GAME NOTES AND FOLK-LORE. 189 



draw up, and hold the pheasant. As the 

 pheasant passes under the creep he puts his 

 neck in the noose, and draws it so that 

 he is caught. The wires are muzzled, so 

 that the bird shall not be strangled. If 

 the loop was left to draw up tightly without 

 a check, the pheasant, pulling against the 

 noose, would hang himself, and be soon 

 dead. But as a pheasant sells best alive 

 the poachers do not want this, and so ar- 

 range the loop that it shall only draw up 

 to a certain point, sufficient to hold the bird 

 fast, but not to injure it. 



They next go round to one end of the 

 copse — the wired ' creeps ' being in the 

 centre — and proceed to drive the pheasants 

 towards the wires by tapping two pieces of 

 stick together, or a couple of stones. At 

 this sound the pheasants begin to run away 

 from it along their accustomed paths. Too 

 much noise would cause them to rise, but 

 this peculiar tap, tapping merely makes 

 them run. In pheasant-shooting, when the 



