282 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
as much a feather in the cap of one keeper as the 
bagging of the thousand by another. Keepers are 
not given to exaggerating the number of birds turned 
into covert ; it would be cutting their own throats. 
No keeper appreciates bad guns, unless he is 
anxious to spare his stock. Keepers, as a class, are 
not what some people are pleased to call ‘dead 
shots.’ Now and then I have met one who was 
very good indéed so far as his experience went, but 
the majority of keepers would be useless if set to 
deal with driven birds. The head-keeper on one of 
the largest estates in Hampshire was a dreadfully 
bad shot; he was so bad that he was obliged to 
trap or snare, or otherwise poach, the greater part 
of the game which he was supposed to shoot for his 
employer's larder. After a time it began to be 
noised abroad by the ladies of the kitchen that shot- 
marks seldom were to be found on the game. This, 
of course, did not help the keeper to shoot any 
better; but to protect himself he hit on the plan of 
blazing at each head of game after he had trapped 
it. Another keeper was a still worse shot, but he 
openly confessed that though he had tried hard for 
many long years, he had succeeded in hitting only 
one object while it was moving—a rook—when he 
wasn't trying. I have made my share of misses, 
but, curiously enough, I do not remember ever to 
have missed a poaching cat, and I have shot at— 
well, several. 
