PHEASANTS: IN WAR 125 



dodge of a keeper whom I often went to help on 

 shooting-days. Two or three of us would be given 

 live pheasants to put in our pockets, and when the 

 guns came out of the house it would be suggested 

 that a clump of very thick high laurels might be 

 worth 'running' through. In we would go till we 

 got to the middle, where there was a shaft-like 

 opening, up which we would start our birds. 



The first day's covert-shooting which I managed 

 was a great event. I had a hundred and seventy 

 birds handed over to me when they were fit to go 

 to covert. We carried them on a stretcher coops, 

 hens, and pheasants, two coops at a time from 

 the rearing-field to my covert, a good half-mile away. 

 And I was not sorry when that part of the job was 

 over. How proud I was of those birds ! and what 

 a show they made in the long days of their innocence 

 when I * fed ' along the broad ride ! As they grew 

 older they grew shier. When the time of shooting 

 drew near, though I knew by various signs that my 

 birds were about the covert, I would have given 

 a good deal for a sight of them all together. For 

 about a month before shooting-time it is usual for 

 keepers to complain that their birds must be straying 

 away, because they do not see them at the feeding- 

 places, and the food is not cleared up. The reason 

 is that there is an abundance of natural food, which 

 the birds prefer to that provided by the keeper. 

 Pheasants will leave wheat untouched if they can 



