222 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
When their favourite does not shoot up to his usual 
standard, the beaters are ready with some. such 
excuse as, ‘He isn’t hisself or summat ; you could 
tell that by the looks on un.’ For the useless 
shooter who is continually giving trouble: about 
game that there is no immediate prospect of picking 
up, and every trifle he can think of to worry other 
people unnecessarily, the scorn of beaters is beyond 
description. One old beater, having stated the bag 
of a party of shooters, made this quaintly significant 
comment: ‘ But they doan’t ‘its ’n every time they 
shoots ’n off.’ A man took a shoot in my neighbour- 
hood, but gave it up after one season, though it was 
said to have yielded him bags that averaged rather 
more than a beater a day, besides other game. It 
so happened that the skeleton of a suicide was 
found during the first day’s covert-shooting by the 
succeeding tenant. No one seemed to know any- 
thing about it, but a local sportsman, who had shot 
with the previous tenant once—and once only— 
suggested that it was the last of So-and-so’s beaters. 
For covert-shooting, beaters are not of much use 
without stops; and stops are worse than useless 
unless they are carefully placed, and stay where 
they are placed. There is a very golden rule for 
the management of stops—that they should be 
placed, and not be allowed to place themselves, no 
matter how well they know the ground. An old 
woman taught me the value of this rule. I had told 
