236 FRAXfc forester's field sports. 



far more certainly after half an hour has elapsed. For myself 

 I have found it the best plan, where woods are small, and the 

 covert thick, to go on beating the open fields, without following 

 the l)evies at all, in the first instance, marking them down care- 

 fully when they rise, until the feeding and running hour has 

 passed, — then to follow bevy after bevy, whither you have seen 

 them alight ; and knowing their whereabout, if not the exact 

 spot where they lie, the dogs will soon find them. 



Otherwise, if one wastes the morning in killing off one beA-y. 

 by the time he has done with it, the birds will have crept away 

 into their hiding-places, and he may h.unt the wood-skirts, and 

 brush-holes, all day along, without finding another, even where 

 they abound, unless he blunder upon one by chance. 



During the heat of the day, if one have not found birds in 

 the morning, although it is pretty much chance work, bog mea- 

 dows, brown bushes on southerly and westerly hill-sides, old 

 pastures with much bent and ragwort, and the skirts of cop- 

 pices, are generally the best ground, though in some regions 

 they will be found in large open woodlands. 



In the afternoon, soon after four o'clock, the bevies again 

 begin to ixm and feed, and in this part of the day they will fre- 

 quently be met running along the grassy margins of streams 

 which flow through pasture-fields, whither they resort to drink, 

 or at least to crop the wet herbage. 



So good is the chance of sport at this time, that I would urge 

 it strongly on the spoilsman who has failed of finding his bevies 

 on the feeding ground in the morning — if he l:now that there is 

 a fair show of birds in the district — not to persist in wearing out 

 himself and his dogs, by fruitless toil in the heat of noon, but 

 rather to await the cool afternoon, when he will very often make 

 up for lost time, and make a heavy bag when circumstances 

 have looked least auspiciously. 



I have now set my sportsman fairly in the field, and shown 

 him how best he may find his birds, — more is beyond my 

 means. 



A crack shot must in some sort be bom ; but most persons, 



