230 THE GUN: AFIELD AND AFLOAT 



shooting season, and permission were, instead, accorded 

 for shooting up to the close of the year. This might 

 long delay or altogether prevent the total loss of this 

 fast-vanishing game-bird. 



Pheasant-shooting as now generally practised is quite 

 another sport from that followed a generation or two 

 ago. In our grandfathers' time the first of October was 

 a date eagerly anticipated, and on that day pheasant- 

 shooters were early astir beating out the hedgerows and 

 coverts all thickly decked with foliage and furnished 

 with densest undergrowth. Then the spaniel proved an 

 invaluable ally, and the kind of shooting presenting 

 itself, especially in the open, was of the easiest descrip- 

 tion. Pheasants rising from a hedgerow or out of 

 brackens and briars, where there is little timber to 

 obstruct the view, present the simplest of shots. This 

 particular form of sport might with propriety be termed 

 pheasant-hunting, for herein are centred the chiefest 

 and most exciting elements of the chase the scenting, 

 chasing, and capturing of an animal through the instru- 

 mentality of man, dog, and gun. It is just this zest 

 which gives spice to the whole proceeding, otherwise it 

 would prove a tame affair indeed beside other sports that 

 may be mentioned. 



Those who have entered into the fun and excitement 

 of chasing strong-running old cock pheasants through 

 thick undergrowth, causing them to rise within-gun shot, 

 know fully well all that this implies. Compared with 

 the shooting of hen pheasants rising tamely at one's feet, 

 it is sport in truth. Some sixty or seventy years ago, 

 one of the keenest and most hard-working sportsmen 

 that England ever knew, Colonel Peter Hawker, made 

 the following entry in his diary : " Breakfasted by 



