138 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE 
enjoy your week, and be as great an acquisition to 
your host and hostess as the most serious gunner of 
us all? 
I have purposely interpolated this advice in the 
chapter on Driving, because it is precisely at the places 
where the driving is of the best that we are likely to 
be most. tempted to the indulgence of our appetites, 
and equally because driving is precisely the sport 
wherein we shall the most suffer for the indulgence. 
The host who does his shooting really well, most 
probably ‘does you well’ in all other things, and the 
combination of Nimrod and Lucullus is often to 
be found in the England of to-day. 
It is impossible, in my opinion, to tell any one how 
to shoot driven partridges, further than it has been set 
down already in what I have written in a former 
chapter about calculation. In the matter of how to 
make the most of your chances, however, there is 
a word or two to be added. The importance of 
standing at the right distance from the fence cannot 
be over-estimated. Stand well back, even as far as 
twenty-five or thirty yards from a really high fence, 
unless, as sometimes happens, you are asked not to 
do so, because of the ground being near the boundary, 
or for some reason connected with the succeeding 
drive. Let there be no one under the fence in front 
