216 LETTERS TO YOUNG SHOOTERS LETTER 



it, they can as easily be driven therein as if it were 

 dry, and once break up a covey in wet cover and you 

 may often kill every bird. Partridges do not run to- 

 gether in wet herbage, as for instance soaking turnip 

 leaves, but if driven into such shelter, they are very 

 likely to lie close and rise singly. 



It is also an error to suppose that partridges soon 

 leave a wet field of roots if beaten into it. They 

 generally, I find, remain a considerable time, for 

 they a,re loth to run to the open through the wet 

 leaves. 



"When walking up partridges it is often taken for 

 granted by the shooters that the birds are to be found 

 in the root crops as a matter of course, and that if 

 they are not present in one field of turnips the best 

 course is to walk forward to the next, and so on 

 throughout the day. 



This is a mistake, for by acting in this way half 

 the birds on the ground may never even be seen, 

 as they may all the time be sitting in the adjacent 

 stubbles or grasses, especially when the weather is wet. 



If on walking through a good field of dry turnips 

 or other favourable cover you do not find partridges, 

 though you are aware they exist somewhere in the 

 locality, depend upon it they are not far off, and it 

 will pay you far better to seek the birds and drive 

 them into cover than it will to march forward to other 

 fields. 



