THE PHEASANT 45 



It is not a pleasant thought to any one but the 

 sportsman, that the beautiful bird is there in those 

 woods merely to be a moving target for the gun — that 

 all the care and the coaxing, the anxious safeguarding 

 and the regular feeding which have been expended on 

 him, are only meant to lead up to the fatal day when a 

 hailstorm of lead will lay him low. The first of October 

 alters everything for the Pheasant. Then he awakes as 

 from a happy dream, to find that his best friend is his 

 worst enemy, and that the green covers whence every 

 enemy was watchfully kept away are full of noise, and 

 terror, and death. 



An enormous amount of money is spent in this 

 country on Pheasant preserves, and on many estates the 

 birds are reared simply with a view to providing a few 

 days' shooting in which thousands fall to the guns of 

 their owner and his guests. It has been reckoned that, 

 counting up the cost of the rental, the feeding, the 

 keepers, etc., every Pheasant thus killed means an outlay 

 of£l. 



A less expensive way of Pheasant-rearing is to leave 

 them to look after themselves and bring up their 

 families as do the wild members of their class in south- 

 eastern Europe and Asia Minor. Left thus they soon 

 grow hardy and self-reliant. 



"On one great estate in Hampshire," we are told, 

 "an estate with very extensive woods and heaths, some 

 three thousand out of six thousand Pheasants shot in a 

 season have been wild birds. On a big property in 

 Suffolk, they are scattered all over the estate, and often 

 roost by night in the hedgerow oaks, causing anxiety to 

 the keepers sometimes by doing this right over the 

 public roads. But the greatest area over which the wild 



