148 LETTERS TO YOUNG SHOOTERS LETTER 



The pheasants I calculate as being reared from 

 wild eggs gathered on the estate, or from an aviary at 

 home. When you are obliged to purchase pheasant 

 eggs, up fly the game accounts at once in merry style. 



The pheasants on an estate as here described will, 

 with care, pay for their food ; and the partridges, hares, 

 and rabbits should pay at all events to within 150L all 

 expenses in wages, cost of hens, repairs to aviary and 

 coops, hire of rearing fields, food for dogs, compensation 

 for crops injured by rabbits, licences, and so forth. 



If, that is to say, every pheasant you kill (dispose 

 of it as you may) is worth in the market, did you 

 choose to sell it, just what it cost you in food, and 

 your partridges, hares, and rabbits pay to within 150/. 

 all outgoings other than pheasant food, you are most 

 fortunate, and, I will vouch, a clever manager, though 

 your land be well adapted for game. I here allude to 

 a well-stocked shooting of fair size, yielding one head, 

 or nearly so, of winged or ground game per acre. 



Should you hire shooting, the rent will always be 

 in addition to all expenses of rearing, preservation, 

 and killing of the game, and may be said to supply 

 the sport and convenience enjoyed irrespective of 

 anything else. 



If you can make your pheasants pay for their food, 

 and have the sport of shooting them, and at the same 

 time leave a fair number of hens in the coverts, it is 

 as much as you need ever expect, save on exceptional 

 land for the nesting of wild birds. Should you kill 

 your pheasants at an outlay of 2s. 6rf. in food per 



