A Trick for Poachers. 65 



■\\-ithout the necessity for night watching, by having suitable 

 coverts, as has been already fully explained in the preceding 

 chapter. Where larches and other trees with exposed horizon- 

 tal branches abound, recourse should be had to mock pheasants, 

 which are excessively annoying to poachers, as they cause 

 them to expend ammunition uselessly and alarm the neigh- 

 bouring keepers, without any profitable result. Mock pheasants, 

 quite incapable of being distinguished from the real birds at 

 night, may be made of hay bands, rushes, or fern bound 

 with tarred twine or wire on a stick about two feet long. 

 Capt. Darwin, in his " Game Preserver's Manual," writing of 

 mock pheasants, states " they are very easily made, but their 

 situations should be often varied. Some keepers make them 

 of board cut into the shape of a pheasant. These are of Httle 

 use, for a poacher gets under them and sees at once what they 

 are. Others make the body of wood roughly turned in a 

 lathe, and nail a strip of wood on it for a tail, or with real 

 tail feathers stuck in. The best mode of making mock 

 pheasants after all is as follows : Get a bunch of long hay and 

 roll it round a stick till it is the size of a pheasant's body, 

 leaving enough for a tail ; wrap it with thin copper wire down 

 to the end of the tail ; cut a peg about six inches long and as 

 thick as a lead pencil ; wind a bit of hay round the end to make 

 a head, and run the peg into the body. Tie these imitations 

 on the branches of larch trees here and there. Pheasants 

 prefer this kind of tree to others, in consequence of the boughs 

 coming out straight, and so allowing them a level surface to 

 sit on. In woods where there are no foxes, and where the 

 ground vermin has been well killed down, it is a good plan 

 (especially if you think it a likely night for poachers) to unroost 

 the pheasants in the evening. They will not fly up again that 

 night. If you begin by unroosting the pheasants when they 

 are young, and have only flown up a few nights, they will take 

 to roosting on the ground altogether, and never fly up at all. 

 Pheasants that have not been accustomed to be driven down 

 at all are made rather shy by the frequent repetition of this 



