It is difficult to suggest when precisely it was discovered that partridges would permit themselves to be interfered with upon the nest.
The credit has been given to Marlow, Lord Ashburton’s keeper at The Grange. The author has no reason to dispute the credit, which is probably properly bestowed. At any rate, Marlow made Hampshire famous for partridges, and for years held the record for a day’s as also for a three days’ bag, and but for hand rearing at Houghton he would have held it for four days also, and entirely without hand rearing. This is not the place to discuss partridges, except for the fact that the use of dummy and clear eggs for those birds has been erroneously attributed to Euston. Really it was an advance, and a very great advance, on the Euston plan. But pheasants have been handled on the nests by careful and clever keepers for many years, although it appears to be only recently that it has come to be known that partridges could also be treated familiarly, if proper precautions were taken. The principal of these is not to attempt to touch the nest with the bird upon it until she has been sitting close for three days at least, and then to make no sudden movement when approaching or handling the nest. If these points are attended to, the bird will not leave her nest far, if she leaves it at all, and will soon come back upon the retreat of her supposed enemy.
But whether this system of egg preservation is partially practised or the eggs are wholly left to chance, they should all be marked, either with indelible or invisible ink. The former plan is of the most use in preventing egg-stealing, and the latter is the most useful in bringing home the theft, and perhaps in ridding a neighbourhood of an undesirable. The invisible ink shows up as soon as eggs marked with it are inserted in an appropriate solution.
BRINGING PHEASANTS TO THE GUNS
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.