PHEASANT REARING 
T O those who can carry their memories back over a long series 
of years the vast increase in the number of pheasants in the 
British Isles is very marked, and this is perhaps the more 
striking since it is by no means the case with partridges. In 
the “ fifties ” and “ sixties ” of the last century partridges were 
much more numerous than they are at present — excepting in 
certain localities where the latest up-to-date methods are practised on 
their behalf; and where in those days two guns, shooting over pointers or 
setters on manors of a few hundred acres, could obtain five -and -twenty 
to thirty brace in the day, it would be difficult now to obtain a modest bag 
of twelve or fifteen brace. Yet on these small manors, which afford the 
bulk of the shooting in England, there is often now a fair sprinkling of 
pheasants. High farming, and the cutting down of the old straggling fences, 
which are ever such a protection both in nesting time and in stormy weather, 
have been accountable for the dwindling away of the partridge in the one 
case ; whilst the very great increase in the number of pheasant rearers has 
been the reason for the other, since the general stock of pheasants has 
been thus greatly augmented. It is well this is so, for the pheasant affords an 
immense amount of sport ; and whether it is hunted by a team of spaniels 
down a hedgerow, or comes over with the partridges in a drive, or sails 
overhead as a grand rocketer, there is a genuine feeling of satisfaction 
when it is hit well forward, and comes down with a thud upon the ground. 
Where small shootings are not managed in a sportsmanlike way, and 
adjoin the coverts of, perhaps, wealthier neighbours who rear extensively, 
there is apt to be friction betwixt the two parties if every pheasant 
is potted which strays over the boundary. If, in addition, attractive food 
is cunningly laid to induce the birds to come and seek it on “ Tom 
Tiddler’s ground,” it is scarcely to be wondered at if the peace is hardly 
kept between the two neighbours. On one occasion I was shown a small 
spinney which followed the rise of a hill for barely two hundred yards, 
and which was not more than twenty -five yards broad in any part, and 
was told by the proprietor that this was a wonderful wood for pheasants, 
and that he had already killed eighty -four out of it. Having expressed 
surprise at its capabilities, a cross-examination elicited the fact that 
about three thousand pheasants were reared and turned out in the valley 
below, and that he himself fed heavily in the copse on purpose to attract 
them. In response to a further question my informant stated that he was 
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