x. PHEASANT' SHOOTING (PART /) 163 



alone offer a target for the shot, and a clean kill is the 

 exception. 



If a fair number of pheasants are driven toward 

 a young shooter as he stands outside a covert, the 

 very best advice I can possibly give is 



Place your nose toward the covert, and keep it 

 there.* 



Kill all you can in front of you, and never mind 

 the birds that have passed straight over you. Nor 

 should you turn right round after a pheasant that 

 you have missed with your first barrel in front, in 

 the endeavour to kill it with the second behind 

 your back ; you will not only be liable to wound 

 it through shooting into its tail, but it is just 

 as likely you will lose a chance at a fair shot 

 to your front whilst you are occupied with a bird 

 behind you. One pheasant killed handsomely over- 

 head is worth six draggled down after they have 

 flown past. 



A /////// side shot at a pheasant can, however, 

 always be taken, as the head and neck, and the 



* I should like to print this advice in large letters on a page to 

 itself, it is so important. The man who kills pheasants is the one 

 who is always in time, though never in a hurry, and who steadily 

 holds his ground, and drops the birds as they approach him. The 

 man who does not kill pheasants is the one who dances and twists 

 about, and excitedly turns first to his right side and then to his left, 

 to point his gun at a bird he, perhaps, after all, does not fire at, or 

 who twirls round to shoot at a difficult bird behind him, and then 

 bustles back in a deuce of a fuss to blaze at, and probably miss, an 

 easy one to his front ! 



M 2 



