i. REMARKS ON MODERN GAME SHOOTING 7 



It always excites my curiosity to learn how ' An 

 Indignant Shooter' the man who writes that he 

 loves a walk with his dogs, and abhors the blood- 

 thirsty fashion of driving birds to a corner and then 

 ' butchering them ' recommends PHEASANTS to be 

 killed even with the aid of the best dogs in the w r orld ! 

 Take, for instance, the ordinary Norfolk or Suffolk 

 covert, bare of undergrowth, densely planted with 

 dark firs, and scarce space between them to swing a 

 cat, then imagine two or three hundred pheasants (or 

 but a score 'twould be just the same) ready to run 

 out at one end of the wood directly a man treads on 

 a rotten stick at the other. 



Just try (' Indignant Shooter ' says it is real sport) 

 a team of spaniels in any such modern wood, well 

 stocked with pheasants, and see how many of the 

 birds you will kill, how many you will drive clean 

 over your boundaries to be bagged by other people, 

 and how many friends you can give shots to with- 

 out placing them forward at the much-abused 'hot 

 corner ! ' 



Shooting pheasants over dogs is a ' sport ' if 

 such it can be termed that can only be carried 

 on where the birds are stragglers, and have wan- 

 dered into the hedgerows and fields from their proper 

 home. 



I fear, however, the shooter whose habit it is to 

 seek pheasants in this style, and who fills their tail 

 ends with shot at the closest range, so long as he 



