The Verdict of the Season
To find out how the wild birds have fared is always difficult: one never sees them properly until the days of shooting are at hand—and not always then, when a sight of them rather under than over forty yards distant might be welcome. We may pass by a wood outside which many pheasants may be feeding, as a flock of fowls, or sitting lazily about on the fences, some perhaps indolently stretching a wing in the pleasant wallow of a dust-bath; but this does not prove that pheasants have done well—merely that there are so many pheasants at a certain place; it does not even prove that they will be there the next day. Such a spot may be a place where large numbers of pheasants are reared. One may count a hundred birds in the corner of a field—perhaps there should have been a hundred and fifty. Or perhaps the hundred to be seen means better luck than usual in the breeding season in that particular part. A man who sees pheasants where he does not know how many were bred may think a dozen a large number, or he may view with scorn the sight of several hundreds if he has been accustomed to see thousands. We know places where so many pheasants may be seen at any time as to suggest that they swarm there regardless of the season. But the birds seen casually may have been bought from a game-farm and turned down, to make up a supply that failed. However, it always delights the sportsman's eye to see many pheasants about a wood—especially if he has the shooting.
From a just standpoint, it is the comparison of what might have been with what is that settles the verdict on the pheasant season. The season cannot be judged by the birds of one preserve. Allowance must be made for many points. The number of wild broods to wild hens left to manage their own affairs, and the number of eggs set under fowls and how they hatched must be considered. Then the quality of the rearing-ground makes one district much better than another—whether heavy or light, low-lying or high, and rich or poor in natural food. The question of foxes must be weighed, and one would like to know before judging a season from any one case how many birds were turned into covert at five to seven weeks old, and how many fell victims to foxes—to say nothing of gapes.
