QUAIL SHOOTING 
FRANCE. — Before the spread of railways gave facilities for the sale of 
game, and encouraged poaching, no country in Europe was better stocked 
with game than France. At the present day every holder of a licence costing 
27f., is at liberty to shoot on all lands on which the sporting rights 
are not reserved by the owners, and even they are not always able to reserve 
their rights. All attempts at prohibiting shooting have been useless, the 
peasants regarding it as a right. Migratory birds like quail, woodcock, 
and woodpigeons fall to the gunners, two -thirds of whom care little for 
sport, and use destructive nets to capture them for the market. This is 
especially the case around Arcachon, in the Gironde, and in the Landes, 
where hundreds of birds of all kinds are captured in this way. Everywhere, 
indeed from north to south, there is an organized slaughter of game 
throughout the year. In Central France the prefects authorize the use of 
nets even at night, ostensibly to catch larks, but with the result that num- 
bers of partridges and quails are also taken. In Brittany these birds have 
all become very scarce. Woodcocks arrive in the autumn, but their haunts 
are then covered with snares of all kinds, which capture both woodcocks 
and snipe. Only in the neighbourhood of Paris, in Central France, Nor- 
mandy, and one or two departments in the north, is the country still 
stocked with game, but the best sporting estates are in the hands of 
wealthy owners, who preserve chiefly partridges and pheasants. At the 
present day, therefore, sportsmen in search of quail, unless they happen 
to be guests of resident landowners, are not likely to meet with much 
success in France.* 
SPAIN. — In this country, where the quail arrive about the end of March 
and beginning of April, leaving in the last fortnight of September, some 
good bags are made by those who know just where to go for them. Mr Abel 
Chapman has put the case concisely when he saysf that “ though not 
strictly marsh birds, quails at times abound amongst the moist rushy 
prairies both of Spain and Portugal, and hardly a hillock of drier ground 
or patch of maize stubble but will yield a brace or two. The largest bag 
recorded in our game book is fifty-two brace in a day, but this has been, 
and easily might be, exceeded. At certain passage -periods the Andalusian 
vegas simply swarm with quail, and at such times, with dogs well entered 
to this game, very large bags might be secured by anyone specially follow - 
*M. Paul Caillard in Sport in Europe (1901), p. 123. 
t Chapman, Wild Spain (1893), p. 419. 
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