88 SHOOTING AND SALMON FISHING 



Keepers vary very much in their ability to rear pheasants. 

 Some will lose very few each season, while others will lose many 

 hundreds, and it is not uncommon to hear of gentlemen who, 

 buying five thousand eggs, yet get no better result than others 

 who have purchased but two thousand. 



In order to give a keeper every chance, all bought eggs 

 should be delivered before the end of the first week of May, 

 and the slightly higher price paid for these is money well spent 

 if the yield they give is compared with that of the later laid 

 eggs. 



To the mind of the not very enthusiastic shooter a battue 

 is to some extent associated with the " tip " to be disbursed at 

 the end of the day ; as dusk comes on, the heads of guests 

 are to be seen close together in whispered conversation, the 

 tenor of which is : "How much shall you give .-* I vote we 

 all do the same." This is a question we rarely ask of anyone, 

 for as the day finishes and the total of the bag is called out, we 

 settle in our own mind what is the right thing to do, from 

 which we rarely swerve. Where there is not a very large staff 

 of keepers, we usually remember the second in command as 

 well as " the head." A friend of ours who is a good judge, and 

 annually does a great lot of pheasant-shooting in the home 

 counties, tells us he has a fixed tariff — ten shillings up to two 

 hundred birds ; a sovereign from that up to seven hundred ; 

 while from that up to a thousand, or even double, the maximum 

 of two sovereigns is reached ; and he finished up by saying : 

 "And, thank goodness, as I'm a poor man, there are more 

 days under seven hundred than over!" 



This tariff is, however, one evolved by a Londoner, shoot- 

 ing chiefly within a radius of fifty miles of Pall Mall ; beyond 

 this distance, in counties situate farther away from clubland, 

 tips are rightly not so large ; for, in a society not depend- 

 ing on London gunners, where the greater number of guns 

 at every shooting party are made up of county gentlemen who 

 shoot with each other many times every season, it would be 



