CHAPTER VIII. PHEASANTS. 



GENERAL MANAGEMENT AND MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS. 



HPHERE are several matters connected with pheasant 

 JL preserving which require consideration, and as we 

 cannot afford each and every one of them a chapter, we 

 have put them together under the above heading. The 

 most important is : 



Feeding in Coverts. Those who take up pheasant rearing 

 and preserving for the first time must at once make up their 

 minds that the providing of the stock with a sufficiency of 

 food is an item of the first importance. If pheasants are 

 not regularly, properly and considerately fed they will not 

 remain, but move, imperceptibly no doubt, but no less 

 certainly, to more hospitable and enticing coverts. It is 

 during winter time, and the weeks preceding and subsequent 

 to it, that this feeding becomes obligatory ; consequently 

 it is necessary that the arrangements made do not fail. There 

 are but two practical ways of covert feeding, one to carry the 

 food to the birds daily and feed them as one would fowls, the 

 other to provide them with a permanent supply within the 

 coverts from which they can help themselves. The latter 



