278 CHASING AND RACING 



elevation, which goes away with both legs shattered, 

 but wings intact ? Many a time and oft have I, 

 when shooting shaws and hedgerows, three or four 

 days after a big covert shoot has taken place, come 

 across a wretched pheasant lying helpless in a ditch, 

 in the last throes of thirst and starvation, with its 

 terrible wounds gangrened. Oh yes, I know it is the 

 practice of the keepers to go round with their dogs 

 immediately after a shoot, to collect and despatch the 

 wounded, but the rule is very often more honoured 

 in the breach than in the observation, because, in order 

 to make a clean sweep of casualties, it would be 

 necessary to enter and disturb unshot coverts which 

 had been allocated to another day. 



In any case a large proportion of victims are so 

 hidden that they are not discovered, and thus are left 

 to perish miserably ; unless perchance, a vagrant fox 

 or stoat comes along to administer the coup de grace. 



On some moors, grouse driving is not a matter of 

 choice, but of necessity ; though whenever and 

 wherever the bonnie brown birds can be shot over 

 dogs, the true sportsman will elect so to account for 

 them. I regard, with something bordering on con- 

 tempt, the driving purist who seriously tells me he 

 would not waste time finding and flushing grouse on 

 their native heather, because they offer such an easy 

 mark that their killing becomes a certainty and conse- 

 quently wearisome. This is rubbish ! The best shot 

 in the world, after shinning up a rugged mountain side 



