CHAPTER XXVIII 

 QUIET PARTRIDGE-SHOOTING 



September joys — The Briton abroad — Cherished memories — The first 

 partridge — Shooting- over dogs — Old-time bags — Partridge-driving — 

 Pleasures of "dogging" — A fair day's sport — Modern methods — An 

 old shot belt — Partridge -netting with a setter — Still practised in 

 eighteenth century — Courage of the partridge — Suppression of scent 

 — A strange pet — "Towering" — Phenomenal bags — Hungarian 

 partridges and their introduction — Big shoots on Baron Hirsch's 

 estates — Weight of English and red-legged partridges. 



WHETHER he is young or old ; whether he 

 takes the field equipped for the pursuit of 

 partridges in the most perfect style of fin de Steele 

 shooting, with an army of beaters and every adjunct 

 that luxury can desire, prepared to count his evening 

 bag by the hundred ; or whether with a brace of 

 friends and a retriever or two he sallies forth upon 

 some quiet manor to account for a modest fifteen or 

 twenty brace of birds, the gunner can recall few greater 

 annual pleasures than the first days of September. 

 Partridge-shooting is undoubtedly by far the most 

 generally popular of all British field sports. It ap- 

 peals to the farmer with his old pin-fire gun and his 

 still undiscarded setter or pointer, or to the rural 

 townsman with his ''little bit of shooting" five miles 

 from the market town, just as much as to the great 

 landowner of many hundred Norfolk acres, or the rich 

 Londoner, who cares little what his sport costs him, 

 so long as he and his friends make a bag. 



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