236 FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
far more certainly after half an hour has elapsed. For m) self 
I have found it the best plan, where woods are small, and the 
covert thick, to go on beating the open fields, without following 
the bevies at all, in the first instance, marking them down care¬ 
fully when they rise, until the feeding and running hour has 
passed,—then to follow bevy after bevy, whither you have seen 
them alight; and knowing their whereabout, if not the exact 
spot where they lie, the dogs will soon find them. 
Otherwise, if one wastes the morning in killing off one bevy, 
by the time he has done with it, the birds will have crept away 
into their hiding-places, and he may hunt the wood-skirts, and 
brush-holes, all day along, without finding another, even where 
they abound, unless he blunder upon one by chance. 
During the heat of the day, if one have not found birds in 
the morning, although it is pretty much chance work, bog mea¬ 
dows, brown bushes on southerly and westerly hill-sides, old 
pastures with much bent and ragwort, and the skirts of cop¬ 
pices, are generally the best ground, though in some regions 
they will be found in large open woodlands. 
In the afternoon, soon after four o’clock, the bevies again 
begin to run and feed, and in this part of the day they will fie- 
quently be met running along the grassy margins of streams 
which flow through pasture-fields, whither they resort to drink, 
or at least to crop the wet herbage. 
So good is the chance of sport at this time, that I would urge 
it strongly on the sportsman who has failed of finding his bevies 
on the feeding ground in the morning—if he know that there is 
a fair show of birds in the district—not to persist in wearing out 
himself and his dogs, by fruitless toil in the heat of noon, but 
rather to await the cool afternoon, when he will very often make 
up for lost time, and make a heavy bag when circumstances 
have looked least auspiciously. 
I have now set my sportsman fairly in the field, and shown 
him how best he may find his birds,—more is beyond my 
means. 
A crack shot must in some sort be born ; but most persons 
