128 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
I could have made sure of about a hundred of 
those pheasants by driving them to and fro over 
the rides. You seldom find a keeper reluctant 
to show his birds in a sporting way, if the guns 
are likely to hit a fair proportion of them. But 
when guns are known or prove to be consistently 
bad, can it be wondered at that keepers should 
give some thought to the bag, by which, un- 
fortunately, tips too often are measured? It is 
not human for men who, to quote from the 
language of beaters, have shot ‘summat scandalous’ 
or ‘rascallion-bad’ to be generous. 
I often have seen pheasants fail to give sport 
in circumstances apparently the same as when, 
on many other occasions, they have come well. 
Suppose one has a wood which is not only of 
convenient size to take in one beat right out to 
the guns in the open, but, so beaten, gives a 
maximum amount of shooting at birds passably 
good, if not actually tall—this may be so for several 
years, while the underwood is fairly short and thick 
at the bottom. Then there comes a time when the 
birds will persist in going back, while those that 
do come forward do not rise far enough away 
to be good when they reach the guns. . Often 
have I seen this sort of thing, and heard people 
discussing the puzzle, which generally was put 
down to the birds’ ‘cussedness.’ (No pheasants 
will face guns in the open in the teeth of a gale, 
