Practical Game-Preserving. no 



to the night poaching of pheasants is found in those 

 particularly clear and well-kept woodlands which are the 

 joy of the up-to-date forester ; but without going so far as 

 to claim that coverts should be kept as " a tangled brake/' 

 the more small dead wood there is on the ground, the more 

 regular the carpet of low-growing briar, and the more 

 general the fringe of small twig-like branches on the firs, 

 &c,, the less likely is the night poacher to risk a raid. 

 His every step and movement are, under such circumstances, 

 signalled through the covert to any keepers or watchers 

 listening for them. Then, again, the ideal game-covert, 

 without being in any way dark, should be thinned and cut 

 out with some considerable reference to the birds roosting 

 in the trees, both as regards sufficient protection from 

 the weather and also from the shooting poacher who may 

 seek to raid the coverts during such conditions of weather 

 and moonlight as permit the possibility of successful 

 operations. 



Before dealing with the subject of the regular sporting 

 rides through the coverts, what I may call keepers' 

 paths require to be mentioned, as I rarely see any 

 particular reference made to these useful means of thread- 

 ing the coverts. I do not mean the ordinary trodden paths 

 distinctly marked, and by which anyone can pursue his 

 way, but irregular, ill-defined ones, only marked by the 

 absence of anything in the way of dead wood, briars, &c., 

 which might give notice of approach. Any gamekeeper 

 with even the slightest instinctive knowledge of woodcraft 

 who marks out for himself some of these paths through his 

 woods will be able to thread his way by them at almost all 

 times, and provided he removes all such obstacles as those 

 named, there will be except to him no marked track, 

 and his coming or going will be practically as silent as 

 he likes to make it. The advantage of the plan is 



