
As in olden days, the start of the drive is signalled by 
the pleasant bugling of hunting horns or by a blast from a shotgun. 
For the first 5 to 10 minutes thereafter the shooter hears only the 
rapid pounding of his heart and the lazy swish of an occasional crow 
or magpie disturbed by the distant beaters. But as the noise of the 
beaters becomes increasingly clear, the partridges, first singly or 
in pairs, start coming over, often high, wide, and fast. If there 
are many birds, the last 5 minutes of the drive can be a time of wild 
excitement to all but old hands, with birds passing the butts at 
express-train speed singly or in scattered groups of 10 to 30. At 
such times a crack shot may keep 2 or even 3 hot, double-barreled 
guns shuttling between him and his secretarios with such agility as 
to have 3 or even 4 shot birds in the air at one time. 
The normal practice is to put on five or six drives, each to 
a different set of butts, in a day. From these a total bag of 150 to 
400 or more birds may be expected. On the occasional big shoots the 
number of birds loaded on the burros at sundown may exceed a thousand. 
The all-time record is reported to be over 7,000 partridges fallen to 
12 guns in 1 day,with a 2-day bag of 12,000 birds. 
To the average American sportsman, except when he is hunting 
in Spain, the big ojeos may seem like slaughter. But the butts are 
often so placed as to make shooting extremely difficult so that to 
make a large bag a high degree of skill and coordination is required. 
The birds are always killed in the air, usually clean, and the surplus 
is sold in the market for food. It is more shooting than hunting and, 
of course, does not possess the advantage of mass participation and 
individual initiative characteristic of much of the hunting in America. 
Surprisingly, in the management of the Spanish redleg as a 
crop the ojeo plays an important and constructive part. As previously 
indicated, most drives over a given area are scheduled only so long as 
a surplus of birds are present and are discontinued promptly when the 
numbers have been reduced to the minimum necessary to insure a good 
crop in the following season. To provide good shooting is a social 
and business asset in Spain; a finca with good cover and poor shoot- 
ing is often a matter of considerable concern to its owner. Thus 
over the years when most lands open to general hunting have been badly 
overshot, the fincas with their ojeos have played a large part in 
sustaining the overall abundance of the red-legged partridges in the 
Iberian Peninsula. 
Like the chukars, redlegs are amazingly tough, resourceful 
birds and quite capable of maintaining themselves, once successfully 
introduced, under American hunting practices and of providing excellent 
sport. 
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