Practical Game-Preserving. 22 



The purchase of pheasants " to turn down " is invariably 

 a very unsatisfactory mode of commencing operations. 

 Sometimes the birds when turned away, if carefully 

 watched and considerately tended with sufficient allure- 

 ment in the shape of daily supplies of tasty food, may be 

 induced to accommodate themselves to their new domicile ; 

 but they never seem to settle down, or take to the place, 

 and invariably decrease to about five-sixths their original 

 number after one winter. It will be necessary to deal 

 with two sets of circumstances : one where actually there 

 are no pheasants at all, the other where there is a small 

 sprinkling already established. 



For the present it will suffice to show how a small head 

 of birds may be worked up upon what may be a small 

 estate or a portion of a larger one, with a view to a 

 steady increase of the stock and an extension of the area 

 placed under preservation. It must be admitted that there 

 are more ways than one of going to work, but inasmuch 

 as the owner of a small shoot must be considered in 

 these pages as well as the prospective preserver upon a 

 large scale, if the simple and effective manner of making 

 a beginning now to be described fail to command approval 

 the more elaborate methods described subsequently can 

 be applied in modified form. 



A practical and quickly successful way is to form a 

 large rough pen for the rearing of some birds in a covert 

 chosen for its suitability for the purpose. Any small 

 covert possessing most of the features already detailed, and 

 situated within easy distance and observation of the 

 owner's or keeper's dwelling, will serve for the purpose. 

 The actual site selected for the pen must be well towards 

 the centre of the covert if not a very large one of, say, five 

 to eight acres extent, and there should be an abundance of 

 low cover, such as small fir saplings, hollies, bushes, and 



