PHEASANTS: IN WAR 123 



and see a hundred hens if they are wild ones, you 

 may reckon on a good many more unseen. But if 

 you see a hundred hand-reared birds, probably you see 

 all that there are to be seen. This is fortunate, par- 

 ticularly from the keeper's point of view. For when 

 he is expected to produce so many pheasants for 

 the following shooting season, by hand-rearing he 

 can manage it from a much smaller stock than if 

 dependent entirely on the efforts and luck of birds 

 allowed to conduct their own affairs. And wild 

 birds are easier to keep at home, though it is 

 uncertain in what part of it you will find them. 

 Provided their home is reasonably attractive com- 

 pared to the state of things beyond bounds, wild- 

 bred pheasants relieve the keeper from that worrying 

 tendency of hand-reared birds to stray, and to stay 

 where they stray. Wild birds are not nearly so 

 easy to manage, and therefore to show, as so-called 

 tame ones ; and so the keeper naturally prefers the 

 latter, since, as is so much the case in these days, 

 the demand is for a concentrated show. I should 

 say that a hundred tame birds are likely to make 

 a better one-day show than half as many again of 

 wild ones. 



During a day's shooting the leakage of wild birds 

 is so much greater than that of tame ones, in all the 

 many ways in which pheasants can give one the 

 slip. Assuming that you have cut off the escape of 

 wild birds in every direction, they are by no means 



