124 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
as good as put over the guns. When they find 
that every loophole of escape by their legs is barred, 
they squat, and do not keep running about in a herd 
like tame birds, which stop every now and again 
and look up, as much as to say, ‘ Here’s a state of 
things! What had we better do?’ On come the 
beaters, and your wild birds have to make up their 
minds whether they will fly at all, and, if so, whether 
over the guns or the beaters, or whether they will 
lie low and chance being passed over. Anda wild 
pheasant that elects to lie low is cunning enough 
not to budge unless almost trodden upon. And 
they are dreadful offenders at breaking back. They 
are wonderfully quick in noting that the sticks and 
curses of beaters are less offensive than the banging 
and expressions of disappointment of the men with 
guns. 
It is especially in small coverts that wild birds 
compare unfavourably with tame ones—which can 
be driven with a fair amount of certainty from 
covert to covert, backwards and forwards, more or 
less how you like; but wild birds, when they can 
see the guns standing in the open, very much prefer 
to go back, no matter in what direction you try to 
drive them. In big woods they give much better 
results than hand-reared birds, fizzing up through 
the tree-tops and away at a fine pace, instead of 
flopping across the rides as tame birds mostly do. 
Talking of pheasants fizzing up reminds me of a 
