I am obliged to content myself with a partridge manor; and, after all, I believe I like partridge and snipe shooting better than any other.
As I remark in my notes on "November Shooting," a friend of mine once said he considered snipe-shooting "the fox-hunting of shooting," and I am disposed to agree with him.
But, to return to June, from the 5th to about the 20th of the month, most of the forward hatches come off, and are seen basking and bathering round their mother.
But there are other hatches much later, for cheepers are often found in September quite unfit to shoot at.
I can only account for this, that the old birds have had their eggs destroyed in some way or other.
A partridge manor is not one quarter the expense of pheasants and coverts. The latter birds not only require constant attention, night and day, but feeding forms a very serious item. Pheasants are very costly, and only within reach of the rich man.
A partridge manor, to have a good head on it, though, must be well looked after, the vermin kept down, and your keeper with a sharp eye to all poachers and suspicious characters.
With a net at night they often sweep off the birds wholesale; but there is a very easy way of baffling them. Put sticks, about eighteen inches high, fifteen, twenty, or thirty yards apart, over the ground the partridges generally roost on; these, as the net is drawn along, lift it up, and the birds easily escape.
It is a good plan to walk the fields of an evening with a brace of dogs, where you know they roost, and disturb them; they may probably then take to the gorse, if any, potatoes, seed clover, and other safe ground.
In May and June I wage war with the crows, magpies, jays and hawks, shooting or trapping the old hen birds. Always kill the male bird first; this is easily done by waiting patiently within shot, under cover of some tree or hedge where the nest is, which is generally built in some pretty high tree; the hen will not desert if sitting hard, which you should allow her to do; her death is then easily accomplished.