300 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



A semicircle of beaters is advocated sometimes, but the 

 wings are feeble protection against pheasants breaking away, 

 and it is much better to employ stops, when there will not be 

 the same necessity for the crescent formation. 



Beaters should be supplied with smocks. It is not fair to 

 them to send them through thick covert without some pro- 

 tection to their clothes, more especially if the covert is wet. 



Pheasant coverts are not now often full of ground game, and 

 the beating for both together is not as fashionable as formerly 

 was the case. There are usually difficulties ; for instance, the 

 rabbits cannot be got to leave coverts, and the pheasants are not 

 much shot inside them. But where the guns are used to drive 

 the pheasants to favoured rising places, and no attempt is made 

 to shoot the birds before they get there, rabbits and hares can 

 very well be shot in these beating operations. The only difficulty 

 in this is the delay that occurs in looking for the dead and 

 wounded, and really there should be no difficulty about that, 

 if all shooters made it a point of sportsmanship to have a good 

 and reliable retriever. But if canine steadiness is always useful, 

 it is essential on these occasions. Pheasants are running in 

 front, perhaps in hundreds, and a retriever sent for a wounded 

 rabbit must be perfectly safe not to get on the foot scent of one 

 of the pheasants and rode it up, until overtaking it he flushes 

 hundreds and spoils the day. There are some retrievers that it 

 would be quite safe to send for a rabbit, because it never goes 

 far, and also for a hare, or pheasant, back, but for neither of these 

 forward, because there is no knowing that they will not run into 

 the bulk of the pheasants, and when once put on wounded game 

 it is the retriever's business to follow until he gets it. 



In very big coverts the stopping out of rabbits may safely 

 proceed before the pheasants are shot, if care be taken that the 

 stopping is in progress only in one part of the wood at any one 

 time. 



Sometimes it is necessary, in order to make pheasants rise 

 far enough from the guns, to run nets across a wood 100 yards 

 or 200 yards from its end where the guns are to be posted. 

 Some people use a " sewin " instead. This is a long string with 



