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possible. Of course it is indispensable to possess or rent a 
sufficient quantity of suitable ground, well stocked with 
partridges, and the right to preserve them upon it: 2,000 or 
3,000 acres is quite necessary, if not more, for good sport and 
success. The fixed idea that “ hawking drives birds off the 
land” is everywhere prevalent, and utterly unremoveable. 
This prejudice militates heavily, against even renting grouse, or 
partridge ground, for our present purpose. It happens to be a 
perfectly incorrect idea, from a common sense point of view, 
but it is useless to attempt to discuss it, nor will I write about 
it here. Suffice it to say that the constant presence of two or 
more wild peregrine falcons, living very much indeed on my 
own and neighbours’ partridges, not only never drove our 
numerous partridges away, but was not thought to do so; 
whereas two or three miserably inferior tame hawks, not to be 
named in the same week, with the wild ones, with reference to 
their ability to take partridges, were believed to drive all our 
game away. Luckily it did not. On the contrary, when hard 
shot, it was our neighbour’s lands that were bare, whilst ours, 
being kept quiet from the report of the gun, were a land of 
plenty (for partridges) to our great content, and I hope to 
our neighbour’s disgust. But they stuck to their text just the 
same ! 
Every single flight, even at partridges, throughout the day 
differs considerably from its predecessor and its successor. The 
two best days I can remember were twelve partridges one day 
and fourteen on the next (both in October). I once remember 
killing a partridge with a nearly perfect game hawk called 
“ Lundy,” from his birthplace in the Bristol Channel, and who, 
before a bad neighbour killed him, to deliver a pigeon from his 
clutches, had taken more than 400 partridges in his four years of 
service, besides two kestrels, some falcons being desperately 
fond of going at any wild hawk. This little fellow had done 
enough one day, when a neighbour’s keeper came up and asked 
to see a flight. Too late, said I, the other hawks being fed up. 
Just then the dog employed, a ceaseless worker and finder, came 
to a dead point in some high clover. Quite forgetting what I 
