232 THE GUN: AFIELD AND AFLOAT 



certainty, no mean test of a man's ability to handle the 

 shot-gun. Those who first essay to perform this feat 

 will probably be the first to admit the truth of this 

 assertion. 



It has been the fashion among a certain section of 

 writers for the Press to throw derision upon the modern 

 system of shooting pheasants. These writers have 

 likened this shooting to the shooting of farmyard fowls, 

 the killing of which with the shot-gun is but slaughter, 

 calling for neither skill nor endurance on the part of the 

 shooter. Such ideas, of course, are the outcome of 

 ignorance, a certain and effective cure for which would 

 be the placing of those holding such notions outside a 

 pheasant wood where, with a penalty attached to the 

 missing of each pheasant with the two barrels of their 

 shot-gun, they would, I fancy, be most quickly convinced 

 of the fallacy of their belief. 



The average villager knows far better than this now- 

 a-days, and he, at least, can shrewdly appraise the value 

 of the work done by the guns as he assists the keepers in 

 driving the pheasants high up over the deadly line. Then 

 it is that one may casually overhear quaint and pithy 

 remarks uttered by the beaters among themselves as 

 they assess each gunner's merits. Opinions such as the 

 following, overheard in a north-country covert, "Didst 

 tha' see - - a-swipin' on 'em doon, Bill ? " "Aye, mun, 

 but that there gent in that yaller suit he be a-beatin' on 

 him," may often lead to long and heated arguments, so 

 keen is the partisanship ofttimes displayed by beaters 

 in respect of their favourite shots. 



Under the modern system of hand-rearing, pheasants 

 have vastly increased throughout the country generally ; 

 and it probably is not too much to say that in many 



