Reproduced on heavy paper, the artwork is a feast for the eyes. The quality of the writing is uneven; the book would have benefited from closer editing. Still, I found it interesting to read about how different artists see and relate to this enigmatic gamebird. Gudgeon writes that he shot four woodcock in the latest season, which represented "a good year." He notes that "every glimpse [of a woodcock] helps build up a more complete picture of how it moves and behaves." Says McPhail: "No bird poses such a challenge to the artist as the woodcock. Its strange shape and subtle plumage are tricky enough to render in paint, but the greatest difficulty is studying the living bird itself." This large-format volume provides American sportsmen and sporting-art lovers with a welcome introduction to both the European woodcock and to some talented British artists. Thomas Horsley, Gunmaker of York By David J. Baker (available from the author, 01144-1239-851664, david.baker14@btinternet.com; 2006) 207 pp. £50 plus £17 airmail shipping. (A number of copies have been sent to the US and can be purchased for $103-contact Baker for details.) Accompanying the re-cent interest in older British guns that has swept both the US and the UK has been a spate of books about gunmakers. Most have focused on famous London firms such as Holland & Holland, E.J. Churchill and Stephen Grant. Now David Baker gives us something new: a readable, in-depth history of Horsley's, a small family-owned and -operated firm in the north of England. As with the author's excellent Heyday of the Shotgun (Safari Press; 2000), Thomas Horsley also sheds light on the phenomenon of the British sporting gun and on the society and times that spawned and nurtured it. (Baker, a Cambridgeshire native and history teacher, is also co-author, with Ian Crudgington, of the notable two-volume set, The British Shotgun.) The first Thomas Horsley set up shop in Doncaster around 1830 before moving his business to nearby York in 1833 or '34. He was succeeded, over the years, by a son and a grandson, both named Thomas. Horsley's was an innovative firm, building and selling a variety of guns having a range of mechanisms and design features that included several patents of its own. The company is probably best known for a number of classic hammerguns made and sold in the 1870s and '80s. (A friend of mine is fortunate to own one of those gems, a beautifully engraved 12-bore whose quality appears to equal or surpass anything produced contemporaneously in London.) A true gunmaker, Horsley's was able to carry out under its own roof most or all of the processes and stages that went into making sporting shotguns. One specialty was a pullback toplever for opening and closing the action. Another Horsley gun had an adjustable comb on the stock, an innovation that was not patented, even though, writes Baker, "I have never seen another on a gun of any make." Baker himself first became interested (obsessed, as he puts it) in Horsley guns when, as a young man, he bought a Horsley hammergun "in extremely neglected condition." He explains: "The style of the gun grew on me so that I began to search for others and to find what I could of the maker." Helped by family member Moyra John-son (Horsley was her maiden name), Baker learned about the personalities linked to the firm. He also researched many of the company's guns. In places his book becomes quite technical, leading Baker to write: "Some will find the following discussion of the changes and minutiae of these thousand guns tedious, as we are not all fascinated by such detail." But Baker also ranges more widely, explaining, for example, about the bicycles sold by Horsley's (many English makers diversified to sell bicycles in the late 1800s) and the motorcar the firm developed (a flawed engine-valve design rendered this horseless carriage a huge flop). He speculates on why a man would buy a muzzleloader during the period from 1862 to '72, when that style of gun had been superseded by breechloading designs, and credits it to live-pigeon competitions: Some shooters didn't want to risk ruining their patterns by squeezing shot through a breechloader's forcing cones. Baker also details a punt gun that Horsley's built and an alarm gun: a freestanding device meant to be fired with a trip wire to discourage poachers. Many fascinating aspects of life in Victorian and Edwardian times come to light in these pages. We learn that there were three postal deliveries daily during the 1880s. Gunpowder sometimes was used medicinally, "to dose both horses and humans, its sulphur content rendering it a laxative." Lending a special liveliness to the book are vignettes of various original owners of Horsley guns, each accompanied by a photograph of the actual firearm. We read about soldiers and politicians and businessmen, their travels, accomplishments, sporting feats and quirky behaviors. (The owner of Horsley No. 2381, one F.G.B. Dyne, lived in France, "co-habiting with a woman by the name of Sarah Haynes," whom he finally married after she had borne him seven children. Had the Dyne family considered Ms. Haynes beneath F.G.B.'s station?) Baker ferreted out these facts in obituaries, letters, census records and various "who's who" books. Copious color and black & white photographs, diagrams and portraits illustrate this large-format volume. A contact of mine in the English gun trade told me that he considers Baker's book the best summary of a single gunmaker yet published. I agree. Dangerous-Game Rifles By Terry Wieland (Countrysport Press, 800-685-7962, www.countrysportpress.com; 2006) 344 pp. $40. Dangerous game, Terry Wieland writes, includes the animal that "when wounded does not run from the hunter, but attempts to turn the tables and even the score": a leopard, for example. The category also encompasses animals that will attack a human without being provoked: lions, tigers, brown bears, Cape buffalo and elephants. When hunting game of this sort, you need a rifle-bullet combination that will stop the animal before it can reach you to, as Wieland puts it, "bite, gore, stamp, and claw." One plus of Dangerous-Game Rifles is that its author does not deviate from his main purpose by titillating the reader with repeated tales of mayhem caused by wounded or truculent game. Instead Wieland logically, lucidly and thoroughly describes the firearms-and the cartridges, loads and bullets-that will get the job done. He has ample real-world experience, having been on many African safaris and North American hunting expeditions in his capacity as Shooting Editor for Gray's Sporting Journal, as Field Editor for Sports Afield and as a writer for other publications, including SSM. A journalist by profession, Wieland is the author of four previous books on guns and big-game hunting and also of Spanish Best, which describes the shotguns produced in the Basque region of Spain. Wieland provides a solid historical underpinning to the concept of the big-bore rifle and follows it with a section on double rifles, those loveliest of firearms whose popularity-and prices-have skyrocketed since the 1990s. (These days you can commission a new detachable-lock Westley Richards for a cool $112,000.) Although the H&H Royal is "the benchmark for double rifles," Wieland pronounces the classic Anson & Deeley double "austere, functional, and deadly." The author also describes pertinent bolt-action, single-shot and lever rifles. He himself cleaves to doubles and bolt-actions. Yet although a double rifle can deliver two swift shots against a charging animal, a bolt-action in the same caliber will afford more firepower. Wieland writes that he was in "a tight spot with a dangerous animal exactly twice-once with an incoming Alaska brown bear and once with a charging, wounded Cape buffalo. In both cases, I was armed with a bolt-action, and in both cases it was the third shot that finally put the animal down. Had I been armed with a double rifle either time, I might not be writing this now." Wieland makes a distinction between the working rifle that will do its duty in the bush and the "masterpiece of the gunmaker's art that would be worthy of a museum but might get me killed"-such as a gorgeous Austrian double rifle he once handled at a Safari Club International convention whose maker was aghast when Wieland pointed out there should be checkering on the grip and forend. The maker blurted, "No, no! You cannot checker it-you would not see the grain of the wood!" Wieland notes that the purpose of checkering is "to give sweaty hands a firm grip on a big rifle," to deliver shots accurately and swiftly when need be. The book includes information on cartridges and bullets (including how to test bullets' mushrooming properties and toughness by shooting them into soaked newspaper); various kinds of sights; recoil and how to live with it; optimal weight and balance for a dangerous-game rifle; standards of accuracy; and ways of practicing with a big bore so that when you get it into the veldt or on the barren ground you will know exactly how the gun is going to perform and how to properly and effectively use it. If you entertain any notion of owning and using a working dangerous-game rifle, Wieland's book is a must. For the rest of us, it's a highly enjoyable read. Charles Fergus's classic bird hunting book A Rough-Shooting Dog recently was published in paperback by the Lyons Press.