CHAPTER XXX. 



PH E ASANTS. < Concluded. > 



The largest bag of pheasants recorded in Mr. Wade's 

 book, "With Boat and Gun in the Yangtze Valley," is the 

 Ewo bag of 1889, when out of a total of 2,049 head there 

 were 1,801 pheasants. These, of course, were got in the 

 ordinary China fashion over dogs, out of cover, and in the 

 fields. Nothing was attempted in the form of driving, 

 except such ordinary beating of bamboos as can be done by 

 a few coolies. There were six guns, but only four shot 

 continuously, and the number of shooting days was twenty- 

 three. For other information respecting the sportsmen of 

 bygone days and the bags they got, together with everything 

 else in the way of sporting knowledge required in this part 

 of the world, the reader may turn with confidence to the 

 book above named. 



My own experience has been with smaller parties and 

 not at the best time of year. The cream of the shooting is 

 to be got perhaps a little before Christmas. A great deal 

 depends on the condition of the crops. My best time amongst 

 the long tails happened one year after Christmas in a piece 

 of country along the Grand Canal between Kahshing and 

 Soochow, where at ordinary times one rarely found anything. 

 On this occasion, however, for some reason or other, a few 

 patches of paddy had been left, the only ones apparently in 

 the whole district, and to them pheasants from far and near 

 had been attracted. In a couple of hours before sunset and 

 another couple of hours next morning twenty-five birds were 

 collected to a single gun. With a party directed with some 

 regard to strategy there might have been a very good bag 

 made on that occasion, for pheasants were as plentiful as 

 one could remember them within a dozen years after the 

 end of the Taiping rebellion. Then whole bouquets of birds 

 might be put upoutof favourite piecesof cover, reeds, bamboos, 

 or what not. In the morning they might beseenrunningahead 

 of sportsmen till they had reached what they thought a safe 

 distance to rise, or disappeared altogether in cover. Shooting 

 was comparatively easy in those days, and little was looked at 

 but pheasants, deer, hares, pig, and such water-fowl as got up 

 from creeks and ponds. Native hunters were few and far 

 between, and there was not the market demand there is now. 



