2o6 HINTS ON BEATING COVERTS 



growth or plumage until the month of November. 

 Pheasants' poults, as well as turkey poults, are good 

 eating, but they lack the flavour of maturer birds. 



In beating large coverts for game, there should be 

 several guns placed at certain distances in the drives, or 

 close to the high wood, one man with a couple or two 

 of silent spaniels beating the short underwood up to 

 them. In our own woods we always used a long low 

 net when the gunners were few in number ; the pheasants 

 were then obliged to rise, or run back again into the short 

 wood. The word net may sound unsportsmanlike, but 

 in large woodlands, where we had an abundance of rabbits, 

 it was our quickest plan for reducing their numbers ; 

 and by pitching off a few acres at a time, we cleared the 

 ground as we went. Not being driven by dogs, few were 

 ever caught in the nets, but at openings above and below 

 the guns were placed, and to these points the rush was 

 made by every kind of game. 



The best plan for rabbit-shooting is to have a short 

 ladder placed against a tree near some well-used rrms, 

 and from this position you may fire away right and left, 

 without their detecting your whereabouts. Seated on 

 the lower limbs with my back placed against the trunk 

 of the tree, I have dealt destruction around to the coney 

 tribe from my hiding place, but from such an exalted 

 position there is considerable risk in regard to flying shots 

 at pheasants. On one occasion I toppled over, by 

 forgetting that I was not on terra firma, and brought 

 myself down instead of my pheasant. 



Hares have a strong attachment to the place of their 

 nativity. Those bred in woodlands will always resort 

 to the covert for their sitting, rambling about at night 

 for food ; and those bred in the fields will hold to the fields 



