CLOSE HIDING. 
23 
snuffing of a dog, and now the steady pointer stands in 
view, fixed and rigid as tliougli turned to stone, and 
The pheasant startles from the brake, 
With all his gandy plumes outspread; 
The sportsman, surer aim to take, 
Crouches mid fern and bracken red, 
Or steals along from brush to tree, 
Silent, and slow, and cautiously. 
Again the death-shot rings through the wood, and the 
shooter passes on, rejoicing in the acquisition of a second 
year's cock, a noble fellow, whose weight cannot be much 
short of four pounds, with a tail like an embroidered 
pennon. 
Craven says that ^ for pheasant-shooting, if you use dogs 
at all, employ low-backed spaniels with short legs : never 
.j^ake your setters with them ; for you cannot find a dog, 
^kiy more than a man, master of all trades. These spaniels,' 
says our authority, ought to be slow, mute, and Ibrid of 
" pottering," or hunting close about you ; but ' v^and this, 
* be it remarked, is a very important but) ' the true 
way to go about this business is to take cover yourself, 
with only a single steady retriever at your heels, some 
thirty or forty yards behind you a couple of boys with 
sticks, to beat the bushes, and who will instantly give over 
w^hen they hear a shot, until the word is again given by you 
— go on ; " they should then proceed as before.' Further- 
more, he says that ^ in beating for pheasants, more particu- 
larly early in the season, don't leave a foot of cover untried ; 
we have often found a whole nidus in a tuft you might put 
under your pocket handkerchief, and that, too, within a 
few yards of a spot where a volley of jokes had been firing 
off for half-an-hour.' 
With this habit of the bird of lying close, all sportsmen 
are well acquainted ; it renders a careful searching or beat- 
ing of the covers necessary to its successful pursuit. Old 
birds, especially, when disturbed in their usual hiding-places 
within the preserve, will run with great swiftness through 
the underwood to the side hedges or adjoining fields, rather 
than rise and be shot at ; one can hardly blame them for 
this, although it is vexatious to the shooter desirous of filling 
