SHOOTING THE PHEASANT 



sure ' of an odd brood or two of half-grown pheasants 

 in a small covert, thick with leaf I have seen this 

 mistake made often. While you are engaged upon 

 this sort of pretence of covert shooting you lose your 

 partridges, which run together again, or make back 

 on to their own ground, and the result, so far as con- 

 cerns the pheasants, is that you do what I have de- 

 scribed above : you kill a few immature pullets, which 

 afford the most pottering, poking shots, and the old 

 cocks or full-grown young ones escape you altogether. 

 You had far better, in truth, leave such places alone 

 altogether, and treat the birds in them as so much 

 extra stock for next year, trusting to luck to come 

 upon the old gentlemen in their wanderings for acorns 

 as you go over your partridge ground a second time. 

 If, however, you live in a land much beset by poachers, 

 and the covert be a lonely one, far from a keeper's 

 house, you must make a day there before the leaf is 

 fairly off 



Nothing strikes one more in Norfolk, especially in 

 the heath district, than the prevalence of pheasants 

 everywhere. Every big fern Ijrake, or little copse 

 or spinney, on or adjoining the heaths, holds its little 

 quota of these birds, and it adds greatly to the charm 

 of a partridge drive when it is varied by a few rocket- 

 ing pheasants out of the belt you are standing by, or 



