CHAPTER I 
WHAT WILDFOWLING REALLY IS 
PUNCTUALLY at the beginning of the shooting season of 
each year, a certain type of journalist permits himself a little 
printed scorn as to the shooting of ‘‘tame pheasants,” and 
so forth. Not knowing a pheasant from an owl, a partridge 
from a wild duck, or a sporting gun from a service rifle, he 
nevertheless talks glibly of ‘‘alleged sport” with perfect 
satisfaction to himself, and sighs for the ‘‘good old days” 
when drives were unknown, when ‘‘sportsmen were sports- 
men,” and other such twaddle. 
They do not know that the modern reaping machine 
shears the ground so close that walking up birds becomes 
impossible in many instances. They do not realise that 
driven birds come past the sportsmen at such various speeds, 
heights, and angles that they offer far more difficult—and so 
more sporting—shots than are ever obtainable when birds 
rise at one’s feet; they are quite unable to appreciate the 
enormous skill, technical experience, and knowledge of the 
habits of birds required to organise an ordinary partridge 
drive. 
Shooting, which such people so easily imagine to be the 
easiest of all sports, and indeed hardly worth the name of 
‘*sport,” is, on the contrary, the most difficult and most 
engrossing of all. This book is not written for the general 
public in the first instance, but it is conceivable that it will 
fall into the hands of some of them—which is one of the 
reasons for the above remarks. But, it may be asked, what 
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