COVERT-SHOOTING 275 



Coverts. — The woods here lie along the valley 

 of the Girvan, and consist of the usual admixture 

 of hardwoods, larch and Scots fir of varying ages. 

 The acreage of wood is large, but the coverts are 

 individually of a convenient size for shooting, 

 except three large woods in which we never put 

 any birds. If we had enough birds to turn down 

 in one of these woods, the shooting of it would 

 make an interesting day, for the whole wood could 

 be run into a fair-sized wood lying beyond the 

 N.W. end, whence the birds should come back 

 well. 



The Shooting in General. — ^We never rear a big 

 head of pheasants here, and so we endeavour to 

 make up for lack of quantity by quality, on the 

 principle that a few good birds are worth a host 

 of bad ones. My own opinion is that it is not a 

 difficult matter to make pheasants fly decently 

 high anywhere, even in the flattest country, if 

 only the fundamental principles on which every 

 successful rise is based be recognised, and a little 

 common sense employed in their application. 



Every rise should be fixed by previous experi- 

 ence ; the birds run out from their own ground to 

 the " stop," and then intercepted on their home- 

 ward flight by the guns. I have had the pleasure 

 of shooting real tall pheasants on the flattest of 

 ground; how much more then, if one is lucky 

 enough to have coverts in a hilly country, should 

 the birds be made to fly not only respectably but 

 really high. 



