PHEASANTS: IN WAR 127 



brief but horrible account of a performance at as 

 pretty a rise as ever I organized. All the shooters, 

 only one of whom was worthy to be called a gun, 

 were forward ; and all the birds, of which there were 

 over two hundred, went forward except two or three. 

 There was no rushing, the birds going one or two at 

 a time, never more than four. Each one of them 

 was good to see. The result was that the gun who 

 could shoot (and, of course, had least shooting) got 

 nine, and the others (I do not remember what the 

 beaters called them besides shooters, but several 

 things) six between them, the best individual per- 

 formance being the firing of thirty-eight shots from 

 one gun not an ejector for three pheasants. I 

 since have heard of (only, I am glad to say) a man 

 who emptied a hundred and seventy cartridges at 

 one stand, and bagged seven pheasants. However, 

 another gun, who was at the same stand when the 

 beat was taken a second time the same day, pulled 

 down ninety-two by way of atonement. I never 

 could understand what satisfaction some people get 

 out of blazing away all day for nothing. As one of 

 my beaters put it, ' they must have a devilish good 

 cheek to stand there and do it.' 



This is how bad shooting affects the keeper 

 my beautiful rise reduced the bag for the whole 

 wood to nineteen. I had arranged everything 

 with a view to make as many birds as possible 

 available for the full-cream shooting. I suppose 



