BRITISH SPORT PAST AND PRESENT 



difficulty in hitting a pheasant. He does not dodge and twist 

 like a snipe or a woodcock. To shoot as one does at partridges 

 in the open when our bird is fifty yards away, is folly in covert, 

 and what none but a novice would think of. Pheasants do 

 not rise in covies and bother us in that way. They make a 

 great noise, no doubt, about launching themselves before the 

 public : but that is just a bit of bounce to which one soon gets 

 used, and, after a time, ceases to impress one at all, except 

 perhaps by lending additional gusto to the act of stopping 

 them. We believe the chief reason why men miss a pheasant 

 is, in the first place, that he flies a great deal quicker than he 

 seems to fly ; and, in the second place, that they do not always 

 wait till he has done rising, which is generally possible to do 

 without letting him get out of shot, and then firing just as he 

 steadies himself for a straight flight. To kill pheasants, or 

 indeed any birds coming over your head, is an art by itself. 

 If you wait till they are perpendicular, you must give the gun 

 a little swing backwards as you pull ; but it is better to breast 

 them if you must shoot, for the shots are unlikely to enter the 

 breast, and probably take fatal effects in the head, neck, or 

 belly. 



' To shoot a covert properly, the men and beaters should all 

 walk in a line, gunner and beater alternately. We are here, 

 of course, speaking of coverts where that is possible. Many 

 are so thick that it is quite impossible to shoot inside them ; 

 and in that case the guns are stationed outside. But the other 

 plan is ten times the more pleasant one, as admits of a little 

 sociability, seasoned with a few bets, and streaked with a vein 

 of mild chaff. There is no trouble at all in finding pheasants 

 and rabbits, if you know they are there. In the coverts they 

 must be, or else, the latter, at least, in the hedgerows. So you 

 beat out the coverts before lunch, and the hedges afterwards, 

 unless upon a day especially set apart for the slaughter of 

 pheasants in all the coverts on the ground. 



' A party of four or five intimate friends for a day of this 

 kind is uncommonly jolly. By the time the winter shooting 



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