i. REMARKS ON MODERN GAME SHOOTING 9 



Then, when the fields arc cleared and quiet, the birds 

 have become so strong and wild that you might on 

 most estates, particularly in a grass district, as well 

 endeavour to shoot them off the back of an elephant 

 as expect to work pointers successfully. 



Before the days of scientific drainage, of reaping 

 and mowing machines, and drill-sown root crops, the 

 stubbles, meadows, and turnips were respectively long, 

 high-tufted, and dense, and cover was abundant for 

 partridges to lie in (and vermin too). Killing the 

 birds was then often murderous work, and very 

 similar to turning them out of traps at ten yards' rise, 

 as far as any skill in actual shooting was concerned ; 

 indeed, this is even now the case in the few places 

 where partridges lie well to pointers, as on the fringes, 

 of moors, or in bracken or heaths, and occasionally in 

 high turnips early in the season. 



Try setters for GROUSE. On most of the York- 

 shire, Lancashire, Durham, or Derbyshire moors you 

 may for a few days bring in a fair number of late- 

 hatched birds ; but after the first week likely enough 

 all you see of the grouse are the packs as they rise 

 and skim away on the horizon, or else you fall in with 

 occasional old pairs or single birds which spoil your 

 dogs by running for several hundred yards before they 

 finally spring up far out of shot. 



Forty years ago pointers and setters were doubt- 



