262 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



pointer running loose, they may call it shooting over dogs, and 

 any sort of animal will do for that, even if he is a dog show 

 Champion ; but that is not what the author means by shooting 

 over dogs. 



If you have a line of guns to tread up the game, dogs are 

 superfluous. If you have dogs that can find everything, then 

 a line of beaters is superfluous, and besides in the way, too, for 

 it makes birds wild. 



Noise is often said to make partridges wild, but this is only 

 partially true. Noise in any one direction, such as talking, 

 generally makes them fly, but any noises heard from all 

 directions simultaneously makes them lie like stones. 



No country is so difficult to drive as one with small fields and 

 high hedges, especially if it is also hilly. It is almost im- 

 possible to make the partridges know that there is a line of 

 beaters outside of their own little field, and they are very likely 

 to go out at the flanks and swing back behind the beaters in 

 the next field. 



That the fox is the worst partridge poacher in the nesting 

 season is not questioned by those who know ; but the plan 

 described in the previous chapter is a very good and the only 

 way of securing many partridges in a fox country. Neverthe- 

 less, this plan has been written down in the press, obviously by 

 interested people, who appear in all sorts of disguises in the 

 interests of game-food makers, who are aware that if the 

 Euston plan of pheasant preserving and the Stetchworth plan 

 of partridge preserving were to be commonly practised, it would 

 be all over with game-food manufacturers. The author first 

 described the Stetchworth plan some time before Mr. Alington's 

 book appeared, in which he related Mr. Pearson Gregory's 

 wonderful success with partridges in the middle of the Belvoir 

 country, where foxes abound. In place of this safeguard against 

 foxes, futile attempts have put forward evil-smelling mixtures 

 to protect the nests ; but, as Mr. Alington and Mr. Holland 

 Hibbert have shown, when foxes take one doctored nest they 

 then hunt for the smell, and in the experience of Mr. Alington 

 the mixture was successful the first year, but in the next all 



