RABBITS, PARTRIDGES, PIGEONS 149 



that it was not wise. It looks so bad ; it is not 

 workmanlike ; it is an over anxious device. Keep 

 the gun down till the moment to raise, swing, and 

 fire arrives, or you will be sure to fumble. 



In shooting at rabbits in these very narrow paths, 

 be sure, before you fire, that a dog is not in hot 

 pursuit a foot or two behind the rabbit. 



Pheasants, woodcocks, and hares live in the 

 coverts with the rabbits, and add zest to the sport of 

 rabbit-shooting. You will not get shots often at 

 high-flying or very fast pheasants, unless the ground 

 is very broken and you are walking now in deep 

 wooded dells, now along or over steep hill and 

 hanger. But you will find that some wild pheas- 

 ants in covert, getting up in front of the dogs, offer 

 by no means the simplest of shots at thirty-five 

 or forty yards distance. When pheasants get up 

 within short range, fifteen or twenty yards, there 

 is a tendency on the part of some rabbit-shooters 

 to be too quick on them. It is droll to see appa- 

 rently the easiest shots imaginable at flying game 

 missed now and then by even good performers. 

 Sometimes the explanation is, I think, that the 

 pheasant is shot at whilst it is still mounting and 

 before it sails away. A certain cock pheasant which 

 my dog put up in an open field I cannot forget. It 

 happened more than eighteen years ago on a farm 

 over which I was shooting by myself for several 

 months. This farm held a fair head of partridges 

 with some hares, whilst in the two or three small 

 coverts and in the dense hedgerows there were 



