SCOTCH DRIVING 131 



It is absolutely essential that the Scotch keeper 

 to whom driving is an unwelcome novelty should be 

 made familiar with the aspect of the birds' flight from 

 the butts. You must make him delegate the manage- 

 ment of the drive to his next in command, and be 

 with you in the butts at least once or twice at each 

 particular drive, that he may see what happens. He 

 will then be able to observe why it is that one or two 

 butts have all the shooting, or why birds which come 

 apparently well to the guns are at certain drives 

 never properly realised ; he will see the difference in 

 difficulty between birds creeping through a slack or 

 pass straight towards you, and the same birds when 

 you only command the slack from above, and have to 

 point down at them at a sharp angle as they curve 

 round beneath you. Again, he will understand why 

 you, after some experience of this drive, possibly con- 

 clude that by shifting the whole line of butts only a 

 few yards you may convert a difficult killing place 

 into an easy one. He will grasp the point, and be 

 keen enough unless endowed with too great a share 

 of Gaelic obstinacy, to reconstruct the line and watch 

 the successful result. You must never be afraid to 

 make new lines of butts or to shift old ones, nor 

 permit your keeper to make any fuss over the question. 

 Scotch keepers arc sometimes very troublesome on 



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