PHEASANTS: IN WAR 125 
dodge of a keeper whom I often went to help on 
shooting-days. Two or three of us would be given 
live pheasants to put in our pockets, and when the 
guns came out of the house it would be suggested 
that a clump of very thick high laurels might be 
worth ‘running’ through. In we would go till we 
got to the middle, where there was a shaft-like 
opening, up which we would start our birds. 
The first day’s covert-shooting which I managed 
was a great event. I had a hundred and seventy 
birds handed over to me when they were fit to go 
to covert. We carried them on a stretcher—coops, 
hens, and pheasants, two coops at a time—from 
the rearing-field to my covert, a good half-mile away. 
And I was not sorry when that part of the job was 
over. How proud I was of those birds! and what 
a show they made in the long days of their innocence 
when I ‘fed’ along the broad ride! As they grew 
older they grew shier. When the time of shooting 
drew near, though I knew by various signs that my 
birds were about the covert, I would have given 
a good deal for a sight of them all together. For 
about a month before shooting-time it is usual for 
keepers to complain that their birds must be straying 
away, because they do not see them at the feeding- 
places, and the food is not cleared up. The reason 
is that there is an abundance of natural food, which 
the birds prefer to that provided by the keeper. 
‘Pheasants will leave wheat untouched if they can 
