THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
the web gets broader, and consequently the end of the feather rounder, 
until a really old bird is as round at the top as a man’s thumb. 
Vermin, both winged and furred, must of course be kept down ; 
but the poor kestrel should be spared, whose usefulness in destroying 
voles — its especial food—is inestimable. The same plea cannot be 
advanced for the hedgehog, which, interesting as it is, and useful for 
devouring beetles, is a terror when it finds a nest of eggs. It will also 
attack a brood of tiny chicks before they can fly, and as it will tackle a 
hen pheasant, it would probably cope successfully with the parent grouse. 
Fortunately, however, hedgehogs are no great frequenters of moors, being 
unable to make their way well through the heather. 
Grouse-netting . — On many moors, especially in the West Riding of York- 
shire, the baneful shadow of the grouse -netter is seen. It is incredible the 
area from which they can draw their supplies, and the far-reaching mis- 
chief they can do. The method is to erect nets ten feet high, in thirty feet 
lengths, which may extend for two miles, and when grouse fly into them 
the section between two poles usually falls to the ground, enveloping the 
birds, whilst the remaining lengths of the nets are left standing. The object 
is to take the birds alive, for sale to persons possessed with the fallacious 
idea of introducing new blood, or stocking some hitherto grouseless 
land ; and for such purposes the birds sell readily from fifteen shillings 
to a guinea a brace, and sometimes more. For this purpose small 
areas of moor are rented, or holdings obtained which are frequented by 
grouse, or across which they fly, for it is not necessary the birds should 
ever alight in order to be caught. All that is necessary is that there should 
be well -stocked moors in the vicinity, and then to set the nets in a favourite 
line of flight — ^when the netters are able to guarantee the birds have been 
captured on their own ground ! The writer has known one such case where 
the nets gradually reduced the birds on four surrounding moors to such 
an extent that they became very scarce ; and one moor which had easily 
produced 250 brace fell away so much that during the last two years the 
nets were set in the vicinity the total bag was but 41 brace and 106 brace. 
The year the netting was stopped the bag rose to 137 brace ; two years 
later it was 172 brace; and last year (1911) 249 brace, showing that in 
four years’ time the moor had recovered its former productiveness. It 
was also found that while the moor on which the nets were placed 
had had very few nests annually, the numbers caught in the nets had 
averaged between four and five hundred brace. Such facts speak for 
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