164 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
the shots.’ On my asking how that happened, he 
said: ‘Gawd A’mighty knows—I doan’t.’ Another 
old fellow, who got most of his living by shooting 
pigeons, was asked if he could fetch them off the 
tops of some tall beeches. ‘Yes, I can,’ he 
answered, ‘but I has to grind me teeth and pull 
devilish ‘ard.’ To show what a lot of stopping 
pigeons take when shot at on the ground, I give an 
experience of an old keeper friend. He saw that 
the ground beneath a beech-tree was ‘ reg’lar blue’ 
with pigeons, so he crept along a ditch till he was as 
near as he could go without being seen. He fired 
one barrel into the blue on the ground without 
effect, but eight pigeons fell to his second, on the 
wing, and, following the direction of the survivors, 
he picked up eight more. 
I never have been able to get a real good family 
shot at pigeons, though several times I have come 
very near it. Once I came to a gap leading into 
some barley stubbles and young clover, saw a single 
pigeon within a dozen yards, and shot it. Just 
round the corner a huge flock rose within twenty 
yards, Another time, one cold day in early March, 
I was going round a chain of fields of young clover, 
on which there were always crowds of pigeons. (As 
they kept in great flocks, and had so many fields to 
go to, and there were no trees, I never got more 
than odd birds.) Luckily a miniature blizzard came 
on just as I had located a huge flock on an open 
