172 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



is a penny and a fifth in the pound. Even the 

 proverbial half-sovereign cost of a live pheasant, 

 plus a penny for a cartridge wherewith to kill it, 

 shows, at two shillings for the dead bird, nearly 

 four shillings in the pound ! 



The man who shoots on an average one day a 

 week probably has a shoot of his own, or a share in 

 one. For this he must pay heavily out of his own 

 pocket, in addition to the cost of guns, cartridges, 

 tips, and so forth. The man who hunts one day a 

 week may do so at a yearly expenditure of five or 

 ten pounds by way of contribution towards the up- 

 keep of the pack. For hunting-rights he pays not 

 a farthing. Yet the shooting-man, besides paying 

 heavily for his shooting-rights, must not only put up 

 with a tribute on his returns levied by foxes and 

 hunting, but subscribe to the furtherance of his own 

 taxation, or be despised of hunting-men as selfish, 

 and all the rest of it. Half the sport of a shooting- 

 man may be blotted out by the depredations of 

 foxes. What sympathy does he get from the hunt ? 

 rather are insinuations scattered abroad that his 

 complaint is moonshine. Possibly someone writes 

 to a paper to say that on such a day he helped to 

 shoot a thousand pheasants in one wood in which, 

 during the proceedings, half a dozen foxes were 

 seen perhaps with the idea of convincing the 

 gullible that the more foxes in a wood, the more 

 pheasants. 



