COVERT-SHOOTING 285 



the best, and may be assisted by some 

 artifice such as the sugar mats set up on 

 hurdles, that Captain A. Glen-Kidston 

 uses so successfully in his Welsh coverts, 

 and about which he was kind enough to 

 supply the writer with the following 

 notes : — 



GwERNYFED ; ThREE CoCKS, 



Nov. 30, 1912. 



You ask me to let you know about the 

 sugar-mats. I first saw them used at Sir 

 Walter Smythe's place in Shropshire, where Mr. 

 M'Corquodale has the shooting, and in my 

 opinion they are excellent, especially when used 

 on a bank or ridge. If the cover is hollow in the 

 bottom, the pheasants run along them and do not 

 see the guns. They break the wind and keep the 

 covers warm. Every here and there I stick 

 privet or rhododendron bushes at the lee side of 

 the hurdles, which keeps the birds from bunching ; 

 they also have the advantage of necessitating the 

 birds rising four or five feet before clearing the 

 hurdles, and when once this height in the air, 

 they make out for the top of the trees and come 

 right over the guns. 



I have found them most effective, even on the 

 bare open face, by putting them in echelon along 

 that face, and allowing the grass to grow up 

 among them. 



