58 Practical Game Preserving. 



serves is poaching without the gun ; and this, although not 

 often alluded to, is a class of poaching much more largely 

 practised than would appear. It presents this difficulty, 

 that it is only discoverable when the perpetrators are 

 caught in the act. We have had personal chats with men 

 who have worked this class of depredation, and had the 

 various modes of procedure described in detail. One man 

 said he had on several occasions, with two or three " pals," 

 got upwards of a hundred head of pheasants in one night. 

 On the course of procedure there is no reason for being 

 communicative : but it may be well to say that no light 

 is used whereby the keeper might be warned, and that 

 the capture is effected by knocking the pheasants down 

 from their perches. Here, again, we have evidence of the 

 value of thick coverts as opposed to those of larch, &c. 

 Naturally, young pheasants offer most opportunity for the 

 exercise of this kind of poaching. 



It is sometimes asserted that one system in practice entails 

 the bringing down of the birds from their roost by means of 

 suffocating fumes produced beneath them. We should fancy 

 the deposition of small quantities of salt upon the extremity 

 of the pheasants' tails might be as likely a means of 

 capture. 



The above comprise, for the most part, night-poaching. 

 That kind of spoliation of the preserves practised by day 

 consists mostly of hingling, egg-stealing, and netting. 



Hingling is sometimes most extensively carried on, and 

 often proves very successful. It consists simply of driving 

 the birds into previously prepared snares. Either the 

 poachers walk the birds forward through the covert, or 



