PARTRIDGE-SHOOTING 65 



schemes for driving partridges do not always turn 

 out as well as they might, it should be obvious 

 that haphazard drives can bring about the best 

 results only by merest chance. 



There is a popular fallacy about partridge-driving 

 that the results (in the shape of bag) obtained 

 on big shoots are due to the personal skill of the 

 keepers. This implies that the keepers in charge 

 of small shoots are comparative duffers at driving. 

 True, they may be, but not necessarily ; or rather, 

 the big-shoot keepers are not necessarily superior 

 in skill to the small-shoot keepers. Again and 

 again a small-shoot keeper has to bring into play 

 more thought, judgment, and attention to details 

 and brains than his brother on the large place. 

 Often an individual drive on a small shoot is of 

 maximum excellence when the only three or four 

 coveys on the ground included in that drive are 

 engineered over the guns ; whereas on the large 

 shoot a couple of hundred birds may escape the 

 drivers and yet another two hundred go to the guns. 



Therefore, to drive partridges on a big shoot 

 is simple compared to driving them on a small 

 extent of ground. In the latter case the controlling 

 thought must be how not to lose your birds by 

 letting them slip over the everlasting boundaries, 

 and not so much how to get them over the guns, 

 which is the far less complex aim of driving on an 

 ample acreage. As it fell to my lot during most of 



5 



