134 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



with the aid of netting, we should have bagged well 

 over a hundred hares ; for the guns that day, by 

 way of a very welcome change, were all useful. I 

 had one little wood only thirty-nine acres and in 

 the first beat of it less than fifteen acres I am 

 certain good guns could have bagged a hundred 

 hares the first time through. 



A sprinkling of hares is a great help to a day's 

 covert-shooting. There was never a dull moment 

 in my woods on shooting-days ; always there were 

 hares on the move, even before the beaters started. 

 By the time the pheasant stage of a beat had 

 arrived most of the hares had run the gauntlet 

 (I remember one hare that jumped clean over a 

 beater who tried to stop it from breaking back). 

 Where pheasants are the only game, there is a 

 great deal of dulness, punctuated occasionally by 

 a burst of furious firing. Rabbits do not improve 

 matters much, since they come mostly when it is all 

 hands to the pheasants. And with hares there is no 

 bother about stopping them out, with the consequent 

 disturbance of coverts. All that is necessary is to 

 keep them quiet. Once it was suggested to me, 

 when my coverts were to be shot the second time, 

 that I should beat them chiefly for hares, as there 

 were not many pheasants to spare. I said I had 

 intended to do so had there been any hares in them. 

 1 was informed that there were any amount of hares 

 in them, because they had been seen a few days 



