There are some places in which it would be almost impossible to have
pheasants and not have sport. The desire is to shoot pheasants that are
difficult up to a certain degree, but no farther. For instance, in a
flat country one cannot make the birds fly too high to please sportsmen,
and in a hill country it is difficult to prevent them from flying too
high. The way pheasants are driven to the guns at Holkham seems to
please all shooters, and Lord Leicester’s management has always been
held up as a model of woodcraft. The park at Holkham is very large, is
surrounded by a wall, and contains within its area an arable farm.
Around the park inside the wall run coverts, and the first plan of
action is to drive the pheasants forward to small elevated woods, and
then to place the guns between the birds and their homes. In some places
the guns are posted three deep. It is the height of these rising places
that makes the shooting there so good. But very much time is saved by
the plan adopted by Lord Leicester of not shooting at pheasants until
they have been driven into the right spot. This not only saves the time
too frequently occupied elsewhere by stopping to look for game as the
line should be advancing, but also obviates the necessity of all the
ground being hunted over for wounded pheasants the day after the shoot.
It is a very clean performance in every way, and anyone who wants to lay
out pheasant coverts cannot do better than make a visit of inspection to
Holkham, by Lord Leicester’s leave. But the laying out of pheasant
coverts is like planting a tree. It is true that a tree grows while its
planter sleeps, and is therefore economic; but it is also true that an
oak grows when its planter sleeps the long sleep, and therefore it is an
investment for posterity. So also is a pheasant covert in a less degree.
The real test of woodcraft arises when coverts are flat and there are no
tall trees. Then it is still possible to make pheasants fly high enough
for anyone, provided a few favourable conditions exist. Before referring
to these, it may be well to say a word on the character of the pheasant;
for it is only by knowing this that a shooter can make sure of getting
the birds to behave as they are required to in unexpected or
unfavourable conditions. The pheasant, then, is the most timid of game
birds; whether he has been hand reared or is of wild bred origin, this
character clings to him. He is, besides, as superstitious as a young
lady alone in a haunted house. He is frightened at any material object,
but he is much more afraid of the unseen and suspected enemy. In the
pheasant pens some cocks get very familiar with their feeders, and will
even spar at and wound them with their spurs; possibly they think that
this treatment is the influence that brings the food. The same bird that
attacks a strong bearded giant of forty within the bars would go frantic
with fear if an unknown child of three summers toddled up to the outside
of the bars of the pen. In the coverts the bird is still the same
creature of impulse. If you make a noise, he will run before you, for he
understands perfectly well what is making the noise; but if you move
forward silently, and come upon the pheasant unawares, he will not run,
but will either crouch and sit tight, or fly, and very likely go back
over the head of his disturber. Indeed, it is generally as easy to guide
a lot of pheasants as a motor car, and much more so when the latter
skids. Pheasants do not skid; they do nothing for nothing, and
everything is done for a very good reason. Theirs are not chance
movements at any time. Knowing that a pheasant is superstitious, it is
exceedingly easy to prevent him from going on foot where he is not
wanted, but he is only superstitious as long as he is on foot. Noises
made by hidden “stops” will have no effect whatever upon him the moment
he gets upon the wing. Then he must see in order to fear.
These traits may all be made use of in causing birds to fly high where,
without artifice, they would not rise 10 yards.
For instance, assume that it is wished to beat a covert which has
pheasants and possesses only a few trees for roosting, and none that
will make a bird mount to get over them. That does not matter. Out of
just such a covert the author has seen the most pretty pheasant
shooting. The way of it was this. All the birds were run out into an
adjoining broom-field, from which in the ordinary way the pheasants
could have been driven back to cover with the beaters re-starting at the
other side of them, and at the end of the field farthest from the
covert, without any of the shooting being more than moderate in
difficulty. In the ordinary way of beating, stops would have prevented
the pheasants running out at the far end of the broom-field, and when
the beaters went round to join these stops, leaving the guns under the
wood and on the field side of it, the trouble would begin, because in
this case the pheasants would never fly very high. But a totally
different complexion can be given to this shooting by a very slight
alteration of the plan of campaign. In the first place, instead of half
a dozen boys being sent round to stop the pheasants from running clean
through the broom-field, a few of the most trustworthy men are sent on
this business, with instructions to tap sticks occasionally, but to
speak not at all, and above all never to show. The object is to prevent
the birds finding out what is making the tapping noise, and if they see
boys they will know directly what is the cause. By this means the other
side of the field of broom farthest away from the covert is converted
into a mysterious land, one into which no self-respecting pheasant will
enter on any account. Having run out the pheasants into the broom, and
placed the guns between the field and the wood, instead of driving the
pheasants back towards the wood, the beaters will be most successful in
making pheasants fly high if they attempt to drive them on, past the
mystery men at the farther end of the field. _Nothing_ will make the
birds go: they will all come back to their own covert; but instead of
rising wild and flying low, they are now as it were between the devil
and the deep sea. As they dare not face the spirit world, or the unknown
quantity, the more they are frightened by the advancing beaters the
better for their flying. It is one of the few cases where noise is
better than silence in driving game. The more the noise the closer the
birds will lie, and the closer they lie the higher they will rise, in
order to get back over the heads of their mortal enemies, whom they hold
dangerous in exact degree to their proximity. Then, when the pheasants
have gone straight up and turned back over the noisy beaters, they see
the guns between them and home, which has the effect of keeping them
from sinking as they go homeward, and often makes them rise higher
still.
If, besides making use of this plan, including driving the birds away
from home on their feet and back to headquarters on the wing (which is
the recognised principle), the last operation can be performed down wind
and in a breeze, the success of the scheme will be enhanced, but it does
not depend for success upon those conditions.
Every shooter professes to despise pheasant shooting unless the birds
are converted into good “rocketers.” But there is a little doubt what
this term conveys to different sportsmen. The author has seen sportsmen
professing the faith of the rocketer, already mentioned, supremely happy
when standing 50 yards outside a covert and slaying the birds that rise
in the corner no farther away. Possibly the term might originally have
been used to imply a bird that had risen straight up, but the author
does not remember its use in that sense. For thirty years it has meant
to sporting ears a bird which has risen high a long way in front, and
comes with the impetus gathered in long flight over the head of a
shooter. If at that moment the bird is sinking slightly on outstretched
motionless wings, it is none the less a rocketer. The late Bromley
Devonport’s chaff about the sportsman who preferred to seek the rocketer
in its lair has doubtless lost its meaning, but all the same those who
surround the corner of a covert in order to shoot just risen or just
rising pheasants are truly cornering the pheasant, but not the rocketer.
How far a pheasant should come in order to get its best impetus is
rather a difficult question. Clearly it must not be so far as to make
the bird begin to look out for a place to alight. That is to say, it
must be under 600 yards in most cases; but that does not assist very
much. Probably the best distance from the rise always alters with
circumstances, but there seems to be no reason for extending it beyond
the midway distance between the first two “sailing” periods.
The pheasants, in common with grouse and partridges, seem to object to
meeting more than a certain air resistance. When they have got up to a
speed at which the air resistance becomes unpleasant, they hold their
wings out still, and sail or float for some distance before renewing
their wing vibrations. If they are shot before this floating occurs for
the first time, they have not come to their full speed. If after, they
probably have come to it. If game is making up hill, the floating occurs
much later for the first time than it does when the direction is
horizontal or down hill. It is possible then that, speaking strictly, a
pheasant does not become a rocketer until it has passed the first
floating stage of its flight. It may be that when going up wind it will
not be able to float at all, but if the wind is as high as this implies,
there is, again, the question whether the pheasant is entitled to be
called a rocketer. The term, however, has been so much abused by
misapplication that it has almost gone out of use, and people speak more
frequently of high or tall birds and of fast ones, of curling and
sailing pheasants.
Although pace is in great request by the pheasant shooter, he does not
generally appreciate the greater difficulty of shooting through foliage
at his birds. There is excuse for this. The shot does not do the trees
any good, and besides there is a distinct tendency to shoot to a
“gallery,” which in cover is limited by the surroundings. It
unquestionably enhances the pleasure of covert shooting to be able to
see what all one’s fellow-guns do. There are times when no birds come
except in one way, and this is apt to be dull for those not then
“engaged,” unless they can see the wings of the battle line.
Nevertheless, speaking of our best English sporting spirit, if we can
satisfy our own critical sense, we desire no other appreciation. But we
like to appreciate others and to criticise mentally their performances,
therefore we want to see them. The author, however, has pleased himself
more by success in killing pheasants between tall trees that he could
not see through than by any other kind of shooting. However, he would
not say that this is really the more difficult in practice, although in
theory it looks to be infinitely the more taxing. The author has missed
more easy game than any others, he supposes by mere laziness. If there
is anything special to be done, one is never late for breakfast; but on
a day off one often is late, and it seems to be the same in shooting. If
there is only just time, then the nerves are alive to take the smallest
chance, whereas, given ample time, the author at any rate can often take
just too long.
In bringing pheasants to the guns, it is often necessary to discriminate
between the wild and tame bred. The former are much more upon the alert
than the latter, and it is often impossible to drive them out of a
cover, for the very simple reason that they cannot be got to go into and
remain in it long enough to be driven out. Then pheasant driving becomes
beating a country, very much like grouse or partridge driving. Wild
birds are also much more apt to take wing before they are wanted to, and
to fly out at the flanks of the beats over the heads of the stops. But
provided the wild birds can be kept upon their legs, they will answer to
the control of the woodcraftsman just as well as tame bred pheasants.
Probably there is no difference in the speed at which tame and wild
pheasants travel, and one is as easy to shoot as the other when brought
to the gun, but the wild bred bird is not as easy to bring there as the
other. If he cannot fly faster—and the author agrees with the Marquis of
Granby that he does not—he can at least fly farther, and probably he is
more likely in hill country, where he is mostly in evidence, to take an
up-hill course. Both of these characteristics are apt to carry him well
out of range of guns that are posted as experience of hand-bred
pheasants suggests to be best.
Pheasants will rarely fly away to ground they do not know, but they can
be made to run there. The principle of driving them is to leave one end
open and close three sides by means of beaters or stops. But the birds
have a natural tendency to cling to cover as they run, not necessarily
woods, but any cover that can hide them; turnips and gorse, broom and
ferns, they particularly like to run in. But in driving pheasants along
narrow strips of covert side stops have to be well back from the
plantation, otherwise by becoming aware of stops far ahead the birds may
believe themselves to be pounded, and then they will fly at once, and
usually towards their homes—that is, in the opposite direction to that
in which they are wanted to go. At Holkham, for the reason stated, a
good deal of this shooting of “pheasants back” is prohibited; but in
many places it is the most appreciated of all, for those that fly back
over the heads of the advancing line in covert are sure to be high 100
yards behind the rise, whereas in the line they may give rather tame
shooting.
The latest generation of pheasant shooters looks back at the sport of a
hundred years ago with indifference and contempt—indifference because
the birds were so few, and contempt because it believes the shooting was
very easy. Some of it was very easy, no doubt; but in those days there
were no rides through the woods, and some of them were so thick that
leather jackets had to be worn by sportsmen, who would force through
after spaniels, or try to, and often find that even then they could not
do it. The gamekeeper’s change of dress from velveteen to Harris or
home-spun cloth indicates the change that has taken place in the
coverts. Forestry has more or less come in, and with the more thickly
planted trees, blackthorn and bramble, white thorn and gorse, have been
stifled by want of sun and air. The pheasant now runs in the open
covert, whereas he would lie close in the bramble and gorse bushes,
which often grew 8 or 9 feet high. Pheasant shooting in the “hind legs”
was not child’s play; it was dreadfully hard work, and the snap shots
given were often most difficult, but the difficulty was not of the same
kind as that of the fast, high bird in the open, which is mostly one to
overcome by cool judgment and calculating trick, but it was one
requiring physical strength and snap shooting.
Often it has been said that our ancestors knew nothing of the rocketer.
But the hardest pheasants the author has ever had to kill have been
Welsh pheasants flushed by a team of wild spaniels, and these birds
often came a couple of hundred yards before they got within range, _and
all down hill_. That is to say, there still exists shooting done in the
same way in which it was managed before the battle of Waterloo, and that
shooting is infinitely more difficult than any that can be obtained in a
flat country.
The author has arrived at a time of life when he has no particular
ambition to enter into competition with his dead ancestors, but he
believes that their skill in shooting the few birds they had was quite
as great as that of their descendants. They were flight shooters, and if
they could hit flighting ducks and teal in the dusk of evening, they
could do anything with the shot gun, except that they knew nothing of
getting off their guns at the rate of 200 shots in 20 minutes.
This is quite a demoralising rate of shooting at first, but it is
attainable by everyone, now that every gun-maker has a high tower and
clay birds to put over the shooter in streams.
Fashion in shooting always seems to go by contraries. That which is most
difficult becomes most fashionable, and now that anyone may learn how to
hit driven game and “let off” quickly, by means of the shooting schools,
it is doubtful whether fashion will not turn round and favour that which
is less attainable, and not to be acquired by school teaching. This sort
of shooting education cannot help a man to shoot straight at the end of
a long day in hot sun and over the roughest peat hags. Only practice in
the thing itself will do that: there is no royal road to high form, as
there is for the butts.
In big shoots the tendency is to have two parties of beaters, to avoid a
loss of time. One party gets into position while the other is beating,
so that often guns have only to face about after shooting the game of
one covert in order to receive pheasants driven into the beaten covert
from another one.
A semicircle of beaters is advocated sometimes, but the wings are feeble
protection against pheasants breaking away, and it is much better to
employ stops, when there will not be the same necessity for the crescent
formation.
Beaters should be supplied with smocks. It is not fair to them to send
them through thick covert without some protection to their clothes, more
especially if the covert is wet.
Pheasant coverts are not now often full of ground game, and the beating
for both together is not as fashionable as formerly was the case. There
are usually difficulties; for instance, the rabbits cannot be got to
leave coverts, and the pheasants are not much shot inside them. But
where the guns are used to drive the pheasants to favoured rising
places, and no attempt is made to shoot the birds before they get there,
rabbits and hares can very well be shot in these beating operations. The
only difficulty in this is the delay that occurs in looking for the dead
and wounded, and really there should be no difficulty about that, if all
shooters made it a point of sportsmanship to have a good and reliable
retriever. But if canine steadiness is always useful, it is essential on
these occasions. Pheasants are running in front, perhaps in hundreds,
and a retriever sent for a wounded rabbit must be perfectly safe not to
get on the foot scent of one of the pheasants and rode it up, until
overtaking it he flushes hundreds and spoils the day. There are some
retrievers that it would be quite safe to send for a rabbit, because it
never goes far, and also for a hare, or pheasant, back, but for neither
of these forward, because there is no knowing that they will not run
into the bulk of the pheasants, and when once put on wounded game it is
the retriever’s business to follow until he gets it.
In very big coverts the stopping out of rabbits may safely proceed
before the pheasants are shot, if care be taken that the stopping is in
progress only in one part of the wood at any one time.
Sometimes it is necessary, in order to make pheasants rise far enough
from the guns, to run nets across a wood 100 yards or 200 yards from its
end where the guns are to be posted. Some people use a “sewin” instead.
This is a long string with a bit of paper or feathers tied into it at
every 5 yards or less. The whole is then lodged upon sticks stuck into
the ground. If one end is given to a man, he can by jerking the string
turn back large numbers of pheasants; but care is necessary to ensure
that the sticks are flexible, and that the string is firmly fixed to the
tops of them. The object is that the feathers or paper may dance when
one end of the string is pulled.
A succession of small rises throughout the length of a covert can be
arranged, by fixing at intervals short nets set up in the form of a V,
with the opening towards the beaters.