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.