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the occupier, it is often because of the sacrifice of his own sport. The 

 usual thing, we are afraid, is that the shooting tenant does not get on 

 with the farmers. There are, of course, shooting tenants and shooting 

 tenants, but we think that in the majority of cases the farmer is in 

 the right— certainly legally, and often morally as well. Leaving out of 

 sight the few shooting tenants who are real good fellows and true 

 sportsmen, who act on the idea of living and letting live, and who 

 wo aid get on with any farmer, the modern shooting tenants may be 

 divided into two great classes : the one who takes shooting in order to 

 kill a big head of game, and the other who takes shooting hoping to 

 make the place pay, if not wholly, at least to a great extent. Both 

 these classes are undesirable ; we hardly know which is the most so, 

 but feel inclined to say, ' A plague on both your houses ! ' The one is 

 sometimes a snob, the other always a screw, and there is not much to 

 choose in sporting matters between two such persons. It may be that 

 a series of game farms is the most profitable use that land can be put 

 to in these bad times, but then it must be by the occupier of the land, 

 not by a person who has merely a right to sport over it. A Scotch case, 

 bearing on the question of the rights of a sporting tenant to keep an 

 excessive stock of winged game, has just been decided, with the result 

 that such tenant has had to pay damages. There are a number of 

 English cases to the same effect, the question always being one of fact — 

 has an excessive stock of game been kept up or not 1 This often is a 

 difficult question to answer, as the term excessive has different meanings 

 to different minds. Before the Ground Game Act was passed, we have 

 heard occupiers cry out if there were half a dozen rabbits. Now as 

 they have an equal right to the rabbits and hares, the complaint is as 

 to winged game. No one will pretend that in some places an excessive 

 quantity of winged game is not kept up, and it often happens that a 

 tenant looks in a very different light on the head of game his landlord 

 keeps and the head of game the shooting tenant keeps. There can be 

 no doubt of the liability of a man who keeps up such a stock of game, 

 whatever kind it may be, that does damage. It may be that now an 

 action would not lie for the damages done by ground game at the suit 

 of the occupier, as it would be said you ha.ve the remedy in your own 

 hands. You could have killed down the hares and rabbits if you 

 pleased, and as you did not do so, you cannot make anyone else liable 

 for your own neglect. But this does not apply to winged game ; here 

 the occupier of the land has no right to kill a head of game. If he does 

 he is guilty of an offence, and, therefore, in return for the protection 

 the law has placed round the game, it has made the owner of the game 

 liable for the damage it does. As a rule, this question as to damage 

 arises solely in the case of pheasants. We have never yet heard of an 

 action where it was sought to recover damages for partridges or grouse, 

 but pheasants are a very different matter, and no one who has seen a 

 field of corn near a cover where a number of pheasants are kept but 

 will agree that they both can, and do, do very substantial damage. It 



