xv. PARTRIDGE SHOOTING (PART III] 261 



if you keep a large rookery on your ground, you will 

 never have many partridges. 



We often, year after year, when partridge shoot- 

 ing, come to a difficult place that has to be crossed to 

 pass from .one field to another ; perhaps the guns and 

 beaters have to laboriously scramble through in Indian 

 file, and much time is lost and cloth rent, not to speak 

 of the damage to the fence, and the injury to the 

 tenant the 100 or so sheep cause that afterwards take 

 advantage of the gap to rush through it into the crop 

 the other side. At well-known and sometimes dreaded 

 spots of this kind there is no harm done, but a great 

 deal of good gained, by fixing a plank or stile an 

 arrangement I have seen carried out to the advantage 

 of everybody. 



To prevent sheep, cattle, or horses crossing a ditch 

 over which a plank is laid for the convenience of the 

 shooters, make your plank bridge of four boards the 

 same size, roughly nailed together so as to form a 

 box. Not an animal will then cross it, as, on setting 

 one foot thereon, the hollow sound emitted will at 

 once rouse its suspicions. 



If you fix a V-shaped open stile in an awkward fence 

 as an assistance to pass it, and there is no ditch to the 

 fence, place a short plank leading to the gap on either 

 side, hollow out the soil under the planks, and stock 

 will not venture to trespass from one field to the other. 



