178 SHOOTING THE PHEASANT 



ground must be kept up, and may be largely increased 

 by forbidding the destruction of any young bird, cock 

 or hen, in the early days of the season, while the covert 

 is thick and the days are still long and balmy.' Un- 

 less the brood be very backward, I would generally 

 kill the old hen, as, later on, she will be difficult to 

 distinguish from the younger ones, upon which you 

 must rely for future progeny. The wild hen pheasant 

 is a very bad mother, and, to say the truth, when she 

 has hatched and reared in her imperfect and dilatory 

 fashion the four or five chicks which she has ma- 

 naged to save out of fourteen or fifteen good eggs, the 

 sooner she is hung up in the larder the better. If she 

 Ije the parent of a very late brood, no bigger than part- 

 ridges during the first week in October, it is not of much 

 consequence whether she is killed or not ; the young 

 birds are not likely to survive the winter, whether she 

 be dead or alive. 



But, to my thinking, an old cock pheasant should 

 be secured wherever and whenever you can get him — 

 during open shooting in the fields, or beating broken 



' The exception to this would be, where the young birds are 

 hatched and have grown up on the very border of your ground, 

 possibly in the border fence itself, and where you have a greedy 

 hard-killing neighbour. For views on the question of border 

 birds see The Partridge. 



