The Old Wood
The first covert shoot has a peculiar charm for the sportsman—especially when the shoot is in familiar woods. There has grown a feeling of friendship for the old rides and trees, and they seem to offer a warmer welcome every year. He comes to the historic corner where he failed miserably to do justice to a rush of pheasants. Here is the opening through which his first woodcock tried to glide—in vain. He remembers, perhaps, that even now he has that woodcock's two pen-feathers in the depths of some ancient purse. Here was where he scored a double at partridges hurtling through the tree-tops—only to be beaten a moment later by a hare, slowly cantering. Nothing has changed in the woods. They wear the same old look of nakedness; save for a hurrying pigeon, there is the same desolate lifelessness. Nothing stirs, but the leaf fluttering to earth; all is dead quiet. Then in the distance is heard the prelude of the beaters' sticks—tap, tap, tapping. The sportsman dreams, musing of past days and their great deeds. Then a lithe moving form catches his eye—a hare has slipped out of sight. A shot rings out, echoes and re-echoes; another, and doubles, and clusters of shots. The old wood is the old wood still.
