To find out how the wild birds have fared is always difficult: one
never sees them properly until the days of shooting are at hand--and
not always then, when a sight of them rather under than over forty
yards distant might be welcome. We may pass by a wood outside which
many pheasants may be feeding, as a flock of fowls, or sitting lazily
about on the fences, some perhaps indolently stretching a wing in the
pleasant wallow of a dust-bath; but this does not prove that pheasants
have done well--merely that there are so many pheasants at a certain
place; it does not even prove that they will be there the next day.
Such a spot may be a place where large numbers of pheasants are reared.
One may count a hundred birds in the corner of a field--perhaps there
should have been a hundred and fifty. Or perhaps the hundred to be seen
means better luck than usual in the breeding season in that particular
part. A man who sees pheasants where he does not know how many were
bred may think a dozen a large number, or he may view with scorn the
sight of several hundreds if he has been accustomed to see thousands.
We know places where so many pheasants may be seen at any time as to
suggest that they swarm there regardless of the season. But the birds
seen casually may have been bought from a game-farm and turned down,
to make up a supply that failed. However, it always delights the
sportsman's eye to see many pheasants about a wood--especially if he
has the shooting.
From a just standpoint, it is the comparison of what might have been
with what is that settles the verdict on the pheasant season. The
season cannot be judged by the birds of one preserve. Allowance must
be made for many points. The number of wild broods to wild hens left
to manage their own affairs, and the number of eggs set under fowls
and how they hatched must be considered. Then the quality of the
rearing-ground makes one district much better than another--whether
heavy or light, low-lying or high, and rich or poor in natural food.
The question of foxes must be weighed, and one would like to know
before judging a season from any one case how many birds were turned
into covert at five to seven weeks old, and how many fell victims to
foxes--to say nothing of gapes.
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