PARTRIDGE BAGS AND DRIVING 



IN the foregoing chapter it has been shown to what point 

 the greatest bag of partridges in a day has arrived in 

 England. But more than double the number of these birds 

 has been killed in one day in Bohemia. The biggest bag 

 there has been 4000 in one day. The method of preserving 

 adopted there is to make an outlying estate serve as an 

 assistance to an inner preserved portion. But it is not, as has 

 been thought, to catch up birds and bring them in for a day's 

 shooting, as was done by Baron Hirsch in Hungary. The 

 birds may be caught up and brought in to breed, or the eggs 

 from outlying ground may be brought in to fill up nests. In 

 either case that is merely the English plan ; but the author is 

 assured that where the biggest bags are made no removal of 

 coveys in the shooting season has occurred. The birds are fed 

 in the winter, and herein lies the principal difference between 

 our own and the Continental system of preservation. The 

 snow there lies for weeks, and to keep the birds alive wheat is 

 given to them ; but the Hungarian and Bohemian preserves 

 conclusively upset one notion that has got firm hold in this 

 country. They beat us very easily in partridge productive- 

 ness, and they do it without driving. Of course Baron Hirsch's 

 big bags were made by driving, but his was a system foreign 

 to the country, and has been fairly beaten by different methods 

 that are generally employed. The big bags are mostly made 

 by a system of walking up the partridges in the corn. The 

 author, then, is constrained to look for other than driving 

 reasons for the increase of partridges, and he wholly agrees 

 with Mr. Charles Alington in saying that the reason driving 



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