PHEASANTS: IN WAR 127 
brief but horrible account of a performance at as 
pretty a rise as ever I organized. All the shooters, 
only one of whom was worthy to be called a gun, 
were forward ; and all the birds, of which there were 
over two hundred, went forward except two or three. 
There was no rushing, the birds going one or two at 
a time, never more than four. Each one of them 
was good to see. The result was that the gun who 
could shoot (and, of course, had least shooting) got 
nine, and the others (I do not remember what the 
beaters called them besides shooters, but several 
things) six between them, the best individual per- 
formance being the firing of thirty-eight shots from 
one gun—not an ejector—for three pheasants. I 
since have heard of (only, I am glad to say) a man 
who emptied a hundred and seventy cartridges at 
one stand, and bagged seven pheasants. However, 
another gun, who was at the same stand when the 
beat was taken a second time the same day, pulled 
down ninety-two by way of atonement. I never 
could understand what satisfaction some people get 
out of blazing away all day for nothing. As one of 
my beaters put it, ‘they must have a devilish good 
cheek to stand there and do it.’ 
This is how bad shooting affects the keeper— 
my beautiful rise reduced the bag for the whole 
wood to nineteen. I had arranged everything 
with a view to make as many birds as possible 
available for the full-cream shooting. I suppose 
