138 SHOOTING THE rARTKJDGE 



enjoy your week, and be as great an acquisition to 

 your host and hostess as the most serious gunner of 

 us all ? 



I have purposely interpolated this advice in the 

 chapter on Driving, because it is precisely at the places 

 where the driving is of the best that we are likely to 

 be most tempted to the indulgence of our appetites, 

 and equally because driving is precisely the sport 

 wherein we shall the most suffer for the indulgence. 

 The host who does his shooting really well, most 

 probably ' does you well ' in all other things, and the 

 combination of Nimrod and Lucullus is often to 

 be found in the England of to-day. 



It is impossible, in my opinion, to tell any one how 

 to shoot driven partridges, further than it has been set 

 down already in what I have written in a former 

 chapter about calculation. In the matter of how to 

 make the most of your chances, however, there is 

 a word or two to be added. The importance of 

 standing at the right distance from the fence cannot 

 be over-estimated. Stand well back, even as far as 

 twenty-five or thirty yards from a really high fence, 

 unless, as sometimes happens, you are asked not to 

 do so, because of the ground being near the boundary, 

 or for some reason connected with the succeeding 

 drive. Let there be no one under the fence in front 



