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.
SHOOTING WILD DUCKS ARTIFICIALLY REARED
During the last decade it has been discovered that wild ducks can be so managed as to give assured sport. Some people rate it a good deal higher than pheasant shooting, and besides this the wild duck is very much more easily bred than the pheasant, costs less than half, and if it does give as good sport, or better, there is nothing more to be said. But the artificially bred wild duck is very much more difficult to manage in shooting than the pheasant. The latter is a shy, nervous bird; but the duck considers things, and therein lies the trouble. If you treat him affectionately, you cannot frighten him; if you keep him wild, you are very likely to lose him altogether. You may so arrange, if you will, that the wild duck is not the least bit scared at the firing of guns. Probably this is the proper management, because, after all, when this has been brought about, your duck only the closer imitates the game birds that we love so well. You will send every pigeon clattering out of the trees if you fire a gun in covert; but the pheasants take hardly any notice, neither do partridges or grouse care for the sound of a gun, although they care very much for the sight of a man, and shy at the smoke but not at the sound made by a line of guns. The wild duck, unless taught better manners, is as scared as the pigeon by the sound of firing. Hence it is difficult to drive birds backwards and forwards over a line of guns, because even if they will take that flight twice, they will mount up five or ten times as high as a gun can reach. The more shooting there is the higher they mount, and even if they want to come down to a favourite pool they swing round and far above many times before they venture to come near enough to the surface to afford a shot. This is the nature of the really wild bird, which is nevertheless partial to one home water, and is practically at home nowhere else. Consequently, when duck are artificially reared, this wild and pigeon-like habit must be eliminated in some way, otherwise a thousand duck may show themselves only too well, and give no sport whatever. The broad principle of getting shooting at hand-reared ducks is, therefore, either to prevent guns from scaring them, or else to arrange that instead of seeing the shooters constantly they only see them once, and that once when the birds are going home. The first plan is very easily arranged by constantly letting the ducks hear a shot or two about feeding-time. It can even be brought about that the gun is the signal for food, and when that has been accomplished the danger is not that the birds will be scared away to sea or into the sky, but that they should settle near the shooters and quack for food. But without making the gun the actual signal for feeding-time, it is easy enough to let the young birds hear enough of it to disregard it entirely. If this is not done, the birds will not settle during shooting in the neighbourhood, and if they will not alight they cannot be driven. Another difficulty is that these birds love to associate in great numbers, and in a big flock what one does they all do. It is clearly too mad for a moment and dull for an hour when all the duck come over at once, and so end a morning’s shooting.
Two plans have been adopted for getting over the difficulty, both of which are based on calling the birds to feed away from home, and driving them back over the shooters in small batches.