In the foregoing chapter it has been shown to what point the greatest
bag of partridges in a day has arrived in England. But more than double
the number of these birds has been killed in one day in Bohemia. The
biggest bag there has been 4000 in one day. The method of preserving
adopted there is to make an outlying estate serve as an assistance to an
inner preserved portion. But it is not, as has been thought, to catch up
birds and bring them in for a day’s shooting, as was done by Baron
Hirsch in Hungary. The birds may be caught up and brought in to breed,
or the eggs from outlying ground may be brought in to fill up nests. In
either case that is merely the English plan; but the author is assured
that where the biggest bags are made no removal of coveys in the
shooting season has occurred. The birds are fed in the winter, and
herein lies the principal difference between our own and the Continental
system of preservation. The snow there lies for weeks, and to keep the
birds alive wheat is given to them; but the Hungarian and Bohemian
preserves conclusively upset one notion that has got firm hold in this
country. They beat us very easily in partridge productiveness, and they
do it without driving. Of course Baron Hirsch’s big bags were made by
driving, but his was a system foreign to the country, and has been
fairly beaten by different methods that are generally employed. The big
bags are mostly made by a system of walking up the partridges in the
corn. The author, then, is constrained to look for other than driving
reasons for the increase of partridges, and he wholly agrees with Mr.
Charles Alington in saying that the reason driving increases partridges
is because preservers who drive the birds are not satisfied with the
stocks of partridges that previously did satisfy them. They cannot have
any shooting at all unless there are enough birds to give a day to half
a dozen friends; whereas before one covey gave sport, and would be
followed all day by a couple of guns, until only its remnant was left to
stock a farm or an estate. The author also agrees with Mr. Alington in
saying that it is not because old birds are killed by driving that this
system succeeds. Even where driving is practised, the keepers on some
estates net the birds after the shooting season in order to break the
necks of the old cocks and let off the young birds, which is quite
enough proof that driving is not an automatic selection of old cocks.
The latter should be killed, for the reason, that they occupy for
themselves five or ten times the ground that will satisfy a young pair
of birds. On one of these netting expeditions, Coggins, the clever head
keeper at Acton Reynold, caught a woodcock, so that even a night bird
may make a mistake in its most wakeful hours.
Mr. Alington described how one pair of very old partridges took sole
possession of a fence and made their nest, which, by him, old birds are
supposed to make earlier than young ones. He had these two birds
destroyed, and then there were ten nests made in that fence. This
partridge shooter also believes that no partridge lays before 10.30
a.m., and that she lays every day, and an hour or so later in the day
with every egg. Probably this is not a fixed rule. It would involve a
midnight egg, or a day missed, when there was a full nest to be laid.
Then it has been said that it is the “packing,” after driving, that does
the good, of course by initiating cross breeding; but for forty years at
least gamekeepers have been changing eggs from nest to nest and from
estate to estate, so that packing would be merely re-mixing those that
had already been separated by the gamekeepers.
The greatest assistance given by driving is probably the greater freedom
from wounds of the driven bird. The old bad days, when we killed all the
birds that would lie, and shot at all the others, were bad, because
there was no other way of getting a bag of wild birds; but probably if
nobody had ever tried to do so there would have been plenty of
partridges. In other words, it was bad shooting that destroyed the
stock. But more than this, partridge driving is liked; it has caused
much greater attention to be paid to the partridge than ever before,
because it is so much better sport than turnip-trotting, and so much
more bag-filling than shooting over the majority of show-bred or
show-dog crossed pointers and setters. It takes a very good dog indeed
to please in a turnip-field and to render it unnecessary to form line to
beat up the partridges. Besides that, driving is a social amusement,
whereas shooting over dogs is only good when there are but two guns or
less. The popularity of the big day extends to beaters, farm hands, and
farmers, whereas for the old method these people were merely tolerated.
Toleration did not assist preserving; popularity does so.
Although a swerving covey of English birds will present a task fit for a
king, there are very many very easy driven birds, including the majority
of straight-coming Frenchmen. Besides this, the position of the shooter
makes them easy or difficult as the case may be. Put too close under a
high fence, the birds are difficult; put farther back, they swerve, or
turn back over the beaters. When standing up to quite low fences, the
chances are very easy, and when the sun is in one’s eyes they are too
difficult for sport. The most beautiful shooting is when some birds come
over, and some between, a row of high elm trees such as one frequently
sees in the Midlands, but less often in the Eastern Counties.
There is no more beautiful sport than shooting partridges over good
dogs, and it is easy to get them good enough for the work in wild
country, where they are almost exclusively employed, but it takes brains
as well as nose and pace for a dog to be a help to the two guns in
turnips a couple of feet high, and such as contain a hundred thrushes,
blackbirds, leverets, rabbits, and pheasant poults to every covey of
partridges. It is true that if shooters in line, for sentimental
reasons, have a pointer running loose, they may call it shooting over
dogs, and any sort of animal will do for that, even if he is a dog show
Champion; but that is not what the author means by shooting over dogs.
If you have a line of guns to tread up the game, dogs are superfluous.
If you have dogs that can find everything, then a line of beaters is
superfluous, and besides in the way, too, for it makes birds wild.
Noise is often said to make partridges wild, but this is only partially
true. Noise in any one direction, such as talking, generally makes them
fly, but any noises heard from all directions simultaneously makes them
lie like stones.
No country is so difficult to drive as one with small fields and high
hedges, especially if it is also hilly. It is almost impossible to make
the partridges know that there is a line of beaters outside of their own
little field, and they are very likely to go out at the flanks and swing
back behind the beaters in the next field.
That the fox is the worst partridge poacher in the nesting season is not
questioned by those who know; but the plan described in the previous
chapter is a very good and the only way of securing many partridges in a
fox country. Nevertheless, this plan has been written down in the press,
obviously by interested people, who appear in all sorts of disguises in
the interests of game-food makers, who are aware that if the Euston plan
of pheasant preserving and the Stetchworth plan of partridge preserving
were to be commonly practised, it would be all over with game-food
manufacturers. The author first described the Stetchworth plan some time
before Mr. Alington’s book appeared, in which he related Mr. Pearson
Gregory’s wonderful success with partridges in the middle of the Belvoir
country, where foxes abound. In place of this safeguard against foxes,
futile attempts have put forward evil-smelling mixtures to protect the
nests; but, as Mr. Alington and Mr. Holland Hibbert have shown, when
foxes take one doctored nest they then hunt _for_ the smell, and in the
experience of Mr. Alington the mixture was successful the first year,
but in the next all the dressed nests were taken and the others left.
That a large number of keepers may approve of evil-smell systems, and
disapprove of the Stetchworth partridge, and the Euston pheasant,
systems, has no weight with those who know that there are wheels within
wheels, which can be specified if necessary.
That there are smells which destroy or negative others, the author is
sure, but he has no belief in drowning one by the strength of another.
No retriever can find a dead bird if a man stands close to leeward of
the latter and to windward of the dog’s nose. Out of politeness to our
race, we may consider this negatives the partridge scent and does not
merely drown it, but then the deer do not support that view, and can
smell a man much farther off than a foxhound can smell a fox. The
question arises, What is a strong smell to a fox, a dog, or a deer?
A gamekeeper can (because he has done it at Harlaxton, in Lincolnshire)
look after 1500 acres of partridge ground and get hatched off by the
Stetchworth plan 1200 eggs, and do it single-handed, so that the expense
that the interested critics of this system talk of does not exist.
The fox has just been condemned as a poacher, but all the same he is a
great friend of partridge preservers, if they would only look ahead. The
fox is the only influence in this country that prevents half of it
becoming poultry runs. He takes his toll, and deserves it. Land will not
afford more than a certain amount of insect life, and young partridges
cannot live without it. If it were not for the foxes, nearly every farm
and field would be a chicken run, and consequently wild bred partridges
would be impossible.
On the other hand, if it were not for the game preserver, hunting would
also be impossible in provincial countries and where money is scarce. No
foxes could live if the fields were devoted to poultry. The farmer’s
charges in the absence of game would cause three-parts of the hunts to
be abandoned in face of enormous poultry bills. Half the quarrelling
over game and foxes is exaggerated in the telling, and the rest is
caused by a misunderstanding of mutual interests. Outside the Shires,
and perhaps Cheshire and Warwickshire, hunting could not exist without
the game preserver; and outside East Anglia and the grouse moors game
could not exist without foxes, more especially partridges could not, at
least not for long.
It is quite a mistake to suppose that grey partridges are interfered
with by the red legs; of course, where dogs are used, red legs are not a
blessing, but everywhere else they appear to greatly increase the sport.
The two varieties often nest side by side, but the grey partridge cock
would not tolerate any such proximity from his own species, so that the
simplest plan of making two partridges grow on one acre is to have both
sorts.
Straying away, in the winter and the spring, from cold or high ground,
is a great and objectionable habit of partridges. On some estates
nothing seems able to prevent it. In such cases the French penning
system described in the previous chapter seems to be made on purpose.
The driving of partridges in flat country is very much more easy than
grouse driving, on account of the hedges. They hide the beaters and the
guns from view as both go to their places for short drives. But these
same hedges often prevent proper flanking for long drives, and there are
a thousand pitfalls ready for the inexperienced driver of partridges to
fall into. Of course the chief factor in all driving plans is the wind,
if there is any. Success generally comes to those whose minds and plans
are the most flexible; for a plan that would be best one day would
almost certainly be the worst upon another.
In a short chapter on partridges in general it would be obviously
impossible to go into the minute details of driving, or to specify as
many of the pitfalls as have come to the author’s notice. Broad
principles briefly stated are all he has space for, and really almost
everything else alters with the locality. First it is necessary to drive
the birds with a view to their concentration. That is to say, every
drive should be arranged in such a manner as to make the next drive to
it as perfect as possible. The guns, then, will be posted where they can
do least harm to the next drive—not necessarily where they can do most
execution in the one under consideration. Consequently, the choice of
stands for any one drive must be regulated by the distance the birds at
the particular time of year are likely to fly after passing and being
scared by the line of guns. This distance will grow longer each week of
the shooting season. In September birds that would be likely to drop in
roots three fields behind the guns, might easily go six, seven, or eight
fields in November.
It is impossible to drive partridges very far directly up wind, and it
is almost impossible to turn them very much when going fast and high
down wind. Roots are even more important to big driving bags than they
are to “walking up.” At least, without roots most of the birds will come
together, and shooting will be quickly over in each drive, whereas, when
partridges can be first driven into a turnip-field, and secondly induced
to run, they then become scattered, rise in small lots, and give
shooters and loaders a chance.
The nearer the guns can be placed to the rise of the partridges, the
less distant the latter will fly. In a high fenced country noise is
often essential to prevent the birds in one field going back over the
heads of beaters in the next. The partridges generally decide where they
are going before rising, or as soon as they are up, and consequently the
flanks of your line or semicircle of beaters will be useless unless the
birds know of them either before they rise or the instant they are on
the wing.
Another point to be considered is, that partridges will not drive
backwards and forwards over the same fence many times, and if it can be
done, a fresh one should be lined for every drive. Often the nature of
the ground and the disposition of the hedges will not admit of this.
Ideal driving possibly only exists in the imagination, but if it can be
arranged that for every drive there is a turnip-field to drive out of
near to the guns, and another to drive into at the distance of the
birds’ flight behind the guns, then particularly heavy killing ought to
be possible in proportion to numbers of partridges present.
When there is no great amount of wind, backwards and forwards drives,
with the guns shifted up or down the fence slightly each time, are very
deadly with two sets of beaters. With one set only, on the contrary, the
plan of taking the birds all round the beat in four or more drives,
according to its size, is a good one, because it prevents either beaters
or “guns” having long waits or unequal distances to walk. Excellent
driving results have been obtained on an estate as small as 500 acres,
but this would not be possible without big root fields.
The best sanctuaries for partridges, and those of greatest assistance to
driving, are newly planted larch and fir coverts. Where estate planting
is wanted, then by extending it over a series of years, instead of doing
it all at once, it adds to the encouragement and to safe nesting-ground
of partridges and pheasants too, but the necessity of wire fencing it
against rabbits renders it of no use for ground game, which is all the
better for both its true purposes. In a grass country partridges will
remain and breed wonderfully well if about 5 acres of wheat are
cultivated to every 200 acres of grass land. On just such land the
author has killed two-thirds of a bird to the acre within twelve miles
of Charing Cross on the north side.
Some of the Hungarian and Bohemian bags have been as follows:—In 10
days’ shooting 10 guns killed 10,000 partridges at Tot-Megyr, in
Hungary, and the same season the first five of the ten days yielded 7020
partridges. This was on the estate of Count Karolyi. No birds were
brought in from elsewhere, and the method adopted was _walking up_. But
it was in Bohemia, at Prince Auersperg’s place, where 4000 birds were
killed in one day, which leaves Baron Hirsch’s records, and all those of
England, in the shade.