If a pheasant is seen without a tail in the early part of the shooting
season the cause may be put down as fox. Probably the tail has been
lost through an ill-judged effort to capture the pheasant made by some
inexperienced cub--the old fox well knows how important it is to grip
the body of a bird, not merely feathers. But the end of the season also
is a likely time for seeing birds, especially cocks, without tails.
The cause then is not foxes' failures. Long before Christmas, even the
foxes of the year are old in cunning, while the birds whom they robbed
of tails in the days of their callow cubhood will have grown fresh
feathers long since. The cock pheasant who must face courting days
without a tail probably owes his loss of tail and dignity to a gunner
who aimed too far behind, firing at close quarters.
But if you should see several cocks without tails at the end of the
season the fewer questions you ask the keeper in public the better: the
birds are the superfluous ones of those captured for the laying pens,
and have been for a time imprisoned to provide a spirited ending to the
last days of shooting. The keeper is not proud of them, and no doubt
they are sorry for themselves.
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