THE PHEASANTS 55 



Edward sitting in an arm-chair potting half-tame 

 pheasants, but there is no kind of shooting, I think, that 

 requires surer marksmanship than the battue as it is 

 practised in the national preserves of Rambouillet. It 

 is not a wild sport, but it is a sport in which skill is 

 everything. Its sporting equation would be : * The 

 battue is to stalking grizzlies as billiards is to football.' 

 I have shot prairie chickens over a good red setter in 

 the stubble of Wisconsin fields, and have had my day 

 in a boat on the reeds for wild ducks ; now, believe me, 

 in neither instance does the game have so fair a chance 

 for his life as he does in a battue, when he is flagged 

 out of the bush or copse and driven down upon your 

 gun. Far less destructive than shooting over dogs, it 

 is therefore more sportsmanly. This is especially the 

 case when pheasants are in play." The writer de- 

 scribes a battue at which M. Loubet, the President of 

 France, was the principal shooter. 



In America pheasants are usually shot over dogs. 

 We are good imitators, however. Something like the 

 fox-hunting of England is seen on Long Island and 

 elsewhere, and I predict it will not be long before the 

 pheasants are shot at the battues on October Mountain 

 and on the other vast country estates now owned by 

 American men who can afford them. A member of 

 one park association recently informed me that on that 

 preserve the pheasants are held in captivity until a 

 member of the club notifies the game-keeper that he is 

 coming. Thereupon the few birds which each member 

 is allowed to shoot are placed out in a field and he is 

 informed exactly where and proceeds to shoot them. 

 I said nothing when this information was imparted ; 



