THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
And it is essential that the party should be small, just enough for the 
work in hand and no more; four guns and perhaps twice as many keepers 
and beaters making a full muster; any larger display of force is apt to 
disturb the ground too much, and drive the black-game off the scene of 
operations altogether. 
Thus there is a pleasing sense of informality about the whole affair; 
a skirmish in our woodland warfare, and not a set battle. Instead of the 
marshalled army of beaters, stops, and flankers following the carefully 
ordered sequence of drives or rises, there is only, as it were, a marauding 
patrol, moving over the country with a freedom denied to more formal 
arrays. 
The country, too, wherein we shall seek our game, is perhaps of all 
others the most pleasing to the eye, whether of sportsman or artist. The 
higher ground above is an open sweep of moorland which falls, here in 
steep rocky faces, there in long gentle slopes, down to the valley of the 
river beneath. As you descend, the heather yields to rough hill pastures, 
studded with clumps of ancient thorns, overgrown with rushes and 
bounded by low, crumbling stone walls. A scattered growth of alder, 
rowan and birch, straying far up the hillside, follows each deep, narrow 
glen hollowed out through the ages by the course of the mountain stream- 
lets. On the more fertile ground of the lower slopes, straggling patches of 
oat stubbles and turnips surround the occasional croft or hill farm, while 
a long rambling wood of heavier timber— oak, ash and fir — ^follows the 
banks of the brawling little river. 
Even when the black-game prove a failure, there is always a fair chance 
of filling every column in the game book before the day is over. Duck, 
teal and snipe from some marshy hollow on the banks of the river ; grouse, 
hares and rabbits from the edge of the moor; a few wild pheasants and 
plump moorland partridges — -beloved of the epicure — ^from the odd acres 
of turnips; and roe, woodcock and pigeon from the wooded river bank. 
These only to fall back on if things go wrong; when all goes well, the 
undoing of the Blackcock is the sole aim and end of each move in the 
game. For the most part the drives are short; the pack is marked down 
by some keen eye — and the dark heavy form of a Blackcock is a noticeable 
enough object among the light tints of an autumn landscape — -the guns 
stealthily gain their places as close up to the pack as they can approach 
with safety, while the drivers are working their way round to the far side. 
The actual driving is simple enough, consisting of little more than 
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