IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 
37 
If a pheasant, with stiff and motionless wings, planes down 
at a good height over sloping ground, it is usually an impossible 
shot to make any certainty of ; and I am almost grateful when 
a bird of this kind favours someone else rather than myself ! 
If the bird I describe passes overhead it should not be so 
hard to bring down as it generally proves to be. If, however, it 
presents a side-shot sloping downwards, and its flight can be ob- 
served, it is easy to realise the great difficulty of then killing it, for 
a lateral swing is as much out of the question as is a forward aim. 
As I have said, high horizontally-flying birds always appear 
to be travelling slowly towards you, though not so if viewed 
sideways, as when passing over other guns in the line of 
shooters. This deceptive flight, as regards pace, is the most 
frequent cause of missing, through the aim not being taken 
nearly forward enough. 
Even in a flat country, a pheasant rising well back in a large 
field of roots, as in partridge-driving, will often mount high 
in order to avoid the shooters, whom it can plainly see between 
it and the point it wishes to make for. It then gives a good 
example of its rate of flight, slow as it often looks ; as, should 
it be flushed at the same time as the partridges, it always 
leaves them far behind, even though its progress, as it climbs 
upwards, does not equal its velocity when flying horizontally 
and nearer the ground. ^ 
I ever shot at. The tallest pheasants I know of are at Harpton, at a rise called 
Harley's gorse, where the birds come off the top of a high hill and then pass 
above the shooters standing in a valley below them. 
^ On several large estates round Thetford — probably the best natural game and 
inland wild-fowl district in our Islands — I have seen pheasants fly higher out of 
large fields and heaths, during partridge-drives, than in perhaps any other part 
of England. As examples : Elvedon, Euston, Buckenham, Lyndford, Didlington, 
and Merton may be quoted ; and, though some distance from Thetford, Gunton 
should be included, as the birds at this place are equally good ones. 
