92 



CHAPTER XVII 



Drive Shooting — Washington's Unique Plan of Stock- 

 ing Public Coverts — Planting Broods w^ith Their 

 Foster Mothers 



We come now to method number two of stocking covers with pheasants 

 for shooting. This is practically the British system in which a succession 

 of covers, some natural and some artificial, are located over a large acre- 

 age and the birds driven from one to the other by beaters, the guns being 

 placed about each covert as it is beaten so as to afford the maximum of 

 sport. This does not make a general appeal in this country, where field 

 shooting behind a dog has become so firmly intrenched that sportsmen are 

 loath to accept any substitute. It is only fair to say, however, that driven 

 birds can be made to furnish excellent sport, as many American sports- 

 men who have shot abroad will testify and the criticisms that are some- 

 times leveled at this method of shooting usually proceed from some one 

 not fully informed. 



Occasionally drive shooting is done in this country, though the ex- 

 pense involved and the lack of game keepers experienced in it, combined 

 with the national preference for field shooting combine to make the in- 

 stances rare. 



THE HISTORY OF ALLAMUCHY.— There is one spot in this coun- 

 try, however, in which pheasant driving was done on a large scale and 

 most successfully for a number of years. I refer to the adjoining estates 

 of Winthrop Rutherfurd and the late Rutherfurd Stuyvesant, at Alla- 

 muchy, N. J., in the hill country that characterizes the northwestern sec- 

 tion of that state. Here it was that the ringneck was introduced into east- 

 ern United States by Mr. Stuyvesant, as has been stated, and here Messrs. 

 Duncan Dunn and Adam Scott, head game keepers respectively for Messrs. 

 Stuyvesant and Rutherfurd, made possible through their skill the first 

 demonstration of real pheasant driving that this country had ever seen. 

 Here foregathered in the fall many of those best known in the society of 

 that day and no sporting event of the year was more eagerly looked for- 

 ward to than the shooting at Tranquillity Farms. 



Mr. Stuyvesant was enthusiastically working out plans for an enlarge- 

 ment of the shooting, so successful had it been, when death fell upon him. 

 W ith his passing the glories of Tranquillity Farms from a sporting stand- 

 point departed. 



A GREAT PRESERVE DESPOILED.— I recently motored to this 

 spot in company with Mr. Adam Scott and grieved to see how it had fallen 



