68 Game and Foxes. 



make record bags where foxes are preserved, even 

 if sufficient game exists. The foxes worry the 

 game, and however regularly pheasants are fed 

 and driven in they are not to be concentrated and 

 collected together so easily in certain favourable 

 coverts. The birds spread out, and must be 

 sought more widely if the usual proportion is to 

 be bagged. It is a safer plan to permit this, for 

 foxes more speedily make captures where the 

 pheasants are thickly congregated. 



Not many hares are in the country now, but 

 they are the most troublesome of all game to keep 

 and protect where foxes are preserved. As stated 

 elsewhere, leverets are a frequent prey, and hares 

 refuse to remain in a covert much hunted by foxes. 

 Quietude is very essential to their preservation and 

 retention. Hares, like other game, are forced to 

 leave the fields and resort to the coverts during 

 the turmoil of harvesting, but they soon creep out 

 again when the crops are gathered in if foxes 

 occupy the coverts also, and must afterwards 

 be sought on the stubbles, fallows, and in the 

 fences. In fact, every out-of-the-way corner 

 should be searched for game in a hunting locality 

 before an opinion is formed that there is none. 

 The Ground Game Act, on the whole, has not 

 been beneficial to hunting interests, but it has 



