172 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
is a penny and a fifth in the pound. Even the 
proverbial half-sovereign cost of a live pheasant, 
plus a penny for a cartridge wherewith to kill it, 
shows, at two shillings for the dead bird, nearly 
four shillings in the pound! 
The man who shoots on an average one day a 
week probably has a shoot of his own, or a share in 
one. For this he must pay heavily out of his own 
pocket, in addition to the cost of guns, cartridges, 
tips, and so forth. The man who hunts one day a 
week may do so at a yearly expenditure of five or 
ten pounds by way of contribution towards the up- 
keep of the pack. For hunting-rights he pays not 
a farthing. Yet the shooting-man, besides paying 
heavily for his shooting-rights, must not only put up 
with a tribute on his returns levied by foxes and 
hunting, but subscribe to the furtherance of his own 
taxation, or be despised of hunting-men as selfish, 
and all the rest of it. Half the sport of a shooting- 
man may be blotted out by the depredations of 
foxes. What sympathy does he get from the hunt? 
—rather are insinuations scattered abroad that his 
complaint is moonshine. Possibly someone writes 
to a paper to say that on such a day he helped to 
shoot a thousand pheasants in one wood in which, 
during the proceedings, half a dozen foxes were 
seen—perhaps with the idea of convincing the 
gullible that the more foxes in a wood, the more 
pheasants. 
