xn. PHEASANT SHOOTING (PART III} 195 



finished many of the pheasants may be safely hiding 

 in the beat taken perhaps an hour before.* 



When you have driven a number of pheasants 

 into a wood, and the guns have had a blaze at them 



oute, follow the birds up as soon as you can; do 

 so at once if the wood in question lacks undergrowth 

 to hold them. Pheasants that are thoroughly alarmed 

 will s'juat in good covert if they find it ; but if they 

 do not find it, they will run till they do, whether along 

 the hedges or to the open fields, and often, too, how- 

 ever well they are guarded by men acting as ' stops.' t 



If it is luncheon time, delay your meal and obtain 

 your pheasants whilst you have a chance of doing so ; 

 but if you prefer eating to shooting, or desire to spare 

 the birds, it is a different matter. 



OX POSTING THE GUNS 



The most unsatisfactory method of posting the guns 

 in covert shooting is to place them close round the 



* If you obtain a chance at a jay when covert shooting, shoot it 

 for three good reasons : First, he is destructive to game eggs. 

 Second, his blue wing feathers are necessary for tying salmon flies, 

 if you are an angler, Third, his tail feathers are long, thin, and 

 elastic, and hence well adapted to cleaning the stem of a pipe, if you 

 are a smoker. 



f I should like to see the neck wrung of every cock pheasant in 

 England with a ring round his neck. They are not to be compared 

 with the black-breasted bird in the matter of remaining where they 

 are bred and freedom from straying ; nor are they so hardy or so easy 

 to rear. 



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