SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE 



tive work themselves, they have to maintain cordial 

 and constant relations with the police, they generally 

 know pretty accurately where every long net, the 

 kind most used for rabbits, is kept. This knowledge 

 is essential in those parts to enable them to watch 

 and break up the big gangs of poachers, who would 

 otherwise strip them of every head of game. They 

 are, however, exposed to the visits of strange gangs 

 from a distance, who will sometimes have travelled 

 fifty miles by train to visit some particular preserves 

 in a locality where they are not known. 



In all districts, however good the keepers, there is 

 danger from the visits of such strangers. The only 

 material protection is exhaustive bushing, but the real 

 remedy lies in knowing the owners of the nets and their 

 movements. Bushing must not be confined to grass 

 fields only, as partridges often roost on stubble or 

 fallow, and it must be thoroughly done, the bushes of 

 thorn not too few and far between, and so stuck in as 

 to be almost prone upon the ground rather than 

 upright. 



The tunnel-net is, so far as I know, obsolete, but 

 a quaint description of the method of using it is given 

 below. 1 The account is remarkable, as is also the 



1 ' Tunnelling partridges is a most destructive method ; it 

 cannot be so well practised in an enclosed country, from the 



