CHAPTER V 



LOW GROUND SHOOTING— PARTRIDGES, PHEASANTS, 

 HARES, ETC. 



The sport to be had with these descriptions of game has 

 already been so well and so voluminously written about, and 

 the habits, rearing, and preserving of partridges and pheasants 

 have been so closely entered into, that it only remains for us to 

 approach this part of our amusement in a superficial way. 

 There yet remain a few parts of England where partridges are 

 shot to dogs, and in Cornwall and Devon the sport is still 

 carried on in the old style, and the code holding good for 

 the grouse-shooter over dogs applies equally to this sport. 

 The author, however, is of opinion that, if the owner of any 

 shooting is really keen at seeing dogs work, and will be satisfied 

 with a small bag, then there is no county in England in 

 which a certain number of birds cannot yet be killed over 

 them during the first ten days of the season. 



Though nowadays the stubbles are bare, and the shooter to 

 dogs is thus robbed of fully half of his old cover, there still 

 remain turnips, rape, clover, etc. ; and as when once birds 

 are driven into such cover they sit close and offer easy shots to 

 a party walking in line, it is certain they would do the same to 

 thoroughly broken dogs working without being whistled to or 

 shouted at. 



The sport over the dogs can, however, be shared but by 

 two guns, who would make nothing like the same bag as five or 

 six others walking in line ; but, to state that merely because 

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