134 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
with the aid of netting, we should have bagged well 
over a hundred hares; for the guns that day, by 
way of a very welcome change, were all useful. I 
had one, little wood—only thirty-nine acres—and in 
the first beat of it—less than fifteen acres—I am 
certain good guns could have bagged a hundred 
hares the first time through. 
A sprinkling of hares is a great help to a day’s 
covert-shooting. There was never a dull moment 
in my woods on shooting-days ; always there were 
hares on the move, even before the beaters started. 
By the time the pheasant stage of a beat had 
arrived most of the hares had run the gauntlet 
(1 remember one hare that jumped clean over a 
beater who tried to stop it from breaking back). 
Where pheasants are the only game, there is a 
great deal of dulness, punctuated occasionally by 
a burst of furious firing. Rabbits do not improve 
matters much, since they come mostly when it is all 
hands to the pheasants. And with hares there is no 
bother about stopping them out, with the consequent 
disturbance of coverts. All that is necessary is to 
keep them quiet. Once it was suggested to me, 
when my coverts were to be shot the second time, 
that I should beat them chiefly for hares, as there 
were not many pheasants to spare. I said I had 
intended to do so had there been any hares in them. 
I was informed that there were any amount of hares 
in them, because they had been seen a few days 
