324 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



of six brown leverets, and it is evidently wrong to affirm that 

 from two to five is the limit of numbers produced, as was done 

 in Country Life's Shooting Book. Seven is the greatest number 

 reported, but this requires confirmation. What has given the 

 impression that two or three are the usual numbers produced is 

 the fact that the hare does not seem to confine herself to one 

 nest. All her eggs are not put in one basket, and this is 

 instinctive wisdom ; for little leverets give out a good deal of 

 scent even when quite young, and are easily found by foxes and 

 dogs. Cats are not fond of ranging the open fields, but prefer 

 hedgerow and covert, so that they are more dangerous to young 

 rabbits than to leverets, which are generally placed in the open 

 fields without any sort of nest or other protection than the great 

 space about them. 



Very large bags of hares have frequently been killed. Lord 

 Mansfield's Perthshire bag of blue hares once reached very 

 nearly 1300 in the day to five guns, and over 1000 brown hares 

 are said to have been killed in the day quite recently. That 

 the author has not verified, but formerly they must have been 

 nearly as plentiful in Suffolk and Norfolk as they are now 

 in parts of Bohemia and Hungary. Count Karolyi, for some 

 years Hungarian Ambassador to the Court of St. James, once 

 attempted to make a record : he killed to his own gun 600 

 hares in five hours' shooting. It is not this unique feat for 

 which Hungary is most noted, but for its constant supply over 

 a large number of days. There they do not usually kill hares 

 during partridge shooting, but delay the big drives until 

 November. Nevertheless, at Tot-Megyr, six days' shooting by 

 nine guns produced 7500 hares and 2500 partridges. Probably 

 Mindszent, in the south of Hungary, holds the record for a day 

 at hares, for 3000 were killed there by Count Alexander 

 Pallavicini's ten guns. 



Big bags of hares are no new thing in that country, for 

 as long ago as 1753 over 18,000 hares were killed with equal 

 proportions of partridges in 20 days' shooting by 23 guns, 

 including the Emperor of Austria and the Princess Charlotte. 

 In Suffolk, in 1806, a complaint of the number of hares left on 



