October 3, 1914 
LAND AND WATER 
PHEASANT SHOOTING IN THE FLINT-LOCK PERIOD 
One ot a set of four fine old shooting prints from paintings and engravings by T. Sutherland 
ABOUT PHEASANTS 
By GUY C. POLLOCK 
IT would be rash indeed to suppose that one will do 
much pheasant shooting this year— though certainly 
a good many people must and should shoot a good 
many pheasants. But the time when it is legal, if not 
expedient, to shoot pheasants can hardly come and 
go, even in these days, leaving one quite unresponsive to its 
memories and delights. 
A suggestion has been made that all pheasants, or as 
many as possible, should be killed this year in the earliest 
days of October as a generally prudent contribution to the 
communistic good which is now the general goal. But the 
suggestion seems to me neither very wise nor very feasible. 
A great glut of pheasants will do no one any good. Birds 
killed in early October are by no means so good to eat, 
whether for the healthy or for the sick and wounded, as birds 
killed in November and December. It may be doubted, 
moreover, whether it would be found possible to trap or net 
a great number of pheasants— certainly of wild pheasants— 
at this time. It would certainly be foolish to try to shoot 
very large numbers in early October. 
Most of us have at one time or another taken part in days 
of covert shooting attempted prematurely. Lack-lustre days 
they generally are : days of low and reluctant birds, of small 
bags, of much cry and little feather. One such day holds 
pride— if that be the word— of place in m>- memor\' and m 
my game book. That was in a year when we had added to 
the little shoot adjoining coverts most desirable in many 
ways. The keeper then persuaded us to try a premature day 
in these coverts. His intentions were excellent. They were 
frustrated no less by a paralysis of marksmanship that over- 
came even the efforts of ordinarily decent guns than by the 
extreme difficulty of showing anything but foxes in the 
circumstances of the case. That year the leaves clung to the 
trees with an unusual obstinacy. The day was a redoubtable 
disappointment. 
It began with one of those tragi-comedies that add 
variety to all sorts of sport. We were, first of all, to attempt 
a drive of as many coveys as might be pushed successfully 
over a line of guns, despite the difficulties of narrow boundaries. 
The coveys were there, they were remarkably tractable, and 
the keeper's plans worked well . We should, no doubt, have put 
together quite a respectable bag of partridges out of one 
drive if —if we had not solemnly lined the wrong hedge 1 he 
situation, indeed, would have been, for a dispassionate 
onlooker, deliciously humorous. Five guns took their post 
behind what they believed to be the selected hedge bordering 
.a stubble field. They were agreeably excited by a distant 
cry of " Mark ! " They gripped their guns nervously, as 
guns do at a partridge drive, kept eager eyes on the hedge m 
front, and made up their minds to secure at least one bird in 
front. But nothing happened. After an abominable silence 
more cries came, louder and more insistent— cries of " Mark ! " 
■■ Mark over ! " " Coming to the right." And still nothing 
happened. For myself, I began to deem the world bewitched 
when I saw the end gun on the right run hurriedly towards 
the other hedge, passing at right angles to the one we lined. 
As he ran and as, quite amazed, I watched him, I saw a large 
covey break over that hedge and stream away. It was the 
last ol seven coveys which had passed behind our backs while 
we patiently lined the wrong hedge. 
That was a fitting prelude to a day on which impenetrable 
coverts, a multitude of foxes, and very poor shooting made a 
very poor bag, when quite a good one would have rewarded us 
if we had deferred pheasant shooting for two or three weeks 
and if we had not put ourselves in an evil mood by the tragi- 
comic error about the selected hedge. 
But against this I have to set very many memories ol 
quite delicious days and half-days spent in the outwitting of 
outlying pheasants in early October. These have been great 
days of variety and charm. They have commonly begun and 
ended with an impromptu partridge drive, while the major 
part of the day has been spent outside the boundary spinneys 
or along the hedgerows with a spaniel . Some of these October 
days have been spent in the great wood, after a morning had 
been occupied in driving the partridges in the adjoining fields. 
The sum of their memories is of sunshine to make perfect a 
day of crisp English autumn, with all the gorgeous hues of 
beech woods at the turn of their tide to satisfy the eye and 
to charge the spirit with an abounding sense of beauty, of 
good, honest, free and easy sport, of the comradeship of good 
fellows It is a happy memory and it is a sad one, for some 
of these good fellows have fired their last shot on the battle- 
fields of France, and the memory of their companionship 
makes the sport of shooting seem in some sort profane. 
Other memories crowd on me of very happy days spent 
in breaking a few phea-ants out of the hedgerows and spinneys 
of the little shoot One may not find in these hedgerow 
pheasants the thrill of rocketers coming in a steady stream 
over one's stand and demanding a top-notch speed and 
accuracy if one is to look the keeper squarely in the eye 
when the best is finished. But one finds in these little days 
of few birds, no rocketers, but great endeavour— a very honest 
and enjoyable sort of sport. October days are very gracious 
and their spoil is not to be despised. 
AVON TYRES 
THE \von Tyre Co., second largest firm ot solid and pneumatic 
tyre manufacturers in Britain, fiave lost 20 per cent, of their 
employees since the declaration of war. The firm have made 
arrangements for the support of the dependents of these men for the 
duration of the war and have guaranteed to each man that his post 
shall be kept open. As a rule the company employ only British labour. 
This has been slightly departed from at present by the finding of 
temporary posts for Ally refugees. 
The work done with a set of square-ribbed motor tyres of Avon 
make that has come to our notice is of interest as showing the quality 
of work and material turned out by the firm. Out of a total of 5,000 
miles that the car has run since being fitted with these tyres only one 
puncture has been experienced, and there is a large amount of life 
left in all four tyres. The work that this particular set has accom- 
Dhshed is a good testimonial to the quality of Avon manufactures. 
For every dozen golf balls manufactured and sold by the Avon 
Tyre Co. the company are contributing 2S to the Prince of Wales s 
Fund. . 
Messrs Williamson & Cole, Ltd., who publish an excellent 
book on artistic furnishing entitled the ■■ Home Beautiful, have 
recently added to their premises a spacious carpet floor, and on view 
here they have every variety of carpets, including the newest and 
choicest productions from the British loom. The adjoining premises 
are under constructional alteration, and when completed will be 
opened as high-class furniture galleries. 
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