2<5o THE COMPLETE SHOT 



increases partridges is because preservers who drive the birds 

 are not satisfied with the stocks of partridges that previously 

 did satisfy them. They cannot have any shooting at all unless 

 there are enough birds to give a day to half a dozen friends ; 

 whereas before one covey gave sport, and would be followed 

 all day by a couple of guns, until only its remnant was left to 

 stock a farm or an estate. The author also agrees with Mr. 

 Alington in saying that it is not because old birds are killed 

 by driving that this system succeeds. Even where driving is 

 practised, the keepers on some estates net the birds after the 

 shooting season in order to break the necks of the old cocks 

 and let off the young birds, which is quite enough proof that 

 driving is not an automatic selection of old cocks. The latter 

 should be killed, for the reason, that they occupy for themselves 

 five or ten times the ground that will satisfy a young pair of 

 birds. On one of these netting expeditions, Coggins, the 

 clever head keeper at Acton Reynold, caught a woodcock, so 

 that even a night bird may make a mistake in its most wakeful 

 hours. 



Mr. Alington described how one pair of very old partridges 

 took sole possession of a fence and made their nest, which, by 

 him, old birds are supposed to make earlier than young ones. 

 He had these two birds destroyed, and then there were ten 

 nests made in that fence. This partridge shooter also believes 

 that no partridge lays before 10.30 a.m., and that she lays 

 every day, and an hour or so later in the day with every egg. 

 Probably this is not a fixed rule. It would involve a midnight 

 egg, or a day missed, when there was a full nest to be laid. 



Then it has been said that it is the " packing," after driving, 

 that does the good, of course by initiating cross breeding ; but 

 for forty years at least gamekeepers have been changing eggs 

 from nest to nest and from estate to estate, so that packing 

 would be merely re-mixing those that had already been 

 separated by the gamekeepers. 



The greatest assistance given by driving is probably the 

 greater freedom from wounds of the driven bird. The old bad 

 days, when we killed all the birds that would He, and shot at 



