THE WILD PHEASANT 197 



need so much. A little oasis in the 

 desert of this kind is often a great help to 

 the keeper, giving him somewhere to 

 keep up a feed, which of course he 

 cannot so much as attempt in any place 

 to which farm stock have access. 



Regular feeding is essential to any 

 success with wild pheasants in almost 

 every case, for they have an even stronger 

 tendency to wander than hand-reared 

 birds, and it is the only way to collect 

 them for shooting days. The actual 

 amount of food is not so important as the 

 way it is given ; the real object being not 

 so much to sustain life as to keep the 

 pheasant busily engaged hunting for his 

 food at home instead of seeking it abroad. 

 If the corn is buried in a heap of chaff, 

 where the birds will be kept picking and 

 scratching all day to find the scattered 

 grain, it will go twice as far as if it were 

 just thrown down for them to find and 

 take their fill of without any effort on 

 their part. 



While the wild pheasant has certainly 



