30 Wild Birds and their Haunts 



large agricultural parts of England, foi the partridge 

 is an agricultural bird and prefers a life on a well-cul- 

 tivated faim to any other sort of existence. Wildfowl 

 do not come within the scope of my remaiks. Grouse, 

 then, you can let go as far as you like, partridges you 

 can do the same with if the country is open enough, and 

 then you are finished wich it. But in a wooded coun- 

 try, in covert-shooting, rabbiting, or any other sort, 

 you cannot fire fast or slow according to whim ; you 

 must take your birds or ground game as they offer 

 themselves or let them away altogether. And, apart 

 from all this, it is distinctly bad form to be picking and 

 choosing time and opportunity ; it looks bad, it is bad, 

 and I take it on me to say you never see a crack game 

 shot of experience guilty of it. On the other hand, it 

 is a pleasure to watch a downiight good performer at 

 fast birds or other game. His gun seems part and 

 parcel of himself, for it fits him like a glove ; he takes 

 his brace of biids out of a covey with grace and ease ; 

 he does the same with a pack of grouse ; he crumples 

 up an old cock rocketing pheasant, shot dead through 

 the head and neck, as he comes with the wind at fifty 

 miles an hour, or snapshots a scuttling rabbit in the 

 thicket cover and lays him out dead in his tracks ! I 

 say it is a treat to watch such a performer, and a greater 

 contrast between such a man ard a shooter who has to 

 pick and choose both his mark and hh distances because 

 he is using or trying to use a full choke must be seen to 

 be realised ! I have witness id both many a time and 

 oft ; the first I am only too anxious to be a spectator of 

 every day in the week, the second I never wish to see 

 again. 



