374 SPORT IN EUROPE 



allowed to live, ought to be stalked and properly treated, for in very 



many cases the poor brute goes off full of pellets. 



There are two ways of shooting grouse and partridges, and there 



are, I think, two ways of shooting pheasants. There is grouse-driving 



over the heads of the shooters by an army of beaters, 

 Grouse, i i • i r i- r 



Partrids-e ^" there is the nndmg of grouse and partridges by 



and setters and pointers. As to which of these methods 



is the better for the birds I cannot determine, and many 

 shooting. ^ 



a bitter argument has taken place over it. Many good 

 sportsmen argue that in driving, the birds that come first are the old 

 ones, and so they get shot off, and the young ones are left to breed. 

 On the other hand, it must be admitted that grouse moors, with the 

 exception of those kept in the hands of one proprietor, have deterio- 

 rated to an enormous extent since the day when the breechloader was 

 invented, and driving became the regular practice. An old Scotch 

 keeper whom I have known for many years, on whose ground, in 

 the seventies, it was customary for two guns to average, over dogs, 

 a hundred brace a day, and where now six guns would consider they 

 had done extremely well if they got fifty brace driving, affirms that 

 the driving is the "doing o' it." He maintains that time after time, 

 when covey or pack pass over the shooter, barrels are let off in the 

 air, and consequendy, though nothing may fall, birds go away pricked 

 and wounded. 



With regard to the partridge, of course, driving has become more 

 a matter of necessity, for the simple reason that cover has become 

 scarcer since the introduction of improved reaping and other agri- 

 cultural machinery, and the stubbles are almost bare. There can 



