Plots and Counter-Plots
On the shoulders of the head keeper falls the responsibility of all the mistakes that mar a day's sport. His position is unfortunate, for though he may perfect every arrangement, the success of the day must depend on good shooting and the perfect carrying out of orders. His plans must be set in motion amid every kind of distraction—a general in command on a battlefield is not more harassed by questions, plots, and counter-plots than the commander of a shoot. Guns are no sooner told where to go than they inquire the way—one is asking querulously where he will find his cartridges, another is sure his position is hopeless, while the beaters require constant attention, for if they are left alone to move on to the next beat they will lose themselves as a matter of course. In partridge-driving the keeper's nerves are stretched to breaking-point. Half a drive is finished, and not a bird has shown itself; the suspense grows almost unendurable before the swirling clouds of birds at last suddenly rise, and go on beautifully in twos and tens and twenties—in a stream that no man can count. The great art is to give even shooting through the day, and to distribute sport evenly among the guns, without favouritism—unless, indeed, orders are that the cream of the sport must pass the way of an important personage. If a keeper, for reasons of his own, should wish the bulk of the game to go to one quarter, he can manage this by retarding one end of the line of beaters, or by ordering certain beaters to tap with their staves more vigorously than the others—and by this stratagem his partiality is hidden completely from the sportsmen.
