One hears a great deal of praise lavished on the old-fashioned style of
walking-up partridges, to the detriment of driving. True, where birds
and cover are not abundant, a bag of fifteen brace or so made by two or
three guns will often represent much clever sportsmanship--besides a
hard day's tramping and some shots not to be despised. Yet there is a
way of walking-up birds which is nothing more nor less than butchery.
In September, the partridges are mobbed and worn out by men whose duty
it is to drive them from the barer fields into thick roots, there to be
walked up--and snuffed out like so many candles at short range. This
may be magnificent for the bag, but it is not sport. Again, partridges
on occasion may even be walked up in standing corn. That is a moral
crime, and ought to be a legal one.
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