WILD PIGEONS 



175 



It is not improbable that so lengthy and so high 

 a record is altogether unique in the annals of wood- 

 pigeon shooting. Lord Walsingham, too, is accredited 

 with the biggest bag of grouse that has ever fallen to 

 one gun in one day, and the probability is that as much 

 keen pleasure was experienced by him in killing one 

 hundred wood-pigeons as in shooting ten times that 

 number of grouse. 



Of a certainty, in addition to the requisite degree of 

 skill in handling the shot-gun, an intimate knowledge of 

 the habits of the birds, their mode of flight, and of wood- 

 craft generally is needed before the shooter is able to 

 lay out a row of wood-pigeons one hundred and twenty 

 strong at the end of his day's shooting. 



To the shooting of wood-pigeons in winter, and 

 during the open season generally, game-preservers and 

 owners of coverts will raise few objections, but in the 

 spring and throughout the nesting-season they will 

 most likely be strenuously averse to such practice. In 

 March and April, and again after they have reared 

 their first broods, wood-pigeons are often enough found 

 working a great destruction with the farmer's crops. 



