PARTRIDGES, PHEASANTS, HARES, ETC. 85 



steep and high, it becomes a hard matter to beat them in such 

 a way as to keep the birds within shot. 



At Balls Park in Hertfordshire, Carnanton in Cornwall, 

 Kilmaronaig in Argyll, Langley Park in Norfolk, Hall Barn 

 in Bucks, and Tillingbourne in Surrey, we have repeatedly 

 seen quantities of pheasants pass over the guns out of shot. 

 It is, however, quite possible to send one's friends a stream 

 of rocketers from absolutely flat covers. Masters, the head- 

 keeper at Charlecote Park, Warwick ; Hammond, at Langley 

 Park, Norwich ; Mathews, at Balls Park, Hertford ; and 

 Norman, at Cowdray Park, Sussex, are all past masters at 

 this and every other detail of the keeper's business ; and 

 though doubtlessly there are many men quite as good, it 

 would be a hard matter to find four better ones. At Langley 

 Park some of the covers had no hedges, and were merely 

 fenced off with a shallow ditch dividing them from the 

 adjoining fields, and in such covers the undergrowth was cut 

 back for about a hundred yards, while the guns being placed 

 a similar distance away from the fence, the pheasants could 

 see them, and so naturally ceased to run forward when the 

 undergrowth failed, when, as the beaters approached, they 

 would at once fly up through the tall trees to pass over 

 the shooters ; that they did come both high and fast may be 

 guessed when at one stand, out of some four hundred birds 

 put over six guns, but one hundred and twenty were laid low. 

 This cutting back of the undergrowth is an excellent plan for 

 giving rocketers, as it also provides plenty of shooting for a 

 couple of guns standing back behind the beaters. 



We have read it is advisable to kill cocks only the first 

 time of going through well-stocked preserves ; but having 

 seen it tried, unless the manor is a large one with plenty 

 of other covers on it, we are dead against the proceeding. 

 Wherever it is done there should be an interval of fully 

 a fortnight to allow the birds to come together again before 

 the same cover is beaten afresh. On small shootings where 



