118 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE 
Of course, in driving you must shoot sooner, if you 
mean to try and kill two in front of you, than you need 
or ought to shoot at a single bird. You may kill four 
birds out of a covey, but to allow you to do this they 
must either be streaming, so to speak, in column, with a 
long distance between the first bird and the last, or 
they must break up on clearing the fence and fly more 
or less round you, and it must be early in the season, 
when they fly slower. To kill, late in the year, four 
birds out of a covey that comes straight over your 
head, all more or less abreast and with any pace on, 
is to my thinking impossible ; I have never seen it 
done, and never expect to. 
