54 SHOOTING AND SALMON FISHING 



1877, we cannot say how matters now stand in this respect; 

 for, at the expiration of Mr. Virtue's lease, this shooting was 

 split up into four or five smaller ones, which increase in the 

 number of tenants may not have tended to keep up the same 

 fine stock of game. During Mr. Virtue's reign no blackcocks 

 were killed till the woodcocks made their appearance some 

 time early in November, when day by day a fresh cover 

 was beaten, and, oh ! the fun of finding oneself right in the 

 path of a big pack of blackcocks about to break cover ! From 

 tree-top to tree-top they come fluttering along till, at about a 

 hundred yards from the end of the cover, all perch and sit 

 listening to the cries of the beaters. Shortly, three or four old 

 cocks, the acknowledged leaders of the party, take wing and 

 come dashing forwards ; but now is not the time to open fire 

 if a score is to be made — for, if the leaders are shot, the rest 

 of the pack will assuredly turn back ; so let the shooter keep 

 concealed and allow the first few cocks to pass by unmolested, 

 when as soon as the main bulk of the birds have had a lead 

 given them by these few old stagers, they will all follow in 

 small lots, when, no matter how hot the fire may be, nothing 

 will then deter them from following each other. Now is 

 the time to keep cool and make each barrel tell, for the chance 

 that is passing so rapidly away may not again present itself for 

 many a day to come. These packs were often very large, and 

 all over this shooting there were plenty numbering from fifty to 

 over a hundred in each. At one stand we once had the luck 

 to secure twenty-two old cocks out of a pack coming as 

 described, and on another occasion nineteen ; but these were 

 the only two chances of that sort in seven years, or in some 

 two hundred days of sport. 



If the covers were wet — and as we are writing of 

 Argyllshire, it is needless to say such was often the case — 

 then the blackcocks would be found sitting out on the heather 

 to escape from the dripping of the trees. In this event the 

 beaters were sent round to drive in a large tract of ground 



