With the First come poachers, anxious to win the big rewards paid for
the earliest birds to reach the market. Netting is not so prevalent as
of old, but more of it is done than most people imagine, since netting
is practised in the dark, and in fields easily entered from public
roads. The best preventive is to dress the fields in which the birds
chiefly jug--stubbles, pastures, and fallows--with small pieces of
tangled wire-netting, and small bushes, left lying on the ground, so
that they may roll with the net, and entangle it the more hopelessly.
A sneaking method of poaching is to set gins in the partridges'
dusting-places, such as ash-heaps, the remains of burnt couch--the
keeper forms a habit of probing such dust-baths with his stick. As
dawn breaks on September 1, the poacher conceals himself in a ditch
commanding a fallow where the coveys jug. Then he sends his dog or his
son to stroll casually and slowly to and fro across the field at the
far end. The birds, not hard-pressed enough to take wing, make for a
furrow, and run in a solid bunch towards the ambush, to be greeted by
a heavy charge of shot, calculated to account for several brace. One
shot--a rush for the fallen birds--and the poacher has flown.
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