PARTRIDGE 239 



It is not too much to say that at the present day 

 much of the shooting has been rendered twice as 

 difficult as it was a generation ago. Formerly many 

 of the grouse and partridges killed rose to a steady 

 point from thick heather or roots, or the cock-pheasant 

 lumbered up from the dense covert, and fell to the 

 easiest of shots before traversing 20 yards. Under 

 such conditions, assuredly, one ounce of No. 6, or even 

 of No. 7 shot, might well accomplish all that was 

 required. Now-a-days, however, No. 5 shot is not too 

 large a size to use on most occasions under the altered 

 conditions of the sport of game-shooting; and for grouse, 

 pheasant, or partridge, the season through, this is the 

 size I would recommend. In some situations, as, for 

 instance, in the case of guns posted in a valley-bottom 

 and firing at the tallest of tall pheasants as the birds 

 stream overhead from the hill-top, No. 3 shot has before 

 now been requisitioned in order to bring the game 

 satisfactorily to bag. 



In these times proprietor and gamekeeper alike are 

 striving to provide increased sport, and, equally, to 

 render the shooting of game the more difficult. In 

 fact, now that the driving of birds over the guns is 

 widely and increasingly practised, the shooting of 

 game has been rendered twofold more difficult. The 

 wonder has often enough been expressed as to what 

 our fore-elders would have said could they but see 

 and handle the modern hammerless breech-loading 

 gun. Unquestionably, such triumphs of the gun- 

 maker's art the ejecting mechanism, single triggers' 

 and so forth would provide no little cause for won- 

 derment. At the same time, the methods adopted 

 in the shooting of game might be expected to 



