144 LETTERS TO YOUNG SHOOTERS LETTER 



10. In an unpreserved district, or near a town. 



11. In a good hunting country, or you and your 

 keepers are liable to incur the openly expressed dis- 

 pleasure of the M.F.H. if a fox or two is not on foot 

 every time he draws the coverts. However strict 

 the commands given by their master, that foxes are to 

 be preserved, keepers naturally do not like to see the 

 product of their skill and anxiety massacred by the 

 score ; and then be scolded by the foxhunters one day 

 for not showing foxes, and found fault with another 

 day for not showing plenty of pheasants to the shooters. 

 Keepers are, therefore, sometimes inclined on the sly 

 to disobey orders, especially as they can in this case 

 always do so with impunity. 



Foxes and pheasants are supposed to live amicably 

 together, at least so the foxhunters impress upon us ; 

 but I have never heard this idea endorsed by keepers 

 in one single instance. Keep a good supply of rabbits 

 in the woods, and the foxes will not meddle with your 

 pheasants, is another fallacy. A fox can catch a 

 pheasant as easily as he can a rabbit, and is, I 

 imagine, not such a fool in the matter of taste as to 

 prefer the flesh of the latter to that of the former. 

 I have seen pheasant bones scattered all about a 

 covert, and before a fox earth, but rarely the re- 

 mains of rabbits, though the rabbits were numerous 

 and the pheasants were scarce in the locality in ques- 

 tion. 



Foxhunters are sometimes apt to forget their sport 



