34 MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN PRESERVES. 
on an attached bar in front of the corn, are not extensively used. The objections 
to them are, in the first place, their expense, some fifteen shillings to thirty 
shillings each, which becomes a serious item when many are required; their liability 
to get out of order; and, lastly, the unlimited supply they afford to the feeding 
bird, which crams itself to repletion without any exercise, and is disinclined to 
seek food on its own account. 
Unquestionably, the best mode of one pheasants is by the use of small 
stacks of unthreshed grain or beans; but even this may be done in a wrong as 
well as a right manner. My friend, Mr. W. Lort, an enthusiastic practical 
sportsman, makes the following suggestions: “Pheasants may be easily fed from 
small thatched stacks made with bundles of different kinds of grain. The only 
operation then required—pulling a bundle or two from the stack and cutting 
the bands—may be performed every two or three days; though, by the way, I 
must say I like someone to see my pheasants every day; and those who want 
game will find it to their interest to have it well attended to. If weight and 
bulk are objects, a foot or two of the straw can be cut from each sheaf or bundle 
of corn before it is taken to the stacks. The ears should be put inside, or half 
the corn will be taken by small birds; and the bottom of the stack should stand 
at least a foot from the ground. JI use as food in winter peas, beans, barley, 
buckwheat, wheat, and a few oats, and many other little delicacies, such as boiled 
potatoes, ground artichokes, decayed apples, damaged raisins, &c.; and, with all 
these dainties, they will stray twice in the year—when the acorns fall, and at or 
just before breeding-time.” 
The following most complete series of suggestions on feeding pheasants in 
coverts is from the pen of Mr. James Barnes, of Exmouth. It is especially 
valuable as giving practical directions for the formation of catchpools for water, 
without which no amount of feeding will keep pheasants from straying in dry 
weather; and it also contains suggestions for the formation of huts, which are 
worthy of the careful consideration of every preserver on a large scale. Mr. 
Barnes writes:—“ Pheasants are well known to require assistance with food of 
some kind in winter to keep them in good condition, and to have a propensity to 
ramble away and expose themselves to the depredations of trespassers. Buekwheat 
should be sown adjacent to their coverts, cut when ripe and intermixed with 
barley, also in straw, and placed in little stacks in or near their coverts, and 
spread or shaken about at intervals throughout the winter. What is still better 
to my mind, is to place their food in huts. A pheasant hut is an open shed, 
with the roof fixed on four posts, with a pole all round for rafter plate, the 
rafters of rough poles tied on with withies, thatched first with long faggots tied 
up with three or four withies of brushwood with all the leaves on, and allowed . 
to hang down or over the rafter plate two feet or thereabouts. The thatch used 
