PARTRIDGE-SHOOTING 65 
schemes for driving partridges do not always turn 
out as well as they might, it should be obvious 
that haphazard drives can bring about the best 
results only by merest chance. 
There is a popular fallacy about partridge-driving 
—that the results (in the shape of bag) obtained 
on big shoots are due to the personal skill of the 
keepers. This implies that the keepers in charge 
of small shoots are comparative duffers at driving. 
True, they may be, but not necessarily ; or rather, 
the big-shoot keepers are not necessarily superior 
in skill to the small-shoot keepers. Again and 
again a small-shoot keeper has to bring into play 
more thought, judgment, and attention to details— 
and brains—than his brother on the large place. 
Often an individual drive on a small shoot is of 
maximum excellence when the only three or four 
coveys on the ground included in that drive are 
engineered over the guns; whereas on the large 
shoot a couple of hundred birds may escape the 
drivers and yet another two hundred go to the guns, 
Therefore, to drive partridges on a big shoot 
is simple compared to driving them on a small 
extent of ground. In the latter case the controlling 
thought must be how not to lose your birds by 
letting them slip over the everlasting boundaries, 
and not so much how to get them over the guns, 
which is the far less complex aim of driving on an 
ample acreage. As it fell to my lot during most of 
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