44 
HIGH PHEASANTS : 
not think any gun could possibly bring down, and am posting 
it to you/ 
When writing my thanks I always inquired if the bird 
received was shot dead in the air, or if it fell with a 
broken wing. When the latter case was admitted, I sent the 
bird to the kitchen without forwarding it to be reported 
on by one or other of the taxidermists I at the time 
employed. I only retained those birds which I was positively 
assured were shot dead, and which were usually described as 
falling ' like a stone,' or else as ' crumpled up in the air.* 
I cannot, however, put any of the exceptionally high birds 
which I shot myself, or which my friends shot and sent to 
me, as having been over 40 yds. ; so I will take the average 
height at 40 yds. We will see what a game-gun can do with 
a perpendicular pheasant at 40 yds. or 120 ft. 
I can say nothing about the boring of my friends' guns ; 
but as I never meet anyone in these days who uses a full 
choke in game-shooting, I should imagine they would make 
ordinary patterns of about 140. 
The larger proportion of the specimen birds sent to me 
came from the west of England and from Wales, because in 
these parts the country is hilly, and the stands for the shooters 
are often in valleys between the hills. 
I did not receive a bird from Norfolk, and in Norfolk I 
personally know only two places where pheasants fly high 
in covert-shooting. 1 As I have said, pheasants often fly high 
in a level district out of large level fields of roots, or from 
heaths, when being driven forward with partridges, but these 
high birds generally fly at much the same altitude, and, though, 
' At Taverham, near Norwich, where there are hills, or what pass for hills in 
Norfolk ; and at Ken-Hill in the north of the county. 
