The partridge. Natural history

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Fur ano Feraruer Srrims
edited by
ALFRED £Z. T. WATSON

THE PARTRIDGE

FUR AND FEATHER SERIES.
EpiItep By ALFRED E. T. WATSON.

THE PARTRIDGE. NATURAL HItSTORY—By the
Rev. H. A. Macpuerson.— SHOOT/NG—By A. J. STUART-
Wortiey.—COOK ER Y—By Georce SainTsgury. - With
1x Illustrations by A. THorBuRN, A. J. SruarT-WorTLEY,
and C. WuyMPER, and various Diagrams. Crown 8vo. 5s.

THE GROUSE., NATURAL HISTORY—By the Rev.
H. A. Macpuerson.—SHOOTING —By A. J. Stuart-
WortLey.— COOKERY—By Georce Saintssury. With
13 Illustrations by A, J. SruarT-WortT ey and A. THORBURN,
and various Diagrams. Crown 8vo. 55.

THE PHEASANT. MATURAL HISTORY—By the
Rey. H. A. MacpHerson.—SHOOTING—By A. J. STUART-
Wortiry.—COOKER Y—By ALEXANDER INNES SHAND.
With 10 Illustrations by A. THoRBURN and A. J. STuaRT-
Wort ey, and various Diagrams. Crown 8vo. 55.

THE HARE. WATURAL HISTORY—By the Rev.
H. A. Macenerson.——SHOO TI NG—By the Hon. GERALD
LascELLEs.—_ CO URSING—By Cuarves RicHaRDSON.——
HUNTING—By J. S. Gispons and G. H. Loneman.
—COOKER Y—By Col. Kenney Hersert. With 8 Illus-
trations by G. D. Gites, A. THorsurn, and C Wuymprr.
Crown 8vo. 5s.

WILDFOWL. By the Hon. Jonn Scotr-Montacu,

M.P. &c. (/n preparation.
THE RED DEER. By CAMERON or LocHIEL, Lord
Esrincton, &c. (In preparation.

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
London, New York, and Bombay.

COURTING

THE PARTRIDGE

NATURAL HISTORY
BY THE REV. H. A. MACPHERSON

SHOOTING
BY A. J. STUART-WORTLEY

COOKERY
BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. J. STUART-WORTLEY, A. THORBURN, AND C, WHYMPER

THIRD EDITION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY

1896
Oofaw

All rights reserved

PREFACE

+o

THE design of the Fur and Feather Series is
to present monographs, as complete as they can
possibly be made, on the various English birds
and beasts which are generally included under
the head of Game.

Books on Natural History cover such a vast
number of subjects that their writers necessarily
find it impossible to deal with each in a really
comprehensive manner; and it is not within
the scope of such works exhaustively to discuss
the animals described, in the light of objects
of sport. Books on sport, again, seldom treat at
length of the Natural History of the furred and
feathered creatures which are shot or otherwise
taken ; and, so far as the Editor is aware, in nc
book hitherto published on Natural History or
Sport has information been given as to the best
methods of turning the contents of the bag to
account.

iv PREFACE

Each volume of the present Series will,
therefore, be devoted to a bird or beast, and
will be divided into three parts. The Natural
History of the variety will first be given; it
will then be considered from the point of view
of sport; and the writer of the third division
will assume that the creature has been carried
to the larder, and will proceed to discuss it gas-
tronomically. The origin of the animals will
be traced, their birth and breeding described,
every known method of circumventing and
killing them—not omitting the methods em-
ployed by the poacher—will be explained with
special regard to modern developments, and
they will only be left when on the table in
the most appetising forms which the delicate
science of cookery has discovered.

It is intended to make the illustrations a
prominent feature in the Series. The pictures
in the present volume are after drawings by
Mr. A. J. Stuart-Wortley, Mr. A. Thorburn,
and Mr. C. Whymper ; all of which, including
the diagrams, have been arranged under the
supervision of the first-named.

ALFRED E. T. WATSON.

CONTENTS

—_— oO

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

TIL.

By THe Rev. H. A. Macruerson

THE PARTRIDGE AT HOME AND ABROAD
PARTRIDGES IN THE FIELDS

LOVE AND COURTSHIP . , , 3
As CONCERNING PARTRIDGE-NESTS
PARTRIDGES AS PETS ‘ s ‘
THE COLOURS OF PARTRIDGES . . a

POACHING PARTRIDGES . . ‘ Fi

SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

By A. J. Sruart-WorTLEY

‘ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO’ .

‘Toujours PERDRIX’—ForM GOOD AND BaD.

DRIVING . . a A

85
95

. I19

CONTENTS

WALKING-UP 3 ; ‘ .
GROUND, STocK, AND POACHING .
Some RECORDS AND COMPARISONS . .

*VERBUM SAP.’ . 3 - . .

COOKERY. OF THE PARTRIDGE

By Georce SainTSBURY

PAGE

146

. 185
. 216

- 239

- 255

ILLUSTRATIONS

; BY
A. J. STUART-WorTLEY, A. THORBURN, AND C. WNYMPER

(Reproduced by Messrs. Walker & Boutall and Mr. Ford)

VIGNETTE . . ’ ‘ ‘ : oe Title-page
CouRTING ‘ ‘ ‘ ' ‘. Frontispiece
A SuNNY CORNER. : ‘ To face p, 22
‘Harp TIMES’. . ; oe 38
“OVER THE CORNER’ : : 4 ‘ 5 85
WITH THE DRIVERS 5 120
Tue First SIGHT OF THE BRAUER, ay «= P86
STANDING Back FROM A HIGH FENCE : » 138
STANDING UP TO A Low FENCE i » 144
Tue TowrreD Bird... ‘i ‘ 1 168
KITING . . ‘ . . ; dis <8 1» = «182
POACHING WITH STEEL TRAP . ‘ , 4 202

VARIOUS DIAGRAMS IN THE TEXT BY A, J. STUART-
WoRTLEY.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

BY THE

REV. H. A. MACPHERSON

CHAPTER I

THE PARTRIDGE AT HOME AND ABROAD

Our national traditions are so closely associated with
this favourite game-bird, that its presence could as ill
be spared from our midst in these breech-loading
days as when it afforded sport to our hawking
ancestors. Few will deny the pleasure that the
partridge has conferred upon their rambles amid
homely scenery, startling them with its abrupt de-
parture from some clover field, or breaking in upon
the stillness of a summer evening by the iteration of
its harsh, unmusical call-note. Whether we wander
over the downs of the south coast, climb the slopes
of northern oat-fields, or thread our way through the
rich pasture lands of the Thames valley, we cannot
easily forget the presence of this familiar bird or sever
the chain of memories which the whirr of its short
wings speedily awakens. This feeling has grown
upon most of us so strongly that our English meadows
woud seem to be bereft of one of their most potent

B2

4 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

charms if there were no ‘brown birds’ to be spied
stealing away through the wild profusion of orchids
and other wild flowers that scent the air so heavily,
warned of our intrusion by the sound of our quiet
footsteps, which, to their acute senses, are full of
meaning. We question, indeed, whether even the
grouse holds as high a position in popular favour as
the unobtrusive partridge. The latter certainly enjoys
a wider distribution than any other British game-bird ;
indeed, the grouse would have been exterminated
ere this but for the intervention of landowners and
lessees of shootings, whereas even the English
labourer, radical though his creed may be, possesses
a sneaking regard for the partridge. More than that,
all country dwellers really love the bird for its own
sake, and exercise a healthy emulation in the solici-
tude which they evince about its safety. It owes
a great deal also to the protective coloration of its
prettily pencilled plumage, to its cautious traits of
character, and unpretentious presence. Besides, it is
always with us, nestling in the fields of the home farm,
straying into the garden or the orchard, seeking the
neighbourhood of men, depending for its existence in
great part upon the results of human industry. Vari-
able and uncertain as our insular climate must be
admitted to be, we rarely experience more than a few

THE PARTRIDGE AT HOME AND ABROAD 5

weeks of severe protracted frost on the lower grounds
which the partridge haunts—a fact which enables it
to maintain its footing in almost every part of the
country. The struggle for existence is no doubt
serious as it is at certain times and in special
localities ; but our insular stock of birds is fully equal
to any strain imposed upon its resources by heavy
falls of snow or continued spells of drought. The
increase or decrease of British partridges is indeed
affected by the dryness or humidity of the spring and
summer months, which have a great influence upon
young broods. Nor can we deny that the conditions
of a physical character, that closely affect game-
preserving, are diversified by local circumstances or by
circumstances altered by artificial steps. Every one
will admit that rearing partridges in the wet climate
of Skye, and on poor ground, is quite a different
thing from raising them on the highly-farmed lands
which afford the best partridge shooting in Aberdeen-
shire or in the vicinity of the Norfolk Broads. But
the partridge solves the problem of existence better,
on the whole, than might be expected, though we do
not mean that every attempt to introduce partridges
is likely to succeed, for such experiments have failed
signally, even when outward circumstances appeared
to be most promising.

6 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

On the contrary, some attempts at the colonisa-
tion of partridges proved full of disappointment, the
strange stock becoming extinct in a very short time,
and leaving no trace of its existence. The same may
be said, however, of almost any species that we try to
naturalise in a strange locality. Patience and perse-
vering forethought often repair faults of judgment
and bear lasting fruit. But the partridge is to be
found in most parts of Britain—at any rate of the
mainland ; nor is it absent from Ireland, small as
the reputation of that island may be for anything
but bog-trotting. The fact that this bird exists in
regions so diversified argues a large amount of
shrewdness, both in adapting its habits to its environ-
ment, and equally in the choice of its environment.
The very changes which time has wrought in the
appearance of any countryside have their own story
to tell. The destruction of old-fashioned double
hedges, the transformation of commons and moor-
lands into highly-farmed tillage, the conversion of
tillage into large grazing farms, changes in the crops
we grow, should all be taken into consideration by
any one who essayed to show the close relation which
the partridge bears to its native soil. Happily, this
species possesses sufficient pliancy’ of character to
become readily inured to a new régime of farming,

THE PARTRIDGE AT HOME AND ABROAD 7

without decreasing in numbers or losing weight of
substance. Most people regard the partridge as one
of the most local of creatures, and would scout any
suggestion of its being a migratory bird. It is not a
migratory bird in the same sense as the landrail or the
swallow ; our own insular race of partridge is content
to remain upon our shores, come what may ; so far as
we know it prefers ‘short commons’ to a flight that
would extend even across the English Channel, and
resides for the most part in one and the same district
throughout the year, whatever happens. It is true,
however, that from time to time a covey of partridges
lands in a more or less exhausted state upon the
beach of our eastern or southern coast, under circum-
stances which render the hypothesis of a covey of
Dutch or Belgian partridges crossing the German
Ocean perfectly tenable. But, however plausible
such a suggestion may appear, we should, on the
whole, shrink’ from accepting it as proven upon any
but the strongest evidence. It would be more safe to
surmise that, though the birds in question may have
flown in from sea, they had previously left some
neighbouring point of our own coast, and had
deflected from their course to catch up the land
again. This view gains probability from the re-
flection that we never hear of partridges boarding

8 MATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

vessels at sea, though landrails and other short-
winged birds frequently rest on sailing crafts during
their migratory journeys. While thus limiting the
migrations of the partridge, we would have it under-
stood that our remarks on this head refer only to
our island birds. On the Continent the partridge is
probably a more decided migrant, or semi-migrant,
than in our country, since it is exposed to greater
extremes of heat and cold, whilst. its movements are
hampered only by such imperfect barriers as moun-
tain ranges or great rivers present. Even in Britain
the partridge is a quasi-migrant, since coveys fre-
quently perform short journeys—as, for example, across
the Solway Firth. In this case the birds are appa-
rently shifting from the slopes of the Dumfriesshire
hills to the well-cultivated lands of the Cumbrian
plain—-a journey of small extent, but involving their
at least crossing the breadth of the Solway Firth
where it contracts its area between the Sark and Esk.
The natural inference is that the partridge has no
objection to cross a mile or two of water, so that its
continental range can hardly be limited by the courses
of rivers. It would be unwise to push this point too
far: That many partridges remain the greater part of
the year in one and the same district we do not
doubt. Indeed, it has been proved by intelligent

THE PARTRIDGE AT HOME AND ABROAD 9

men, who have recognised white and pied birds
which could not be mistaken for strangers.

The range of the partridge in Britain includes
such a variety of districts, from the water-meadows
of the midlands to the slopes of western isles that are
bathed in the mists of the Atlantic for many months
of the year, that we can hardly affect surprise at
learning that its range in Europe is very extensive, as
becomes a hardy and vigorous species, which has
maintained its position in the face of many difficulties.
It is not. found in Eastern Asia, where its place is
taken by an allied species, smaller in size, having the
horse-shoe of the breast deep black instead of chest-
nut, as in our home bird. The only other representa-
tive of the Old World genus to which our partridge
belongs, and of which it is the type, must be looked
for in Thibet and along the Himalayas from the
borders of Cashmere to Sikkim. This has a promi-
nent horse-shoe, but is more distantly related to our
bird. The latter is local in Asia east of the Urals,
but appears to be generally distributed over the
steppes of Southern Russia. Nor is the partridge
peculiar to the steppe region. Of recent years its
range has extended northwards, and now embraces
governments to which it was an entire stranger within
the knowledge of many residents. It seems, in fact,

10 MATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

destined to increase and multiply in the vast grain-
producing regions of that country, though its numbers
are checked, if not decimated, by scarcity of food in
winters of great severity. From Russia the partridge
extends its range into Poland and Northern Germany,
while to the south-east its presence can be traced to
the northern frontiers of Greece. Indeed, it is the
most plentiful of all game-birds in Bulgaria, and likewise
in Macedonia. We have ourselves seen it in greater
abundance in the Rhine provinces than in any other
part of the German Empire; the most highly culti-
vated plains naturally supply the most favourable
breeding grounds for these birds. In France it is
less common in the south of the country than in the
northern and central departments. It is replaced by
our own partridge in most parts of Spain, but holds
its ground in the northern portion of the peninsula.
We perfectly well remember the gratification with
which we marked a pair of grey partridges that rose
from a small roadside cover, as we drove one spring
day through one of the wildest districts of fair Navarre,
little expecting to find our old favourites in an arid
region which seemed to present but scanty attraction
for a species that delights to luxuriate in English
meadows, full of lush, juicy grass and buttercups, and
teeming with a variety of minute forms of insect life.

THE PARTRIDGE AT HOME AND ABROAD 1

In the north of Europe the partridge is but
sparsely represented, as might be inferred from the
prevailing conditions of physical life. In Belgium, as
in the north of France, the bird is thoroughly at
home on well-cultivated lands—a remark that applies
to Holland as well, though the partridge frequents
the moors of that country as well as the cornfields.
Similarly, it is found commonly in most parts of
Denmark—a fact worth noting, for it becomes scarce
on the other side of the Cattegat. It was not, indeed,
indigenous to Norway, so far as we know, having
made its first voluntary appearance in that country
about the year 1744, according to the calculations of
Professor Collett, who states that the migrating host
entered Norway from Sweden, and was followed by a
second party of colonists from the same quarter about
the year 1811. The latter movement was of great.
importance, as enabling tne species to spread over a
large portion of Southern Norway. Its distribution in
that country is limited to the more fertile valleys ; at
least, it is so restricted under ordinary circumstances,
but not exclusively. Instances of the partridge stray-
ing to higher elevations have been authenticated, as
happened in the year 1860, when a covey of these
birds made their appearance upon the Fillefjeld, at an
altitude of 3,20¢ feet above the level of the sea. The

12 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

species was not originally found in any part of
Scandinavia, but its introduction into Sweden is
believed to have occurred as early as the beginning
of the sixteenth century. It is resident in Sweden,
in suitable situations, as far north as 60° north
latitude, a limit which is frequently exceeded in
favourable seasons, when the birds often succeed in
pushing northward, and even maintain their footing
in such boreal regions until an extra severe winter
decimates their ranks, and compels the survivors to
retreat further south. It is interesting to notice that
in Scandinavia and Russia the partridge is much
persecuted by birds of prey. In the British Isles our
falcons were, no doubt, to blame in former days.
When hen harriers abounded in Lincolnshire, we can
well believe that partridges were scarce, however
excellent the pristine stubble of our forefathers may
have been in the days when scythes and reaping
machines were entirely unknown.

The goshawk, which is such a deadly foe to
partridges on the Continent, has never been suffi-
ciently plentiful in the British Isles to do the game
preserve a mischief. On the other hand, the hen
harrier must have claimed many a victim. The
harriers have now become rare in most parts of
‘Britain ; they always exhibited a spice of daring

THE PARTRIDGE AT HOME AND ABROAD 13

wherever they were suffered to exist. Some thirteen
years ago a Christchurch friend of ours was taking a
country walk near Oxford, when a beautiful hen
harrier singled out a fine partridge and struck it down
dead at his feet. Similarly, the kite must have
accounted for a few young partridges in the days
when kites were common in this country, to judge
from the pertinacity with which we have seen a fine
red kite hovering morning after morning over a field
in which a covey of young partridges lay concealed.

Doubtless the young of all the game-birds are
much exposed to enemies, both furred and feather,
during the first few days of their existence. The
bravery with which the helpless chicks are defended
from their enemies by their parents—be the odds
against them what they may—will always claim
a certain share of admiration. This feeling is
strengthened by the pacific appearance of the par-
tridge, which possesses a larger modicum of courage
and of self-devotion than those who know little of
its habits might be inclined to give it credit for.

14 MATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

CHAPTER II

PARTRIDGES IN THE FIELDS

Tue partridge is one of the most sociable of game-
birds, at least during the greater part of the year.
The season of love, it is true, develops its disposition
to find happiness in monogamy ; but the gregarious
habits characterising birds of this genus are soon
resumed, even if suspended for a few weeks, in
obedience to the laws of increase. The incautious
individuals of the race were long ago exterminated
by their natural enemies, and the survivors are the
descendants of such individuals as proved to be as
superior in craft to their less fortunate fellows as they
were found to be in the lists of love. Thus it has
come about that no covey of birds seeks to roost in
thick cover, or in undisciplined order. The senses
of these persecuted birds have been so preternaturally
sharpened in course of time that they avoid cover
at night-time, and ‘jug’ together in the open field,
taking advantage of any natural features of the ground

PARTRIDGES IN THE FIELDS 15

that serve to enhance the security of their camping
ground. Out in the open meadow the slightest noise
is heard readily enough. Thus the chance of a fox
or any other wild animal stealing upon them unawares
is reduced to a minimum. Not only is the preter-
natural intuition of danger peculiar to the old male
bird of a covey constantly exercised, but each and
every individual is on the alert at the slightest
warning, and their risk is thus considerably reduced.
Of course there are careful observers up and down
the country who declare that the partridge has
fallen upon hard times. They complain dolefully
enough that wire fencing is in the ascendent, and
that the old-fashioned hedges which gave good covér
to the birds in the nesting-time have been grubbed
up in many instances. They point mournfully to the
general adoption of newfangled methods of farming,
and lament the substitution of the mowing-machine
for the scythe. In their eyes there was more merit
in a sickle than in the latest and most completely
furnished reaping-machine. The primitive imple-
ments of husbandry that satisfied farmers of the old
" school are good enough, they argue, for all reasonable
requirements at the present day. ‘Fifty years ago
the use of the scythe was partially, of the reaping-
machine wholly, unknown. It is true that where

16 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

clean farming prevailed stubbles had ceased to be

what they once were, a dwarf jungle; but they still
afforded capital cover for partridges, and gave pointers
and setters at once a chance and a use. Nowadays,
however, we may search parish after parish in all the
best arable counties before we find a good old-
fashioned stubble, and if one by any accident exists,
no sooner are the gleaners out than the wheat-
haulmers are in, and autumn culture destroys all the
hopes of the sportsmen.’! This mournful picture
requires to be discounted by many other considera-
tions.

The partridge is more at home, no doubt, on
highly tilled land than where the soil is poor, anda
warm open country supplies many of its needs; but
it has never been exclusively a bird of the homestead.
True, it is always ready to take advantage of improve-
ments, and thrives best where the soil is rich and
genial ; yet it has a marked partiality for moorland
and mixed cover—some of the prettiest partridge-
shooting over dogs is still afforded by unreclaimed
heaths and mosses. ‘Moor partridges are wild-bred
birds, which have been brought out on the moors,
which are separated, in our southern counties, only
by a splashed bank from the cornfields. Having been

"Quarterly Review, 1873.

PARTRIDGES IN THE FIELDS 17

hatched out on the moor, they, together with old
birds, naturally frequent it, and they “jug” or squat
closely together there at night. The fields are visited
certainly, but the principal food supply will be gleaned
from their wild hatching-out place; and they fly
farther and run longer distances, also they are a little
smaller and darker than those that keep entirely to
the corn and the root lands. The food they get on
the moors is, in a great degree, like that of the black-
cock and red grouse, and their flesh is naturally darker
than that of the other birds. The coveys found on
the moors are wilder also, and far more gun-shy, than
are those of the lower grounds. When they are on
the wing, you can very often watch them fly clean out:
of sight without dropping. These little differences
are all I have been able to observe between the two,
and in the Surrey heath-lands we have a goodly
number of these birds.’ !

But these outlying coveys of partridges are not
peculiar to the south of England. A small race of
grey partridge exists on the slopes of our northern
fells, and has probably done so from time immemorial,
in spite of the disadvantages attending upon its
residence among the wild hills of the Pennine range.
The shelter which they obtain is far inferior to that

1 Pall Mali Magazine.

18 MATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

afforded by the richer meadowlands that lie in the
valleys below, snugly screened from the blast of the
east wind, which cuts like a knife and sometimes levels

everything that opposes its free progress. During the
early part of the year, heavy snow-wreaths cover up the
favourite nooks of the partridge for many weeks in suc-
cession, or the pitiless rain fills the ghylls of the moun-
tains, so that they rise in flood and overflow their narrow
banks. But the partridge heeds not the havoc and
confusion of the elements. In the face of a thousand
disadvantages, this sturdy native doggedly maintains
an uphill fight for existence, and on the whole with a
very fair measure of success ; waiting hopefully for
the solace of courtship, and the joys of the nesting
season, to reimburse him for a sheaf of hardships.

After all, the fell partridge possesses some special
advantages. He gleans many a ripe berry, and knows
how to adapt himself to difficulties better than his
fellow in the low-country. Nor is he a starveling.
‘Plump and well-conditioned’ is the verdict given by
most sportsmen of the hill race of partridges—at least,
if shot jn the months of autumn, before the hardships
of winter-time have pinched his frame ; the slightly
inferior size of the sub-alpine bird is no great draw-
back to any one except pot-hunters, a class of gentle-
men who need little consideration.

PARTRIDGES IN THE FIELDS 19

How the fell partridge thrives, and by what
exercise of strategy he manages to elude the vigilant
attention of the greyhound foxes that are always
roaming over the fells, can best be explained by the
shepherds whose duties necessitate the devotion of
their lives to the charge of the flocks which wander
over the hill pastures. These uneducated men take
an intelligent interest in the welfare of all the wild
creatures that share with them the solitudes of the
remote uplands. Quiet and undemonstrative in their
exterior, they can often tell a good story by the side
of a peat‘fire; nor do they disdain to relate their
simple every-day experiences with fur and feather,
beguiling their narrative with an occasional spice of
dry and wholesome mother-wit.

It is to these fell folk that you must go if you
desire to learn whether the ravens are nesting this
season in the same beetling precipice from which their
young ones flew last year in safety, or whether the
white vixen fox is still inhabiting her earth below the
discarded quarry, or to hear the earliest news of the
cuckoo’s arrival among the persecuted ‘moss-cheepers,’

They are sparing of words, are these simple moun-
taineers, especially so with strangers ; but when once
the ice has been broken, their reticence vanishes, and
a flow of conversation follows.. They have trained

c2

20 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

their senses of sight and sound with such refined

accuracy that very little of what goes on around them

really escapes their attention. They know, most

likely, every grouse nest on the farm, and can tell you~
where a covey of partridges can be found at almost

any hour of the day.

Highland shepherds and their helpers take a
similar interest in the red grouse that nest upon the
sheep farms, especially if employed by the proprietor,
whose interests they naturally desire to protect. The
partridge has many friends besides professed game
preservers. Were it otherwise, it would have become
extinct ere this in many districts. Sportsmen when
shooting over dogs prefer to kill off the leading birds
of a covey, if possible, so that the remaining members
of the covey become scattered and lose their powers of
combination for a while. The theory involved has, no
doubt, a large element of truth for its substratum, but
it must not be pressed too far. Still it is wonderful
how soon the members of a broken covey contrive to
reunite and adopt fresh leaders, to whose vigilance and
guidance they proceed to entrust their safety. ‘Ina
dead hard winter, the partridge is not put to it as his
larger associates are, for the bird naturally is a ground
one ; all his living is got from it; he lives, broods,
and jugs there. No matter how deep the snow may

PARTRIDGES IN THE FIELDS 21

be, it does not cover up all places completely.’ So
the bird struggles on in times of hardship, burrowing
in the snow and gleaning an existence from many wild
seeds. He is somewhat of a dainty feeder upon
occasion, relishing the pupz of ants when obtainable,
as well as every variety of the insect host that comes
in its way. Slugs and worms, grasshoppers and the
grubs of burrowing beetles, flies and other winged
creatures vary the diet of the partridge according to
the nature of the season and the choice of locality.
Besides, it has a liking for young fresh shoots, such
as it finds readily enough about the banks of the older
hedgerows. So if a covey of birds are not employed
in picking the aphides that cluster on the under-
surface of the leaves of the turnips, you may hazard
a guess that they are botanising on their own account,
gathering what John Evelyn calls ‘ those incomparable
sallads of young herbs, taken out of the maws of
partridges at a certain season of the year,’ which give
them a preparation far exceeding all the art of cookery.
Later in the summer they levy toll on the ripening
berries of wild plants, gather the seeds of the weeds
whose presence harasses the farmer: tender green
shoots of heather, whortle berries and those of the
ground brambles are easily partaken of when their
turn comes. The partridge is a careful gleaner, and

22 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

grows plump and well favoured during his sojourn on
the stubble, though the ringdove eats much of the
food which should go to support its more welcome
neighbour. But important as the dietary of the
partridge must be admitted to be, the bird is no
voluptuary, but contrives to make a shift, if occasion
arise, without suffering any apparent ills from its mis-
fortunes. It is too spirited a bird to be easily cowed, as
we might guess from its self-consciousness and pride of
carriage. Indeed birds of both sexes delight to preen
their plumage no less than other species in which a
striking pattern of colours is‘apparent. A strong de-
sire of cleanliness characterises most birds. It is all
_ against their will that they shelter thousands of para-
sites in their downy covering. Either they seek to
rid themselves from their tiny tormentors by frequent
ablutions, or they cleanse their feathers by dust baths,
which appear to answer much the same purpose as
actual immersion in water. During the summer
months, partridges betake themselves to their feeding
grounds at daybreak, and occupy themselves in forag-
ing for food until about ro a.m., by which time they
have usually contrived to satisfy the demands of their
appetites. This important condition of things having
once been arrived at, the birds seek out some open spot
where they can bask in the warm sunshine to their

AaNuod ANNAS VW

PARTRIDGES IN THE FIELDS 23

heart’s content. They are particular, of course, in
their choice of such a vendezvous. The sort of place
which seems to suit them best, on the whole, is a nice
sandy knoll on the side of a hill, screened from incon-
venient observation by a light covering of bracken
or lady-fern. In such a spot as this the birds are
thoroughly at home, and it is delightful to study their
sense of enjoyment. Overflowing with exuberance ot
spirits, they dust their plumage in a sand bath to their
heart’s cortent, preening their feathers with grace and
skill.

At such a time their attitudes are free and fear-
less. Some of the number are sure to be seen resting
on their sides, thrusting their feet through their wing
quills, as if indulging in the luxury of stretching their
relaxed limbs, drinking in the warmth, so to speak,
with easy contentedness. Country folk in the north
of England are well acquainted with this trait, which
they express by the word ‘balming,’ a term which
has extended its meaning by common use, so that it
has in its turn created the term a ‘ da/m’ to describe
a covey of partridges; the designation is informal
enough, but it completely meets the case. The
situations to which the birds withdraw to enjoy their
noonday siesta are generally chosen for their retired
position ; but the partridge is an adaptive species, and

24 NMATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

will take its pleasure where its tastes can best be
developed. In quiet country places, for instance, a
disused quarry, that has been allowed to become the
home of many wild plants, is a likely enough haven
for the ‘ balming’ birds, to which the varied character
of the ground and its patches of small cover are
highly acceptable. The partridge is a bird of resource,
and takes his pleasure accordingly. In default of a
sequestered nook, he and his fellows occasionally
perform their toilette in the light dust that covers the
surface of an old turnpike road, shaking the pulverised
earth all over their plumage with every manifestation
of pleasure.

25

CHAPTER III

LOVE AND COURTSHIP

THE season of courtship among the field birds
possesses an interest for every one who really cares
for country life, marking as it does the revival of
amatory passions that have remained dormant through
the autumn and winter months. The partridge, like the
red grouse, begins to pair long before frost and snow
have disappeared from the higher grounds ; but the
former bird is more gregarious than the grouse during
the first days of spring ; and though its erotic tempera-
ment induces it to form attachments that result in the
break up of a covey, yet the partridge selects its
mate before seceding from the common life. The
paired birds do not at once retire from the society
of their companions. For a few days or weeks they
continue to forage in company, at night they ‘jug’
together ; a trained eye, well versed in detecting the
subtle and fine gestures of the birds, takes notice
of the attention which the cock birds have begun to

26 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

expend upon their chosen partners. A burst of warm
weather in February frequently causes the break up
of a covey ; not that the birds desert their favourite
feeding grounds, but that each couple takes up its
quarters in some well-remembered haunt, and thence
forward shuns the communal life in which it has found
satisfaction.

It would be unsafe to dogmatise too nicely as
to these or any other idiosyncrasies of the partridge.
Indeed, the most carefully considered statements are
after all only approximations to the truth, and as
fallible as other human judgments. The simple ex-
planation of this is that the movements of the birds
vary with the locality, with the aspect of the ground
which is preserved, so that hard-and-fast rules are of
little service.

Moreover, it must be understood that, even when
the partridges in some particular district appear to
have settled their love affairs, and to have definitely
paired off, a retrograde movement sometimes corrects
their ardent desire to enter upon the bliss of their
love period. Suppose, for instance, that a sudden
spell of summer-like weather bursts upon us in the
late days of winter. The mating of the partridges
proceeds apace merrily enough. But the clouds
gather, and the wind shifts to the north; a heavy

LOVE AND COURTSHIP 27

snow-fall soon succeeds the rapidly dispelled sense
of warmth and comfort. Once more the partridges
unite their forces, and band together for mutual
society, and the advantages which they have found
by experience are sure to accrue from their discarded
intercourse. It would be a mistake to imagine that
such a retrograde movement as this ‘ packing’ to-
gether of paired birds appears to be implies that
the males have discarded their former appropriation
of individual partners. Although they fly and feed
together, the individual pairs preserve their liberty of
action, and only share the movements of their com-
panions until the arrival of more’ settled weather
invites them to scatter in all directions. March, in
spite of its proverbial roar, is pre-eminently the
month in which the harsh, raucous call-note of the
cock partridge attracts most attention from country
folk. Rasping as the effect of the familiar cry
certainly is, it possesses a charm peculiarly its own,
stirring into life old memories of days spent in
tramping the fields, and reviving enthusiasms that
might otherwise have continued to slumber for many
months. Not the least pleasant feature of the
coupling of the partridges is the constant devotion of
bird to bird. Their loves are real enough, and they
become constant and inseparable companions for the

28 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

season, unless some misfortune occurs to one of the
pair. In the days when the slaughter of birds that
had found their mates and paired off in real earnest
was esteemed a trifling fault, a practice prevailed of
shooting the cock birds out of the different pairs.
Those who practised this method of spring shooting
carried their purpose out under a firm impression
that it improved their shooting. In all probability
they acted prudently enough, strange as their proceed-
ing may seem tous. The explanation is, that in the
days of flint-locks, many family parties passed scathe-
less through a season, and the birds of a brood were
apt to seek their mates within the ring of their fellow-
nestlings, an undesirable state of affairs. Besides,
the proportion of male birds was always high, and
barren males that could find no mates were not only
useless, but reacted injuriously upon the breeding
stock.

The reason for this is not far to seek : few of our
field birds are more pugnacious than the partridge.
Although devoid of the spurs worn by the repre-
sentatives of other genera, our home bird is of a
jealous disposition, and resents intrusion fiercely
enough. The presence of any number of unpaired
males on a farm is a source of frequent trouble and
disquietude. No harm, therefore, can probably be

LOVE AND COURTSHIP 29

done by a decimation of the superabundant sex. The
widows are not likely to prove inconsolable. Fresh
suitors soon appear to woo the favour of the discon-
solate ones, and thus the balance of Nature becomes
rightly adjusted. It should be understood, of course,
that any such step as that: indicated was performed
quite early in the season, so early as to anticipate
any such misfortunes as those that would follow from
the loss of one of a pair of nesting birds. The very
earliest broods are not as a rule the most successful,
since the weather is often less favourable to the nur-
ture of the tiny chicks in April and the first weeks of
May than in the usual hatching season, which is the
latter part of June in most parts of England.

Such a dry and genial summer as that of 1893
naturally favours the increase of most varieties of
winged game, and of partridges in particular, and helps
to atone for the deficiency of a succession of rainy
seasons. But the habits of the partridge itself have
somewhat altered of late years. Before the introduction
of mowing-machines partridges used to nest almost as
much in the open fields as quail, so that the sitting
bird was liable to be drenched by continuous rains,
from which she was screened imperfectly by the low
cover in which she nestled. Sometimes the bird fell
a victim to the promptings of maternal solicitude,

30 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

preferring to perish at her post rather than to desert
her precious charges. Many other birds would do the
same.

Years ago, when wandering through the pic-
turesque birch woods of the Dee valley, we climbed
to a chaffinch nest, only to find the little hen lying
dead upon the eggs which she had died to incubate.
But the partridge is a bird of stronger attachments
than most feathered fowl. The nest itself scarcely
deserves the usual title, being, in fact, hardly more
than a slight scraping in the surface of the soil, a
cavity of no depth, redeemed from absolute bareness
by the addition of a few leaves, dead and dry as
tinder, and a few stems of withered grass—as unpre-
tentious an affair as could be imagined, but yet
amply sufficient after all for the purpose which it has
to serve. Many partridges still nestle out in the
open fields, but experience plays an important part in
the economy of Nature. The frequent destruction of
nests in the open meadows has convinced many female
partridges of the advantages supplied to nesting birds
by the shelter afforded by the briars and brambles
that festoon the banks of the older and untrimmed
hedgerows. Similarly, an old and bleached root of a
tree, to all appearances cumbering the soil uselessly
enough, in reality provides a serviceable shelter to a

LOVE AND COURTSHIP 31

brooding partridge. Happily the loss of scent which
characterises sitting hens saves them from many of
their enemies. This is specially true of such birds as
choose to nest in close proximity to a well-used foot-
path, or beside the stacks in a farmyard. The hen
partridge squats very closely to her eggs when in-
cubation has once begun, so closely, indeed, that
dogs often pass close to her without detecting her
presence.

One partridge, whose nest was discovered by a
friend of ours, strangely enough made her home close ,
to a highroad, and in immediate proximity to a stone-
heap. This was all the more singular because the
task of stone-breaking was carried on day after day,
while the partridge sat on unflinchingly upon her
treasures. She might easily have found a snug re-
treat under a neighbouring hedge in thick cover ;
actually, she preferred the more dangerous spot, and
her pluck was rewarded. Unlikely as it seemed that
she would rear a brood, this bird brought eighteen
chicks safely out of the egg. A bird that nested within
fifteen inches of a public footpath which traversed a
common on the skirts of one of our large towns was
less fortunate. This was due, however, to an accident
which her vigilance was powerless to anticipate—
indeed, her acuteness hastened the mistake. It was

*

32 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

her constant practice to cover up her eggs with dry
leaves before she left the nest to feed. One unlucky
day a passer-by strayed a foot or so from the path,
and literally put his foot into the nest, breaking a
‘’ pertion of the eggs. “Such a mishap is generally fatal
to the success of the brood, just as the onset of a
dog, which perhaps snatches the tail from the hen, is
the inevitable precursor of failure. Even under such
disastrous circumstances we have known the cock
partridge to take his place upon the nest, after having
failed to persuade his partner to resume the per-
formance of her proper duties ; but her nerves are
generally unequal to the task, and she postpones her
energies for a few weeks, until another nest is chosen
and duly filled with eggs. The devotion which
partridges frequently manifest to their eggs is quite a
touching feature of their life history. Take, for
example, the conduct of a hen partridge which was
found brooding her eggs upon a hedgeside in Perth-
shire. She was discovered: by some young school
children, one of whom lifted the old bird off her
nest, and carried her home in her apron to her
mother’s door, exhibiting the captive in childish glee,
unconscious of the enormity of her offence. The
bird had then been carried a distance of about a
mile from her nest, and was at once borne back in

e

LOVE AND COURTSHIP _ 33

os

like manner to her treasures and replaced upon ‘her
eggs. She showed no alarm, but resumed her
motherly duties forthwith, and in due time hatched
off a fine covey of tiny partridges. Such instances
could easily be multiplied, but the facts are already
too well substantiated to stand in any need of repe-
tition on the present occasion.

Much difference of opinion exists as to the bold-
ness or timidity of brooding partridges. Some birds
will allow a stranger to step up quietly to their nests
for a period of many successive days ; they seem to
comprehend that for themselves complete inaction
affords the best security. Such is really the case, and
very pretty the quiet creatures look as they cower
motionless, eyeing. the intruder intently enough with
their bright bead-like eyes, yet fearful to expose their
eggs to danger by any ill-considered or hasty move-
ment.

Some sportsmen think it unlucky to find a par-
tridge’s nest. Certainly it is best that the majority
of nests should escape attention altogether. The
chances of the young birds chipping the eggshells
successfully is materially increased by their complete
seclusion. The misfortunes which attend the dis-
covery of a nest of eggs are not difficult to under-
stand. If symptoms of human interference exist,

. D

34 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

as shown in broken twigs and trampled herbage, the
curiosity of stoats and other ground vermin is
arrested. Even a field mouse is curious to know
why any little change has occurred in his preserves ;
his peering eyes often discover a dickybird’s nest that
we had left, we had fancied, in perfect security. The
same principle applies to the nests of game-birds, and
all the more forcibly by reason of their being con-
stantly placed upon the ground. If a sad mishap has
befallen a clutch of eggs, and some of the number
have actually come to grief, the misfortune can best
be redeemed by such eggs as happen to have escaped
destruction being placed under the charge of a
domestic fowl. When the little fellows emerge into
the world, they soon learn to take care of themselves,
but the pupze of ants are requisite for their successful
rearing.

‘Two very different kinds of ant-hills supply the
eggs or ant-pupze to the young of game birds, and of
partridges in particular. First, there are the common
emmet heaps, or ant-hills, which are scattered all
over the land; go where you will, you find them.
These the birds scratch and break up, picking out
the eggs as they fall from the light soil of the heaps ;
the partridges work them easily. But the ant-eggs
proper—I am writing now from the game-preserving

LOVE AND COURTSHIP 35

point of view—come from the nests or heaps of the
great wood-ants, either the black or the red ants.
These are mounds of fir-needles, being, in many
instances, as large at the bottom in circumference
as a waggon wheel, and from two to three feet in
height ; even larger where they are very old ones.
They are found in fir woods, on the warm, sunny
slopes under the trees, as a rule pretty close to the
stems of the trees. The partridges and their chicks
do not visit these heaps, for they would get bitten to
death by the ferocious creatures. The keepers and
their lads procure the eggs of these, and a nice job it
is. A wood-pick, a sack, and a shovel are the imple-
ments required for the work. Round the men’s
gaiters or trousers leather straps are tightly buckled,
to prevent, if possible, the great ants from fixing on
them, as they will try to do, like bulldogs when the
heaps are harried. The top of the heap is shovelled
off, laying open the domestic arrangements of the ant-
heap, and showing also the alarmed and furious ants
trying to carry off their large eggs to a place of safety ;
but it is all in vain. Eggs and all they go into the
sack. In spite of every precaution, the ant-egg
getters do get bitten severely, for the ants would fix
anything.’ }
1 Pall Mall Magazine.

36 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

The young partridges reared by foster-parents
become most confiding and animated pets, taking
their place, if permitted, amongst the various species
which assemble in the yard of the home farm at
feeding time. ‘It is far better, however, that the wild
birds should be secured from accident, and allowed
to rear their young from the first, leading the chicks
to the best feeding grounds, and calling them to
secure any specially dainty morsels that they have
had the luck to disturb and drive out from their
hiding-places. The wiles and shifts which partridges
adopt in order to divert attention from their broods
are well known to the majority of people, and very
charming they must be confessed to be.

37

CHAPTER IV

AS CONCERNING PARTRIDGE-NESTS

Tuat May is, in ordinary seasons, the chief month
in which our English partridges lay their eggs will be
admitted by the majority of people. Yet, strange as
the circumstance appears to be, it happens now and
again that an old hen bird is shot on the stubble,
which proves, upon dissection, to contain a perfectly
formed egg, shelled and fully developed, though pre-
sumably unfertilised. It would be rash to suggest
that eggs of this description are laid ina nest. The
probability of their being dropped at random amounts
almost to a certainty, and is supported by what we
know of the usages of other species. Thus, the
sheldrake and the starling frequently drop unfertile
eggs—the former upon the salt marshes, the starling
upon the garden lawn. The significance of the fact
in the case of the partridge is sufficiently obvious.
It simply presages a case of early nesting, such as
actually occurs from time to time in different parts
of the country.

38 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

That partridges should deliberately elect to bring
forth a brood of delicate chicks in the middle of an
English winter sounds improbable enough ; but, after
all, it is the exception that proves the rule ; so the
very fact that records of partridges incubating during
the dead season are so difficult to enumerate, reminds
us that there is, normally, a very general uniformity
of practice amongst the nesting birds. Certainly the
exceptions are surprising enough. No one would
dream of looking for a partridge’s nest in December,
not even in the Isle of Wight or any other warm and
favoured situation in the south of England. Yet as
recently as the year 1891 a brood of partridge chicks
was discovered at Longframlington, in the county of
Northumberland, in the middle of January. Their
condition was the more remarkable because the
weather during which their incubation had been
accomplished was particularly broken and inclement.
Ih warm springs young partridges hatch out as early
as April and even March ; but such abnormal antici-
pation of reproduction is irregular, and even rare.

Not the least interesting point in the life history
of the partridge is the remarkable fecundity of the
female bird. Game-birds are generally prolific in the
production of eggs ; indeed, we may accept their free
laying as a rule of general application. The principle

SSENIL Cave,

ym tpe~

sweets =

i

PRGA

AS CONCERNING PARTRIDGE-NESTS 39

involved is the continuation of the species, which
can only be perpetuated at a loss. The reason for
this must be looked for in the risks attaching to the
rearing of the young birds, which are exposed to the
attacks of snakes and ground vermin by reason of
their terrestrial habits.

The number of eggs appears, likewise, to vary
with the conditions surrounding the reproduction of
the young. If the food supply be plentiful, and the
weather. propitious, the chances of a large number of
eggs being laid are naturally enhanced. The par-
tridge is so small a bird that we should hardly expect
her to cover more than a dozen eggs in her nest.
Sometimes the number falls, we admit, as low as six
or seven ; but such small clutches are generally the
result of a second laying. On the other hand, we
can vouch for such numbers as nineteen and twenty-
one eggs being laid and incubated by a single bird.
The precision with which every separate egg is packed
neatly into its own proper space in the nest is truly
marvellous. Sometimes two hen partridges lay in one
nest, when their combined contribution has been
known to reach a total of thirty-six, not including a
pheasant’s addition of a single egg—+hirty-one
chicks hatched out of the thirty-seven eggs, thirty of
the number being young partridges.

40 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

That pheasants and partridges often lay together
is known to most sportsmen ; sometimes the pheasant
hatches out the entire sitting, but this is rare. We
believe that in the great majority of those cases in
which a pheasant and partridge have laid together, it
is the smaller bird that discharges the maternal duties,
though not invariably so. The female partridge is,
at any rate, the wiser mother, and understands the
care of delicate chicks far better than her rival. It
does sometimes happen that a domestic fowl which has
straggled from a farm-yard joins company with a hen
partridge, or, rather, endeavours to oust the wild bird
from her claims. Such an arrangement is little in
harmony with the jealous temperament of the plucky
little partridge, which is pretty certain to evict the
newcomer from her home before her domestic affairs
have settled down. If the hen has laid several eggs
before the birds come to blows, she generally indulges
in a free scuffle to maintain her rights. On the other
hand, if only one or two eggs have been laid, the hen
is less determined in her intrusion, and deseris her
post more readily. The hen partridge, left to her own
devices, willingly hatches the eggs of the usurper, and
cares for the young chickens as tenderly as for her
own proper offspring, rearing the bantlings in the
fields together with her own young.

4S CONCERNING PARTRIDGE-NESTS 41

We have said nothing, hitherto, of the eggs of the
partridge, and, indeed, their delicate olive coloration
calls for little description or comment. But this olive
coloration is by no means invariable. In rare
instances the eggs of the partridge are white, or, in
other words, entirely devoid of colouring pigment, a
deficiency due, no doubt, to some abnormal suppres-
sion of the secretions of the mother at the time that
the egg was passing through the oviduct. A really
pretty variety is of a uniform pale blue, without any
blurring or surface-tracing, affording a graceful contrast
to the usual olive ground colour.

When at length the three weeks—during which
the development of the chicks is accomplished—have
terminated, and the tiny morsels of down chip the
interior of their egg-shells, preparatory to emerging
into independent life and action, the patience with
which the partridge has shielded her treasures from
harm is replaced by the fond anxiety with which she
and her faithful mate endeavour to provide for the
wants of their precocious family. As soon as the
chicks have dried their down, and recovered from
the helpless sprawling condition to which they are
momentarily reduced by the frantic efforts that they
have made to release their small bodies from the
shivered egg-shells, the old birds lead their nurslings

42 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

to safe cover ; as, for example, under the shelter of
some clumps of furze, that will screen them from
observation. The chicks mature rapidly, if the
weather is warm and kindly, with plenty of sunshine.
Of course, if the weather prove exceedingly hot, the
circumstances attending the rearing of the covey
become less favourable. On heavy clay soils the
earth is liable to contract and split into fissures,
which are veritable death-traps for partridge chicks.
Not the least interesting feature of the hatching-
out period in the life of the partridge is the courage
which it develops in both parents. During the incu-
bation of the eggs the birds only desired to escape
attention as far as possible, and to elude the acute-
ness of prowling fox or thievish crow. But their
shyness becomes transformed into audacity if their
tender young are jeopardised. The attentions of any
interfering biped may be diverted by the pretty
strategy that suggests itself to many nesting birds.
Even the little blackcap warbler will adopt the time-
honoured ruse of simulating the actions of a wounded
bird, with a view to draw a stranger away from the
shrub that contains its callow family in their simple
grassy nest. The earnestness with which a hen
blackcap will endeavour to convince her enemy that
she has become crippled by some untoward accident

AS CONCERNING PARTRIDGE-NESTS 43

as she flutters in the dust at his feet, is very delight-
‘ful to observe. Equally touching is the devotion
which induces a female shoveller to dash around the
enemy, whose presence in the reed thicket in which
her newly-hatched ducklings are skulking has dis-
turbed her peace of mind. Gallantly does she risk
her own safety for her brood, when her first attempt
to wheedle you into the belief that her young are
somewhere else has failed to obtain credit. Similarly,
if we startle a pair of partridges while engaged in
protecting their chicks, we are pretty certain to be
entertained with some charming attempt on their
part of perpetrating deception upon us. Rising from
the tall grass at our approach with startled cry, away
they scurry, as if in hot haste. But they do not fly
far ; no sooner have they traversed a safe distance
from their young than they check their course.
Alighting in the open field within full view of us,
they endeavour to persuade us that they are des-
perately wounded, and might be captured with a
little trouble. Male and female alike trail their
plumage through the dusty soil, in their resolution to
beguile us with their ingenious devices. Their distress
becomes intense if we capture and withhold their
youngsters,
But they have more dangerous enemies than man

44 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

to contend with. In olden days, the fork-tailed kite
used to carry off tiny partridges from their shelter in
the young corn, as we have seen the red bird essay
to do at the present time in Germany. Even the
dainty merlin will, on rare occasions, vary his usual
dietary of small birds, by carrying to his downy
falcons that lie crouching in the heather a delicate
little partridge. Sparrow-hawks and even kestrels
have a weakness for young game birds, though the
kestrel preys on voles and shrews almost exclusively.
Sometimes a pair of carrion crows descend from their
outpost in the top of a dead tree to make havoc of
a brood of partridges ; a bold defence then becomes
necessary to secure their rescue from the maw of the
rascally invader.

But even when no danger exists, or at any rate is
imminent, the partridge is ready to engage in a fray
on trifling provocation. The water-hen is no less
gamesome than its aristocratic neighbour, and often
exchanges blows with the partridges if thirst induce
them to enter its territory. As the summer advances,
it is pretty to watch the old partridges foraging with
their brood ; the cock bird half runs, half flies, while
the female ‘teaches her chicks to thread their way
through the long grass or waving corn, daintily picking
off the insects that, cling to the stems of the plants.

AS CONCERNING PARTRIDGE-NESTS 45

The hen partridge employs a low clucking call-note to
attract the attention of her young, which respond to her
endearments with a complacent purring sound, pitched
so low as to escape the ear of any but the most
attentive listener. One brilliant morning in July, an
angling friend was returning home from a night’s
trout-fishing ; feeling tired, he sat down behind a
rough stone dyke to rest and enjoy the solace of a
pipe. Scarcely had he taken up his position, when he
heard and recognised the cry of the young partridge.
Peering through the interstices of the wall, he saw a
pair of partridges and their young taking their
pleasure in the adjoining field, which happened to
be under clover. Unsuspicious of danger, the half-
grown birds were full of play, sparring freely with
their fellows as they made their way through the
Herbage. Early as the hour was, the old cock was
quite on the alert. No sooner did he detect a
symptom of danger, than he hastened to sound a
cluck of alarm, after which he rose upon the wing and
flew further afield. The old hen and the young
birds disappeared instantly—as if by magic—and
were seen no more. Indeed, we have often admired
the readiness of resource exhibited by young par-
tridges. Unable to elude pursuit by flight, each
individual acts by a common instinct or feeling of

46 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

self-preservation ; the acuteness with which they take
advantage of the best points of cover is wonderful to
recognise.

‘Once,’ says Mr. Warner, ‘in the month of June,
the mowers came across a partridge nest in the centre
of a clover field. In order to give the old birds every
chance of rearing their young, the men left a tuft
of herbage round the nest unshorn. The old birds
did not desert, but they evidently disliked the exposure
of their nest that had taken place. When obliged to
go away in search of food, they left together, and on
their return would pitch in the field within a few
yards of their nest. Having anxiously scanned the
view, the hen bird, still true to her love of conceal-
ment, crouched close to the ground, and crept quietly
back on to her eggs. When these hatched, the young
were at once led to a safer retreat.’ !

' Science Gosstp, 1873, p. 211.

47

CHAPTER V

PARTRIDGES AS PETS

THERE is a charm about the habits and actions of
many of our native birds which renders it pleasant
to detain individual specimens in captivity. Some
species, it is true, are little suited to bear confine-
ment ; either they chafe at the involuntary loss of
their liberty, or they retain their natural fear of man,
and resist all efforts intended to win their confidence.
With the grey partridge itis otherwise. Domesticated
partridges are, generally speaking, birds that have
been brought up undera domestic hen. This was the
case with a covey of nine birds which Mr. James
Hutchings reared under a little bantam. The birds
grew with great rapidity, and enjoyed a regular supply
of insect food. The bantam hen was a kind and
watchful foster-mother, and the covey seemed as fond
of her and as obedient to her call as if she had been
the parent bird. For some three weeks they were
confined to a crib and pitched courtyard, but their

48 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

owner, finding that the chicks responded well to the
clucking of the hen, and would also readily run
together to be fed in answer to his own call, they
were allowed to enter a garden with their adopted
parent. Enjoying a more ample and varied supply of
food than would probably have fallen to their share
in a wild state, the birds matured beautifully, and
were full-grown by the middle of August. About
the end of July, the attachment between the hen and
her charges began to wane. The partridges exhibited
no uneasiness at being separated from the bantam.
They continued to obey the call of their owner until
the end of August, when they frequently strayed toa
greater distance than his voice carried. On these
occasions they would visit the neighbouring fields for
several hours at a time, but would return with a
sudden rush into the courtyard, making two or three _
excursions into the surrounding country during the
day, until the middle of September. At length a
day of unusual warmth and beauty came. The
morning was hazy, but about ten the sun burst out
with unusual splendour, while huge volumes of mist
rolled away in silvery grandeur, rising high into the
glowing atmosphere. It was then that the partridges,
which had been fed at 8 a.m., clustered together,
fluttered their wings, made a soft cluck-cluck-clucking

PARTRIDGES AS PETS 49

sound, and rising on the wing with their charac-
teristic whirr, swept away across the fields and out of
sight. The noon came and went, but the birds did
not return. Mr. Hutchings instituted an anxious
search for them in their favourite fields, but to no
purpose.

‘TI heard,’ he writes, ‘the reports of guns in a dis-
tant field, which awoke me to a full consciousness of
the jeopardy of my pets. Three, four, five .o’clock
came, yet my birds did not. The sun began to cast
his beams of golden hue over the tops of the trees in
the distant wood, but no sound of my covey assailed
my listening ears. A little before sunset my doubts
and anxiety grew into something like a certainty that
my covey had been half killed and the rest scattered,
and the one that made the odd number, whichever
that might be, was panting with agony, feeling the
torture of a broken leg or wing, or both, dying of un-
known quantities of pain under some unsympathising
clod, when suddenly a whirring in the air scattered
my fears, and in a moment the whole covey swept just
over our heads and settled in the courtyard, with a
rush and flurry that made us all jump with delight.
In a few minutes the whole covey went into their
domicile and were made prisoners for life.’?

1 Field, Oct. 1, 1881.

50 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

Our own experience could furnish other instances
in which partridges have proved highly amenable to
domestication.

Mr. T. H. Nelson mentions two hand-reared birds
which lived in a walled garden, following the gardener
about during the performance of his duties, and even
allowing strangers to approach within a yard of them.
Originally, these birds roosted in the garden ; but,
after having been alarmed by a cat, they acquired the
habit of flying out to roost; returning, however, at
daylight to receive their breakfast.

It is not very surprising, after all, that birds reared
under a domestic fowl should attach themselves to those
who care for them. But even birds that have known
the joys of freedom from the time that they chipped
the egg-shells as tiny chicks, are susceptible to kindly
influences if captured adult. We refer especially to
birds that have been taken alive owing to some
unwonted circumstance. Thus a pair which Mr. G.
Stone saved out of a covey, which had been caught in
a town, became very tame when turned into a walled
garden, and soon learnt to attend an open window
when the hour of feeding them arrived.

Oddly enough, there are well-authenticated in-
stances of partridges voluntarily attaching themselves
to the neighbourhood of human beings. Thus, in

PARTRIDGES AS PETS 5r

January, 1890, during severe weather, a hen partridge
found her way into an outlying shed on a Surrey farm
where a few fowls were kept, and, making friends with
them, shared the food thrown to them daily. 'The
cock bird was too shy to do the same, but was always
seen skirting from thirty to forty yards off. The hen
bird so completely lost the fear of man as to take food
from the hand of the bailiff. When the month of April
arrived, and nesting operations became imperative,
this hen partridge disappeared with her mate and was
thought to have gone for good; but when August
came round she reappeared, so no doubt she had had
her nest, satisfactorily reared her brood, and deserted
them when full-grown. She at once resumed her
suspended relations with the poultry, keeping them in
rigid discipline, scolding and driving them away if
they attempted to interfere with her feeding.

A highly practical use for tame partridges kept
in freedom was discovered by the late Mr. Francis
Francis, who kept three tame birds on his place near
High Wycombe, and found them ‘very useful z# Aeep-
ing a good stock of birds close at home. They seemed
to encourage the other birds to come close round the
premises, and coveys constantly jugged in my garden
and orchard. I have constantly seen one or two

‘ HLS.C., Fveld, February 7, 1891.

52 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

coveys; I once counted twenty-four on my lawn
within ten yards of the house. It was a pretty sight.
One would see two or three rabbits, one or two
perhaps just peeping out of the green shrubs or
hopping about the lawn, or perhaps gravely sitting up
and prospecting, while the partridges slowly pecked
their way onward ; now and then one would stop to
stretch a wing, or scratch the back of his head with
his foot, a curious habit with partridges ; then one or
two would suddenly crouch down as close as possible
to the turf, and others would stretch themselves up
to their full height, looking round alarmed ; then, a
sudden scurry would take place, and away they would
all run like racers, into the shrubberies or down into
the ha-ha. The rabbits, catching the alarm, would
pop into the geraniums or shrubs out of sight. A
stray squirrel or two, mayhap, seized also with the
panic, would scurry away up out of sight into the tall
firs ; while half-a-dozen blackbirds and thrushes, which
had been industriously occupied with the worms and
grubs, would twitter off to some favourite thorn-bush
or evergreen until the alarm had subsided. Presently,
after ten minutes of quiet, one partridge would run
out, then another, and another ; then a rabbit would
peep out from amongst the tall geraniums, and seeing
all secure, would hop out and commence nibbling the

PARTRIDGES AS PETS 53

short sweet grass ; the whole of the partridges would
come back perhaps in detachments; the squirrels
would reappear, the thrushes and blackbirds come
twit, twitting, out—and a very pretty busy scene ensue,
which I have watched for hours. I once produced a
perfect furore in the mind of a cockney sporting friend
who came to see me, by showing him a score of
partridges on the lawn, not a dozen yards from him.
Calling him out of bed to see them, he could hardly
believe his eyes. Tremendous was his excitement.
He wanted to get his gun immediately, and to take a
family shot at them out of the window, and felt him-
self really injured when I informed him that I never
allowed a gun to be fired at them on any considera-
tion. I considered it one of the greatest charms of
the country life to have them, almost tame, about me,
and they seemed quite to understand that they were
safe on my premises.’

54 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

CHAPTER VI

THE COLOURS OF PARTRIDGES

THE plumage of the partridge varies in shade in
different localities. Speaking broadly, birds bred on
high, poor land tend to become small in size and
grey in colour, while such as are reared in highly
farmed districts are often large and highly coloured.
The partridge has the forehead, throat, and two sides
of the head, chestnut ; the upper parts exhibit a har-
monious blend of russet brown and grey, varied with
dark bars and buffstreaks. The rump and upper tail
coverts are ‘pepper and salt,’ set off to great advan-
tage by rich rufous markings. The tail is pure chest-
nut red, with the exception of the central feathers.
The breast is grey, finely barred with black ; the
abdomen is white, adorned with a blackish chest-
nut horse-shoe. The distinctions which mark the
sexes of this bird have been variously described by
authors. Mr. Ogilvie Grant, who has made the study
of game birds peculiarly his own, recently devoted

THE COLOURS OF PARTRIDGES 55

some time to elucidating the plumage of partridges,
publishing the results of his labours in the ‘ Field’ of
November 21, 1891, from which we quote the sub-
stance of his remarks,

Mr. Grant finds that the only trustworthy charac-
teristics by which a male partridge may always be dis-
tinguished from a female, except when very young,
are the following :

t. In the male, the sides of the neck are brownish
grey, or nearly pure slate colour, with fine wavy lines
of black ; none of the feathers have pale buff stripes
down the shaft. In the female these parts are olive-
brown, and almost all the feathers have a pale buff
stripe down the shaft, often somewhat dilated or club-
shaped towards the extremity, and finely margined
with black

2. In the male, the ground colour of the terminal
half of the lesser and medium wing coverts is pale
olive-brown, with a chestnut patch on one or both
webs, and each feather has a narrow pale buff shaft-
stripe, and narrow, wavy transverse black lines. In
the female, the ground colour of these parts is mostly
black, shading into buff towards the extremity ; each
feather has a fairly wide buff shaft-stripe, and is also
transversely barred with buff, narrowly edged with
black. The buff cross-bars on the wing coverts are

56 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

of an unmistakable character, and quite sufficient
to distinguish the hen at a glance. The partridge
assumes the adult plumage of these parts at the first
moult ; consequently, the distinctions pointed out by
Mr. Grant are strongly marked in the majority of birds
before the beginning of the shooting season.

Mr. Grant’s researches go to prove, also, that the
horse-shoe mark on the breast is found in birds of
both sexes, although it is more liable to vary in size in
the female than in the male. In the great majority
of young female birds examined the horse-shoe
mark was well developed, although in some it was
represented by a few chestnut spots. In the old
female birds the contrary obtains. In the great
majority of old hens, the chestnut horse-shoe is
represented by a small patch of chestnut mixed with
white. Sometimes the chestnut entirely disappears,
giving place to a pure white horse-shoe.

Black varieties of the partridge are exceedingly
rare. Mr. H. A. Digby records two melanistic
examples obtained in 1891 and in 1888 respectively.
Of these, the first was ofa very dark colour, ‘ the neck,
breast and legs looking exactly as if the bird had
been covered with soot, which had been washed off
leaving all the light feathers slate-coloured, and the
head very dark, the horse-shoe being of the natural

THE COLOURS OF PARTRIDGES 57

colour.’! Reddish varieties are comparatively scarce,
but Mr. Borrer once met with a covey of eight, every
bird of which was of a light fawn colour. A well-
known variety which crops up from time to time
in Great Britain is the form which the late Sir
W. Jardine designated Perdix montana. It occurs
plentifully enough in the Vosges Mountains, but has
received but little notice in this country.

Writing in the ‘Field’ of September 30, 1893,
Mr. W. B. Tegetmeier records a bird of this variety,
which came under his notice in the autumn of 1893.
It had been shot on September 25, in the neighbour-
hood of Stourbridge, out of a covey of partridges
of the ordinary colour, from which it was readily
distinguished. ‘The head and upper part of the
neck are of a lighter brown than in the common
bird » the lower part o the neck, upper part of the
breast, the flanks, the back, and the wing coverts are
dark reddish ferruginous brown ; the feathers of the
upper wing coverts having a central narrow stripe of
light brown. There is an entire absence of the slatey
grey character of P. cinerea. On the sternum the
feathers are light buff, each being tipped with two dark
brown circular spots, one on each side of the central
shaft. The feathers of the legs and vent are buff; the

! Field, February 7, 1891.

58 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

tail had been shot away ; the tarsi and feet are pale
brownish-yellow.’

In the autumn of 1876, six birds of this variety
were shot at Glasshough, near Partsoy, N.B., in the
month of October, and fell into the hands of Mr.
George Sim, of Aberdeen. Mr. Sim stated that the
females, of which there were four, were all alike in
plumage, being brown on the breast, while the upper
parts are beautifully marked with transverse bars of
light brown over a ground colour of drab, the brown
being of greater density in some individuals than in
others. The males differed markedly from the females,
having a preponderance of the rich grouse-like chest-
nut-brown on the back as well as on the breast.

In the year 1868, the late Mr. Robert Gray saw
in the hands of a Dundee bird-stuffer a pair of par-
tridges that had been shot on the higher grounds
of Forfarshire a short time previously. They were
strikingly handsome birds, and agreed precisely with
the partridge figured by Sir William Jardine as Perdix
cinerea, var. montana. ‘The keeper who shot them
distinguished them as ‘hill partridges,’ and Mr. Gray
was informed that small numbers of this variety were
occasionally seen in the lower grounds, mixing with
coveys of the common species. Mr. J. A. Harvie
Brown suggested that the variation of the Forfarshire

THE COLOURS OF PARTRIDGES 59

birds ‘had been induced by food, looking at the
almost perfect grouse-like colour, especially of the
male.’

Mr. J. E. Harting has recorded the occurrence of
a similar bird in Northumberland, and others, which
must apparently be referred to the same variety, were
secured by the late Mr. John Hancock. ‘A remark-
able feature in the colour of this variety,’ wrote Mr.
Hancock, ‘is the entire absence of the grey ash tint
that so agreeably diversifies the neutral colouring of
the normal plumage. The whole of the head and
neck is of a pale buff or chestnut, similar to that of
the front of the head and neck of the ordinary bird ;
the upper parts are a dark red-brown, each feather
having the shaft pale and the extremity with a large
spot of obscure white ; the upper tail coverts are pale
chestnut like the head, with dark brown bands ; the
tail feathers are of the same chestnut colour, but
darker than those of the normal bird ; the under-tail
coverts are brown clouded with darker colour. The
whole of the under parts is of a uniform dark chestnut
colour, as if the usual horse-shoe mark had been
extended ; on the breast in front, where this dark
brown meets the pale chestnut or buff on the neck, it
is not abruptly defined, but breaks into it irregularly ;
the thighs are pale obscure buff, and so are the feathers

60 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

of the vent.’ The description just given was taken
from a male specimen. Mr. Hancock adds that ‘the
dark rich brown colour of these birds suggests at first
sight the opinion that they may be hybrids between
the partridge and red grouse, but on a more careful
examination there is nothing to confirm this.’

Pale buff varieties of the partridge are not very
infrequently met with in collections. Birds in which
the horse-shoe is pale brown and the body plumage a
very pale bluish or stone grey are shot from time to
time in England ; they have been met with likewise
in Ireland. In all the ‘blue’ partridges that we have
personally seen, the chestnut colour of the forehead
and throat had been replaced by cream colour.

Pure white and pied partridges have been met
with in Great Britain on many occasions. Some of
the number have been real albinos, in which the
characters of a blanched white dress and red irides
occurred together. By far the larger proportion of
white birds are examples of Zeucotism, if we may be
allowed to employ the phrase long ago brought into
use by the late Mr. Edward Blyth to explain the
conjunction of pure white plumage and irides of
the normal colour. Mr. A. Hasted recorded, in the
‘Zoologist’ of 1892, the occurrence of two white
partridges in a single covey. ‘On the wing they both

THE COLOURS OF PARTRIDGES 61

appeared to be quite white, but on closer inspection
the brown markings on the plumage were faintly
traceable under the white, the birds having the ap-
pearance of having been washed over with a thin
coating of white paint. The markings were stronger
in the bird shot on October 15 than in that shot on
October 3. The legs of both were of a lighter colour
than those of the ordinary brown bird, and the eyes
were of a bright red colour.’ By a curious co-
incidence, no fewer than e/even white partridges were
hatched on a property near Croydon in the summer of
1881, five being hatched in one nest, a single bird in
another, two in a third, and three in a fourth. Ten of
the number were reared to maturity, when nine of them
were shot. Mr. P. Crowley examined one of the nine
the morning after it had been shot, and found the legs
of a dirty straw colour, and the eyes a pale grey-blue
with no distinct pupil. An interesting question is sug-
gested, as to how far the characters of albinism or leu-
cotism are liable to become hereditary. Unfortunately,
very few albinos or leucotic individuals live long enough
to give naturalists an opportunity of investigating the
characters transmitted to their descendants. There
cannot, however, be the least doubt that heredity
plays an important part in these matters, at least so
far as passerine birds are concerned ; we believe that

62 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

the same is true of other orders. Mr. J. Brodie Innes
furnished the following note, which bears upon the
point under consideration, to the ‘ Zoologist’ :—
‘Some years ago, among a brood of common
brown partridges on my home-farm, there was one
white one. The little bird interested not only me,
but my grieve and his children, who took so much
interest in it that if they saw the covey go off the
farm they used to drive them back; and lest it
should be killed or lost, I forbade shooting on the
farm. At the proper season it paired with a brown
bird, and the result was five white and several brown
birds. They were so purely white as to be easily
distinguished on the ground from white pigeons by
their purity. Again I took care of them. One was
killed by a poacher and found its way to a bird-
stuffer in Elgin, from whom it was taken by Captain
Dunbar Brander, of Seapark, on whose manors it had
been poached. I believe he has it still. The other
fowl survived the season and paired—two white ones
together, and the other two with brown ones. I
hoped. for a good number the next season, but they
all disappeared and there have been none since. I
should not have been surprised if they had all gone
at once in a covey, for they might have been netted
in spite of my keepers ; but they were in pairs, and

THE COLOURS OF PARTRIDGES 63

with growing crops I could not account for it.’
Probably, the birds in question were systematically
killed off by hawks, their conspicuous colour
rendering them peculiarly exposed to their natura]
enemies.

Partridges with white wing quills, and even with
white markings about the head, occasionally come
under the observation of sportsmen. Such birds
seldom call for much remark, but some pied birds
are really interesting. One bird, for instance, killed
in Scotland some years ago, had every fifth or sixth
feather pure white, so that the bird appeared to be
variegated with flakes of snow. We may here remark
that exceptionally dark and rich-coloured specimens
of the partridge have sometimes been met with,
which were considered by sportsmen to be half-bred.
The Rev. M. A. Mathew states that he came
across such birds, and regarded them as melanistic
varieties ; they. appeared to be slightly larger than
the ordinary bird, and darker than the little dark
partridges one is familiar with on the Scotch moors.
The late Mr. Stevenson was of opinion that the
common partridge did occasionally interbreed with
the red-legged species. He assigned to this cross a
bird killed in Norfolk in October 1850 ; the feathers
on. the flanks and wing coverts of this specimen were

64 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

decidedly French, as were the legs and part of the
head ; but the breast, back, tail, and upper part of
the head resembled those parts in the English bird.
M. Suchetet, who has devoted much time to the
investigation of hybrid birds, considers the inter-
breeding of the red-legged partridge and our bird as
being imperfectly verified. Nevertheless, he cites the
evidence of Monsieur Duvarnet, a member of the
Société d’Acclimatation, who purchased an apparent
hybrid of this description from a poultry stall. ‘Its
beak and legs were red. The feathers of the flanks
were those of the red-legged partridge, although
rather duller than usual. The wings and the re-
mainder of the feathers of the body were those of the
grey partridge, and slightly warmer in tint than
usual.’ It may be pertinent to add that another
member of the Société d’Acclimatation discovered
the eggs of the red-legged and common partridges
in the same nest, showing that the two species are
not as indifferent to one another’s society as might
be supposed. M. Suchetet is disposed to think that
the common partridge has at any rate interbred with
one of the red-legged partridges, ze. with the rock
partridge (Perdix saxattlis).

Such a debateable subject as the weight of any
game bird would afford food for many opinions in the

THE COLOURS OF PARTRIDGES 65

gun-room. Our own experience is that thirteen
ounces is a fair average weight for young birds in
good condition. Mr. Tegetmeier says that twelve
ounces is about the usual weight. He has, however,
recorded a much heavier bird, a young male, which
turned the scales at seventeen ounces. This bird
had been killed by Mr. Mann’s shooting party in
the north-west of Norfolk, and was obtained on Sep-
tember 26.!

1 Field, October 7, 1893

66 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

CHAPTER VII

POACHING PARTRIDGES

THE netting of partridges appears to the average
Englishman to be quite as heinous a crime as it would
be voted by any French Javon ; yet there was a time,
and that not so very long ago, when any county
magnate would have cheerfully lent his presence to
the pastime of dragging the fields for these birds.
Such a trifling matter as the expense of making a net
for taking game was sure to be recorded in the
accounts of any ancient house whose head cared for
‘sport.’ A single entry from the accounts of the
Lestranges of Hunstanton may suffice for an ex-
ample. Among the expenses of ‘the Mill, Bac-
house, Brewhouse, and Kechyn’ for the year
1533-34, an entry stands: ‘Itm pd the iij¢ day
of November for ij lb of twyn for the ptriche nett
4 s. xd. It is clear, therefore, that our forefathers
did not content themselves with taking game with
their hawks and crossbows, but had recourse to more

POACHING PARTRIDGES 67

destructive measures, such as those that have sur
vived into our own times, and may be perpetuated
for many a long day.

Our own views of game-preserving are too strongly
coloured with inherited prejudice to admit of oui
viewing the netting of the birds as a trifling mis-
demeanour ; but while we make the most of our
rights as game-preservers, truth compels us to admit
that our rights to game were at one time allowed
to remain pretty much in abeyance. Before the
commons were so generally enclosed, country folk
roamed pretty much where they chose in the more
remote districts. The fact is that few men possessed
serviceable guns, and still fewer of the number could
shoot a bird in flight. Any one who made shooting
his chief pastime could find plenty of scope for the
indulgence of his tastes, as well as for supplying some
items of variety to his neighbour’s larder. The best
shot in a district came to be looked on as one whose
skill entitled him to respect, and if he was hail-fellow-
well-met, he seldom came acrossarepulse. Strangers
were always regarded with more or less suspicion,
especially among the reserved ‘statesmen ’ of the north
of England, but they often fared well, even without
introductions.

A few years before the death of that good

F2

68 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

naturalist, John Hancock, the veteran described to
us a visit which he paid to the English Lake district
when quite a young man.

Both Mr. Hancock and the friend who accom-
panied him carried guns, and shot as occasion sug-
gested, without regard to any private rights. No man
hindered them. They were as welcome as any one
else to try their luck ; no restriction was placed upon
their liberty either; they wandered at their will
through the dales and over the hill-sides of Lake-
land, choosing their own course as fancy might
dictate. And there were gamekeepers in those days.
As early as 1767 a gamekeeper resided at Greystoke
Castle, and was recognised as a dependent of the
house. Doubtless his craft was chiefly devoted to de-
stroying the long-bodied greyhound foxes that came
stealing down from their mountain fastnesses to wreak
havoc on the tender lambs of Herdwick race. At all
events, it was not his business to be over-nice, par-
ticularly provided there was a fair show of game in
the Howard domains.

Of course when country squires began to turn
down pheasants, and even to rear them artificially,
the free-and-easy relations that we have just de-
scribed came to an end, at least as far as the
openly avowed pursuit of game by ‘Bill the shooter,’

POACHING PARTRIDGES 69

was concerned. It is always hard, however, to
unlearn the devices upon which we depended for
amusement in youth. What mattered it that prudence
warned Bill that it were best to keep on a pleasant
footing with ‘t’ squire’? However willing Bill might
be in the main to forego his beloved forays, the Old
Adam within him must inevitably experience a special
hankering after forbidden fruit, and human nature
being what it is, a lapse of his good resolution was
pretty certain to occur in the long run.

A recent writer has informed us that the old stamp
of rural poacher has become well-nigh as extinct as
the Dodo itself. In some districts he is seen, we
admit, less frequently than formerly. In spite, how-
ever, of the spread of education and diffusion of
enlightened ideas, we doubt whether the typical
poacher is really much scarcer than formerly, in ratio
at least to the decreasing population of rural com-
munities. The old dogged type of brutal poacher has,
perhaps, become scarce, but his tastes and predi-
lections have been transmitted to his descendants.
There are plenty of families who treasure the details
of their forefathers’ craft and endeavour to reproduce
the traditions of those who went before them with all
seriousness of purpose.

In the Highlands of Scotland the vast majority

70 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

of the population acquiesce willingly enough in the
preservation of partridges and other feathered game ;
although, if the truth were known, we suspect that
‘Donald’ often finds the temptation to appropriate
to his own use the covey of partridges that have
been reared upon his croft too strong for human
nature to resist successfully. Latterly, a certain sec-
tion of the pious agitators who have done so much
to demoralise the minds of the lower-class Scotch
have hit upon the ingenious expedient of claiming
that all feathered game belongs to the small tenants
of the soil. But, after all, the fault of breaking the
tenth commandment lies at the door of some of our
most eminent statesmen, and poaching partridges is,
in truth, a venial sin compared with the robbing of
churches or defrauding owners of property of the
legitimate returns of their capital.

We have seldom found the poacher to be a man
of much mental cultivation. You would fancy that
he possessed a perfect wealth of woodland law, but
erroneously. Individual poachers, like our Essex
friend, do acquire a marvellously correct knowledge
of the habits of all woodland creatures, whether they
carry fur or feather, and can interpret to you the
cries of every animal to be found within their
favourite haunts. But the typical poacher is a

POACHING PARTRIDGES 71

specialist. He cannot afford, he thinks, to waste
time and trouble on matters connected only indirectly
with his hobbies. If he means business, he ignores
the existence of any creatures except those which
he plans to capture. His opportunities for obtaining
a close acquaintance with natural history in the fields
remain all uncultivated. It must not be supposed,
however, that his knowledge of his own particular
science is superficial. Even if his calculations are
sometimes at fault, he is generally more than a match
for the average game-watcher ; nor does he expose
himself to any charge of half-heartedness, but works
his wicked will with grim determination. Keepers,
on the other hand, though excellent fellows in the
main, are usually too much concerned in rearing a
big show of game to exercise their thoughts on
matters external to their trade.

Mr. Borrer tells an amusing tale of a culprit
being haled before a bench of rural magistrates on a
charge of having appropriated a partridge’s egg. The
witness, a gamekeeper, had in his hand a chaffinch’s
nest, containing several small bird’s eggs and a large
white one. The chairman told him to hand up the
nest to him, and asked which was the partridge’s egg.
‘The big ‘un,’ replied the keeper, with contemptuous
assurance ; on which he was asked whether he could

72 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

swear to a partridge’s egg when he saw it, and he was
very indignant. The chairman, however, taking a
pair of scissors from his pocket, deliberately cut open
the egg, and, producing a young dabchick, set it
upon the desk, observing : ‘There’s your partridge
for you!’.to the great amusement of the court and
the discomfiture of the keeper. The case was, of
course, dismissed, the chairman recommending the
witness to learn his business before again practising
his profession. .

The poacher requires greater shrewdness than the
keeper, if he is to exercise his vocation with profit as
well as with impunity. It is his business, first and
foremost, to net or snare the partridges or other game
that he requires for the market. Success can only be
obtained by close attention to business. An amateur
would be sure to exercise his ingenuity to little
purpose. Even the bird-catchers who drag the downs
of the South Coast with ground-nets for larks in-
cidentally secure a few partridges in the meshes
of their old-fashioned fowling engines. A scientific
poacher leaves as little as possible to chance. He
scorns the idea of shunning danger, being willing and
ready to run certain hazards in carrying out his
schemes. Before he enters upon any serious opera-
tion, he selects his ground and makes himself master

POACHING PARTRIDGES 73

of all the short cuts. He knows, too, all the obstacles
that might impede a hasty flight. Sometimes he
turns his attention to farm lands bordering on large
towns ; more often he journeys further afield, making
mental notes of a practical character as a preparation
to the initiation of a fresh campaign. His arrange-
ments are often brought to a head in the parlour of
some innocent-looking public-house. The tastes of the
proprietor probably include a weakness for sport in
the abstract, and he acquiesces sympathetically in the
eccentricities of his patrons. Nor is this altogether
surprising, if we consider that a plump hare or a
brace of young partridges would form an acceptable
addition to his Sunday dinner. Indeed, we strongly
suspect that in his early days our host himself occa-
sionally figured in transactions of a dubious kind. A
hint of this may be found in the homely construc-
tion of the walking-stick gun which hangs from the
oaken beam in the kitchen; while, if further proof be
needed, the adroitness with which our landlord takes
the weapon to pieces, and stows it in his capacious
pockets, argues something more than a chance ac-
quaintance with its mechanism.

The task of marking down coyeys of partridges is
often facilitated by a hint from some local worthy
who has a grudge to pay off against a discarded

74 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

employer. But the artist does most of his own
scouting, smoking a short clay pipe under the shelter
of green lanes without incurring a shadow of suspicion.
The presence of a stranger in any quiet neighbour-
hood is apt to excite attention, it is true ; but our
friend has no desire to court publicity : on the con-
trary, he usually errs on the side of modesty, or, if
challenged, is ready with an ingenious tale which
more than accounts for his presence. In reality, his
best attention is devoted to ascertaining the precise
haunts of the different coveys, with a view to economis-
ing labour and reducing the risk of possible discovery.
It wouldn’t answer his purpose to go out netting
partridges unless he knew precisely the corner of the
field in which a covey of partridges were sure to
‘jug’ for the night. Their movements are learnt
partly by observation, partly by the harsh call-note
of the leader of the covey, since his authority is
supreme.

Another consideration which enters into the cal-
culations of the poacher is the device of studding the
surface of fields with stakes. A delicate net would
soon be rendered useless if it came into contact with
a quantity of briars. The poacher operates in such a
manner as to reduce the risks of failure toa minimum.
His engine is a light net generally measuring about

POACHING PARTRIDGES 75

thirty yards in length and ten in depth. Such is the
average size. A more deadly engine is forty yards
long and measures in depth twelve yards. In either
case it is made with a two-inch-square mesh. The
material of which the net is constructed varies with
the nature of the ground. Where the land is much
bushed, the net in general use is made of strong pack-
thread, but a favourite material is silk. The latter is
of course more expensive than pack-thread, but it is
lighter and stronger. It has also a special advantage,
that it occupies less space than the thread net, and
can be wound round the body without awakening any
unkind suspicions. In either case a heavy cord is
attached to the bottom of the net to keep it on the
ground. Some men attach pieces of lead to the
bottom of the net when purposing to drag any
rough land: this expedient is most often put into
practice when stubble fields are the scenes of opera-
tion. A cord is fastened to each end of the net, which
must be worked by at least two persons ; a third
assistant often facilitates the labours of the two prin-
cipals. As a rule poachers choose grass and clovet
fields for their nocturnal incursions, especially if the
ground is broken and somewhat undulating.
Partridges prefer to roost on gentle elevations. It
might be supposed that the finer the night the better

96 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

the sport would be ; but such is not the case in actual
fact. The rougher the night, the more favourable are
the chances, both of success in securing a large
bag, and of eluding the attention of any curious
observer.

Innocence marks the poacher’s line of policy. If
surprised during the hours of daylight in a compro-
mising position, the real professional knows his cue
only too well ; he was looking for ferns, or gathering
a few blackberries to take to the missis, and meets
any awkward enquiries with the composure of injured
innocence. When actually operating, the poacher is
on his mettle, and must on no account bungle his
business. If the night is stormy, the birds are pretty
sure to lie close. In any case extreme caution is in-
dispensable to success. Many poachers deaden the
sound of their footfall by pulling a pair of old stockings
over their boots. Their knowledge of the probable
location of each covey enables them to go direct
to their usual roost. If stakes are likely to hinder
operations they are rooted up, to be replaced after
the programme of the evening has been completed.
It has been explained to us that the delicate attention
implied in the replanting of the bushes temporarily
removed is a tacit acknowledgment of the rights of
property. It has the further merit of allaying unneces-

POACHING PARTRIDGES 77

sary suspicion, so that in the event of an operation
proving unsuccessful it may be repeated.

When the game is over and the birds have been
stowed away in a bag, great caution is still necessary,
as it is quite impossible to say when or where a
member of the county constabulary may appear in
evidence. Extreme prudence is second nature to a
professional poacher. He is never in a hurry to dis-
pose of the spoil. Often the results of a successful
evening are stowed away in some thick cover, where
nobody would think of looking for them, and the
poacher returns home empty-handed, looking the very
embodiment of innocence. The ruses by which
poachers evade detection are legionary. Sometimes
one of the gang walks on in front of his mates, un-
hampered by any compromising impedimenta. Should
any suspicious circumstances intervene, the poacher
whistles the call-note of a golden plover, or some
other wild bird ; if that hint fails he strikes a fusee,
nominally to light his pipe, but in reality as a secret
signal to his companions.

Assuming that the operations of an evening have
met with successful issue, the fraternity have still
to dispose of their booty. This is effected by an
arrangement with a game-dealer at a distance, or
through the agency of some local carrier ; the latter

78 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

gentlemen are responsible for the freightage of a
variety of goods. It may not be inappropriate to
instance here a recent experience, albeit not concerned
with partridges. A fellside farmer captured a raven
in a trap set for a mountain fox. The man of flocks
seized the bird and struck its head against a stone.
The lifeless body was then rolled up in brown
paper and committed to the charge of an itinerant
carrier who chanced to call that day. The parcel
was duly delivered at the birdstuffer’s. When the
package was opened, out hopped Mr. Raven,
who, having recovered from a momentary swoon,
flew on to the kitchen table and proclaimed his
return to the upper world with a harsh unmusical
croak.

Carriers of the Barkis type are nothing loth to
earn an extra shilling by the porterage of parcels
which, if examined officially, might not unfairly be
deemed contraband. They are in touch with local
shopkeepers and willingly act as middlemen. But if
the poacher has arranged a contract with a game-
dealer like-minded to himself, the modus operandi is
enormously facilitated. The game-dealer is happy to
supply his agents with his own printed labels convey-
ing the terms of his licence to deal in game. All
that is necessary, under such circumstances, is for the

POACHING PARTRIDGES 79

poacher tocarrya sack of partridges to a strange station,
and there to book the goods to the dealer, attaching the
‘printed labels of a licensed dealer in game as the most
effectual means of allaying inconvenient suspicion.
Sometimes the birds are packed in soap-boxes and
consigned to some small general dealer. Others call in
the assistance of their womankind, who carry the birds
‘to wash’ in baskets of foul linen, or stow them in the
trunk of the ‘ servant girl,’ who is going out to a ‘new
place.’

A more open method of securing the sale of
poached partridges is to impress the co-operation of
some individual who himself shoots a few acres, and
takes out a gun licence to serve as a blind which may
cover other irregularities. Such a man does not
hesitate to add a score or two of netted partridges
to the single brace which honestly fell to his own gun
the previous day. Some game-dealers have a private
entrance for early visitors, approached by some more
or less circuitous route on the plea of feeding the pigs
or filling a bucket with spring water. If the normal
means of despatching game are suspended, recourse
must be had to itinerant hawkers, many of whom are
adroit enough at bartering away poached game in the
prosecution of their ordinary traffic.

The trade in live partridges has received consider-

80 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE

able stimulus from those who purchase large quantities
of partridges for turning down upon their private
estates. Such birds are professedly of foreign origin,
but a large percentage are supplied by the home
counties of England.

Before we take final leave of this subject, it may
be remarked that there are other methods of poach-
ing partridges besides netting; notably, snares are
employed for taking partridges, especially when
snow is lying on the ground, and the birds are
hungrily seeking food nearer the homesteads than
is ordinarily the case. Farm labourers are the chief
culprits in this respect. Snares are so easily set during
the performance of other duties that they often escape
the notice of keepers and landowners, and prove
highly remunerative to those who’ use them. In the
North of England especially, the country folk have a
happy knack of making snares.

When the sand grouse visited England in 1888, a
country hind volunteered to snare a whole flock of
these beautiful species upon the ground on which

they were accustomed to roost, and, if permitted,
would certainly have carried his suggestion to a
successful issue. Such a fate actually befell a whole
covey of partridges, which had had the misfortune
to alight within the precincts of a county prison ; it

POACHING PARTRIDGES 81

was in the old days, when local gaols were managed
by the magistrates, and the officials enjoyed greater
freedom of action than would be tolerated nowadays
The governor of that prison had a weakness for
partridges. One of his charges was similarly affected.
Accordingly the governor ordered the wily old
poacher to proceed to set snares for the birds. That
worthy was nothing loth to exercise his favourite
trade; and between the two, the whole covey of
birds was successfully trapped.

SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

BY

A. J. STUART-WORTLEY

AagRa044 -240145 *L '

«AMHNAOO HHL AAC,

v

CHAPTER I

‘ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO’

A DIFFICULTY in the way of writing about the par-
tridge is the question: To whom shall I appeal?
‘To the public,’ I am told, but here I am doubtful,
for the public knows nothing of partridges, excepting
towards Christmas-time the price per brace. In my
Oxford days, ‘Student Williams’ was a Fellow of
Merton, when Randolph Churchill and I were under-
graduates there—a very brilliant and characteristic
specimen of the Don of that day, whose literary and
classical ability forced from his seniors a measure of
the popularity which his wit and liberality of opinion
readily secured for him from the younger men.
Afterwards one of the most fluent and versatile of
the well-known band of writers who have made the
variety of the articles in ‘The Daily Telegraph’ so
famous, he was one day, being in town on August 31,
asked by his editor to write an article to appear
the next day on the rst of September and partridges.

86 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

‘Good heavens !’ said the Student, ‘I never saw a
partridge, except on a dish!’ Poor Student, he was
more familiar with lamplight than with stubbles, and
a better judge of the balance of a decanter than of
a breech-loader. But the article did very well; the
public, no doubt, were perfectly pleased—and this
makes me uneasy when I think of it, for I wonder
whether the superior ability of Student Williams,
combined with his ignorance of the partridge, would
not make more readable matter than I am likely to
produce.

All that can be said in the practical form of hints,
facts and experiences has been so admirably done by
my friends, Lord Walsingham, Sir Ralph Payne-
Gallwey, and Mr. Grimble, that I can only hope to
interest by sticking to the actual facts that have come
under my own observation, and the deductions which
may fairly be drawn from them.

Here at the outset I come upon a word on which
I must found my first hint to those who wish to excel
in shooting the partridge, or, for the matter of that,
any other bird.

Observation.—Partridges will behave in much the
same manner, under the same circumstances, in all
localities, and a man should know when beating a
field whereabouts the birds are likely to rise, or, when

‘ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO’ 87

sent to his place for a drive, the part of the fence in
front of him where he is likely to get most of his
chances. This quality has often been called instinct,
but this is a mistake; it is the quality of observa-
tion highly developed and coupled with a faithful
memory. If it were instinct we should know where
to look for the game the first time we are taken out ;
but we do not, and’it is really the varied, but always
accurate, recollection of former observations that
produces the apparently spontaneous knowledge of
the sport which distinguishes some men. How often
when beating a field of turnips the way of the drills,
in the company of a duffer, have you seen him half-
cock and shoulder his gun as he got to within about
ten yards of the end fence! Up gets a bird from
under the last two or three turnips, and is over the
fence and away before he is ready. You perhaps kill
it for him, and his only reflection will’ be: What a
wonderful fellow you are to know there was likely to
be a bird in that particular corner! But he will make
the same mistake the next day, and for ever, because
he observes nothing, and consequently doesn’t know
that an odd bird, who has been running up the drills
from you since you entered the field, is often too
nervous to rise until forced to do so at the very end,
and is also afraid to cross by running the small space

88 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

which intervenes between the turnips and the fence.
I dwell upon this instance because therein lies all
the real foundation of the superiority of a good man
out shooting over a bad one. It accounts for the
proverbial good-luck of really first-rate men in driving,
as well as in walking up. The good man appears to
get more chances, because as the ground develops in
front of, or around him, he sees at once where he is
likely to get a shot, and when it comes he is ready for
it. He is safer to shoot with, for his faculty of obser-
vation and memory combined make him aware of
places where the rise or fall of the ground has ac-
counted for dangerous shots being fired, and in such
places he will only fire within certain limits. To a
beginner I would recommend the happy practice of
going over again in his mind all the incidents of the
day, field by field, and shot by shot, when he goes to
bed, trying to remember how and where every brace
of birds was killed, how many were lost, and where.
T used to do this regularly, and sometimes do still,
and I know no pleasanter way of courting the sleep
which the wearied hunter must enjoy to the full in
" order to be fit for the next day’s work.
As I do not know whether I shall be addressing
myself chiefly to the novice in the sport of partridge-
shooting or to the practised shot, I shall just set

‘ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO’ 89

down what I pretty well know, as we painters say,
‘from nature,’ and what I do not know shall say
nothing about, and possibly my reader, if he be a
member of ‘the public,’ may never discover my
ignorance. Talking of the public, I have never yet
been able to discover who the public are. I think in
this country there is a public for everything. I know
there is one for partridge-shooting, just as I am con-
vinced there is one for organ-grinding, and just as I
belong te the one, so I am very sure I do not belong
to the other. Then, again, the shooting public, to
whom I am advised to appeal, is much divided.
There are, and always were since I can recollect, the
two classes of men to whom shooting is a pleasure,
but who look at it from very different points of view ;
although with each the pursuit of game is a ruling
passion. They have only that instinct in common.
One man, whom I will call A., is the accomplished
driving shot, the jz de siécle exponent of the modern
art of gunnery, or of the management of an im-
portant beat, shooting very brilliantly, and though
luxurious by habit, probably no /ainéant at other
vigorous sports and pastimes. He is armed with the
most beautiful pair of guns, his cartridges are loaded
with the utmost care and the best of powder, and he
has a well-trained servant to load for him.

90 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

The other man, called B., has not had the same
opportunities, and cannot afford the same perfection
of turn-out. He is probably a poorer man—he is, so
to speak, a provincial, and neither by social position
nor residence enjoys the chance of shooting where
game is very plentiful and organisation very perfect.
But, on the other hand, he is probably ‘country-bred,
often, though not always, a good sportsman, a keen
judge of a dog or a horse,’a bit of a naturalist, a
good walker, and sometimes a really good shot. His
weapon—he has but one—is possibly an old pin-fire,
a fairly-made, but badly-balanced, gun by a local
maker, with hammers, but without ejectors, of which
the most that can be said is that it will probably kill
a bird at all ordinary ranges if you can hold it straight.
His cartridges are not of brass, nor even green cases ;
they may be very good or very bad, according to
circumstances ; and he has no servant to load for him,
but likely enough a handy man who knows something
of petty sessions, pantries, and partridges, and who is
an infallible marker.

Now how can you bring A. and B. together on
the subject of partridge-shooting? The only answer
is, Why should you try? I will only try so far as to
urge that neither should despise nor dislike the
other. Depend upon it, they both know a good deal

‘ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO’ 9!

about game and shooting. I have known many A.’s
and many B.’s, have learnt much from both, and I
never could see why A. should undervalue or dis-
believe in the undoubted qualities: of B., calling
him pot-hunter, poacher, or ‘unsophisticated native
gunner,’ nor why on earth B. should be so fond of
writing to the ‘Field’ to abuse and ridicule A.,
denouncing him as effeminate, cruel, and ignorant of
natural history or sport, and darkly hinting at his life
of vice and dissipation, while denying him the energy
to pursue it ; abusing the drives he has never taken
part in, and the shooters he has never met, and making
himself ridiculous and offensive on a subject which
should be a bond of brotherhood between all classes
of Englishmen. When the Marquis of Carabas (very
wisely) invites B. to take part in the slaying of 200 brace
of partridges or 1,000 pheasants in one day, I have
never known B. to refuse to shoot with him or to meet
his enemy A. If A. has had too much whisky and
soda and rubicon besique the night before, he will get
his eye wiped by B. at some of the high pheasants
over the valley ; and if Lord Carabas is in doubt how
to get that big lot of birds back from the boundary
fields and how to realise them, he is likely to get as
good an opinion from B. as from A. But when the
birds Aave been brought back, and over the guns, A.

92 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

will give B. a very pretty lesson in the art of shooting,
and B. will find to his astonishment that A. end his
servant are fully aware of and well able to retrieve all
wounded or towered birds that have dropped some
distance behind the line, birds which B. thought his
town-bred rival would never have noticed. But they
are both good fellows: the provincial can learn much
from the metropolitan sportsman, and vice versa. If
B. is asked often enough by the Marquis of Carabas
to shoot the big wood, and by his neighbour, Lord
Turniptop, to drive partridges, he will imperceptibly
assimilate much of the nature of A., and as his ideas
widen and his circumstances improve, he will be
found eventually with a pair of really good London
guns, and may one day be able to kill three birds out
of a covey as they come over him. And it does not
surprise me when I come across a man of the A.
type, who in a wild country, where game is scarce,
proves himself as keen and as able to secure ten brace
of birds under difficult circumstances as any man of
the other type. The grammar of the business he
probably learned in early life, and has the unerring
memory and faculty of observation spoken of just
now. Accurate shooting, a natural gift, he has per-
fected by long practice and in divers places, and all
these things make him very difficult to compete

‘ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO’ 93

against. The Maharajah Dhuleep Singh very seldom
went out for less than 100 brace of birds to his own gun,
and was a typical exponent of the big shoot system.
But I don’t think I ever met any one who knew more
thoroughly the habits and natural history of all game,
whilst of the partridge, from the day of his hatching to
the day of his being roasted and eaten, there was
nothing he did not know. The same may be said of
most of the really first-rate shots, at any rate, of my
generation. I hope the young generation are equally
well posted, but confess I am not so sure of it.

The local gunner has sometimes a great reputa-
tion as a shot. Equally it is sometimes well deserved,
but generally qualified by his description as a ‘par-
tridge shot,’ ‘snipe shot,’ or ‘rabbit shot.’ If he be
a naturally first-class shot indeed, he will be able to
shoot anything. I remember a story of one of the
most consummate shots of the day, who, being on a
visit to Ireland, was pitted against the local celebrity,
described, of course, as the best snipe shot in all
Ireland. So he may have been ; but when the day of
the friendly contest came, he went home at lunch-time.
The English crack was too good for him, and the dis-
appointment of his friends was like the sadness of
heart that beats upon the Town Moor at Doncaster
when the best horse in Yorkshire is defeated by the

94 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

Derby winner. Again, a very excellent trap-pigeon
shot may shoot very poorly at game, but a very ex-
cellent game shot can always become a fine trap shot.
The greater includes the less. Partridge-shooting, if
we take driving and walking together, is an acknow-
ledged test. There is no class of shot which the par-
tridge does not afford at some time or other, with the
exception of the twisting in the first few yards of flight
peculiar to the snipe, ability to succeed in defeating
which is the only excuse for placing. a man who is
peculiarly good at snipe in a class by himself. If you
shoot partridges, walked up or driven, really well, you
can shoot anything. The low skim of the grouse
over the heather may surprise you the first time you
see it, but will not trouble you, for you are quite used
to the sort of difficulties it presents if you have stood
up to a low fence to kill partridges being pushed up
wind. The rocketing pheasant will but remind you
of the way the covey comes over a high belt, and
even a teal coming down wind, perhaps the fastest
thing on earth, will not beat by much the December
partridge under the same conditions, either in pace
or power of swerving in his flight.

95

CHAPTER II

“TOUJOURS PERDRIX ’—FORM GOOD AND BAD

How well each one of us remembers his first par-
tridge! I well remember mine. It was not the bird
I aimed at ; I had been out many days without strik-
ing a single bird with even an outside shot. I am
afraid I at last got to shoot vaguely at the covey like
Mr. Tupman—though not like him with my eyes
shut ; and when this bird was finally retrieved—he
was a strong runner—I felt more of shame than of
pride.. I learnt under old Hirst, the keeper at
Hawarden Castle, my first season, in the days of the
kindly and accomplished Sir Stephen Glynne, and,
.therefore,: before his brother-in-law, the great Mr.
Gladstone, succeeded to the property. Very kind to
me they both were, and whatever great questions of
State may have possessed Mr. Gladstone’s time and
brain at this period, for I confess I do not remember,
he always had a genial word or two, and an enquiry
how the sport fared when I came in at night. Old Hirst

96 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

was a very fine shot, one of the best I ever saw, and
perfectly wrapped up in it. . Nobody shot over the
estate but him and his sons, and I verily believe
that all he knew of Mr. Gladstone was that he had
once been a shooter and had lost a finger through
the accidental discharge of the second barrel while
loading a muzzle-loader. He always promised my
father that he would send me home if I fired a
dangerous shot, and he kept his word. Well do I
recollect the humiliated frame of mind in which I
loitered home about 3 p.m., having killed nothing my-
self all day, and had my gun taken away from me for
nearly shooting Hirst junior. Did I go straight in
and confess? No, I did not; I crept through the
park, loafing and lying about out of sight under the
great trees which Mr. Gladstone and his axe have
since made so famous, and the incident blew over.
I never heard any more of it. But it did me a world
of good, and many a time since when I have seen the
inevitable duffer plugging at low pheasants, and heard
the offensive rattle of misdirected shot in the twigs
about me, have I wished that the shooter were under
discipline, and that I were old Hirst and could send
him home.

Hirst backed himself on one occasion to hit 495
penny pieces out of 500 thrown up. He won his bet,

"TOUJOURS PERDRIX' 97

hitting 498, and proud he was to show you the cutting
out of the local newspaper which reported it. A
really remarkable performance, especially considering
that it was years before glass-ball shooting or Dr.
Carver was ever heard of. Hirst only died a year or
two ago. He must have been a great age, and I am
told that to the last he used to talk of how he taught
me to shoot. I am sorry he did not live long enough
for me to have sent him this book, to show that the
pupil did not forget his first master.

I have often been asked whether pigeon-shooting
from traps is likely to improve a man’s game-shooting. .
My answer is, Undoubtedly, just as I am sure, and
have proved to myself, that practice at the running-
deer target is good for deer-stalking. In both cases
the standard of accuracy necessary for a first-rate
performance is forced upon you; and one of the
most common drawbacks to the average or moderate
shooter is that he has no standard of accuracy. He
does not know what ought to be done, still less what
can be done, with a gun or rifle. If he brings down
a pheasant or partridge, he is content ; whereas
broken limbs, and a mass of tail feathers, or a strong
running bird, distress the first-rate man so greatly that
he would almost as soon have missed altogether.
The latter knows the bird was not in the centre of the

H

98 ‘SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

shot, and unless a bird at easy distance is hit in the
head or neck, or at least well on the forward part of
the body, it affords the professor no satisfaction what-
ever. Here are two diagrams representing what I
mean, and it will be observed that, although the bird
in fig. 1 would undoubtedly come down and look as
though fairly hit to the average observer, it is really
not at all a good shot. Fig. 2 shows the same bird
struck as it should be, the centre of the charge. being
a little in advance of the bird’s beak.

It is just possible to miss birds altogether in trying
for the result shown in fig. 2, but my impression is
that this is rare, and only occurs with first-rate shots
when the birds are very close, and they are trying to
kill without mashing them. But it is better to miss
quantities in this way than to get into the habit—for
it zs a habit, even with some very good shots—of
shooting just six inches too far back. Forward and
high oust be the shooter’s motto ; if he ever shoots
over or in front of a bird, and can be certain of the
fact, let him take careful note of it—he will not do it
often. I well remember being sent to stand in a gale
of wind for ducks and teal disturbed from a long
distance and coming down wind. The first lot that
came over me, wide and high to the right, were five
big ducks. he pace was terrific. I laid on what

99

‘TOUJOURS PERDRIX’

Fig

2

Fic.

100 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

looked like the length of a church in front of the first
one ; I killed the last of the five as dead as a stone.
There must have been quite four yards between the
tip of the first duck’s beak and that of the last, which,
added to the church’s length, shows what immense
allowance must be made in certain cases for cross-
shots in a wind.

Talking of allowance, I remember, when engaged
in a discussion with Lord de Grey and others at the
running-deer range at Wimbledon on the ‘throw-up’
of some particular rifle, we were attacked and chaffed
by the present Lord Dunsany, then John Plunkett.
He chuckled greatly, as he stood up to shoot, at the
difference of opinion between de Grey and myself.
‘But,’ I said, ‘we agree as to elevation; we only
differ as to the amount of allowance.’ ‘Just like me
and my father,’ said Plunkett, as he pulled trigger.

This question of allowance is rightly said in the
Badminton Library} to be governed by instinct, but
the habit of never dreaming it possible to shoot
straight a¢ the body of the bird, unless coming direct
to you or going direct away, and on the /evel of the
eye, can be acquired by any one, and practice will
enable you to a considerable extent to judge how
much in front or over to shoot. Speaking generally,

1 Shooting, vol. i. p. 40.

*TOUJOURS PERDRIX’ Iol

you must shoot a little over everything, excepting, of
course; at a bird which is going away, having passed
over your head. In this case you must shoot under
it, but very little. All these matters are easily arrived
at on paper by a moderate knowledge of perspective,
a subject which, I have often thought, could be
studied with advantage up to a certain point by those
who are very keen to excel in shooting.

I have tried to illustrate my meaning in a simple
form by the following diagrams :—

Fig. 3 shows at a glance the necessity for shooting
over every bird coming to you, except in the case of

Fic. 3

fig. 5, when the bird is approaching on the exact
level of the eye and keeping a level course, which,
being prolonged, would pass through the head of the
shooter.

Fig. 4 shows the allowance underneath a bird
which has passed over your head.

to2 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

Fic. 4

¢G

Fic. 5

ow

ow

“ZOUJOURS PERDKIX’ 103

Fig. 6 shows the necessity for shooting well over
a bird rising off the hill underneath you.

Fig. 7 shows the necessity for shooting over a
bird which rises in front of you! and makes straight
away.

All this is no doubt very elementary, and would
be matter of instinct to a first-rate shot; but it has
not, so far as I am aware, been shown on paper in

Fic. 7

this form before. The very few lines of these drawings
demonstrate, I hope with simplicity, that the only
instance in which you have to shoot af¢ the bird itself
is when, as in fig. 5, it is heading straight for the
muzzle of your gun. The habit of making some
allowance for where the bird is going to may pro-
bably be acquired, though the amount of allowance,

‘It might happen that a bird, having risen in front of you,
flying away, had before you fired risen to the level of your eye,
and was then pursuing a level course; but this would be very
exceptional. In this case you would shoot a/ the bird, as in fig. 5.

104 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

considering pace, wind, &c., will remain a matter of
natural gift. I believe the root of a great deal of bad
shooting is to be found here ; a trick or -habit of
aiming a¢ the bird. This, in the case of a moving
object, obviously can never be right, excepting in the
occasional instances here stated.

Now the difference in result when a first-rate
exponent is at work is simply enormous. It is
wonderful to look at ; and there is nothing prettier to
watch than how each bird falls, crumpled up by the
centre of the charge, exactly at the moment you in-
voluntarily expect it, and looking as though it received
a deliberate box on the ear, knocking it completely
out of time. There is no appearance of haste or
hurry, and though the performance looks, as I say,
deliberate, you would be astonished to find how really
rapid it is, and how much oftener the professor gets
his gun off in a given time than the average man.

A great deal of this effective result is due to the
habit or science of shooting forward of the bird by
calculation. The calculation is rapid, and, I think,
instinctive ; but it is there, just as it is with a man
fielding a ball or running for a catch at cricket. He
doesn’t run or stretch out his hand to where the ball
is at the moment of seeing it, but to the spot where
it will meet his hand ; and so it should be with the

* TOUJOURS PERDRIX 105

shooter. I have seen in print some absurd sugges-
tions, that you should aim on the bird and then toss
the gun forward to where you think your shot should
meet him ; but this is manifestly a bad system for
every reason. It really involves two aims, and when
birds are flying fast it is all anybody can do to throw
quick enough in front, while the ‘toss’ never can be
accurate. In the case of a bird coming quite straight
and directly over your head, you may do it with
advantage, since the gun, when put up to the spot
you mean to arrive at, will blot out the body of the
approaching bird, and it is necessary to point for a
fraction of a second at his beak to keep your line of
aim true. Butif he is coming in the slightest possible
curve or aslant, it becomes fatal at once.

One cannot, therefore, exaggerate the importance
from the first of shooting on the plan that there is a
spot in the air where your shot must strike the bird,
and that you must raise your gun direcily to align
that spot. A delightful phrase to illustrate the result
of the opposite system was heard by a friend of mine,
addressed by a Norfolk keeper to a shooter who was
for some reason or another missing clean an extra-
ordinary number of shots at partridges. ‘Why, sir,
yew don’t fare! to see the birds this moarnin’ ; yew

' Seem.

106 | SHOOTING THE PAKTRIDGE

fare to shute whar the’ hev’ bin.’ And you will surely
shoot where they have been if you aim a¢ them.

One thing that makes partridges very difficult is
that they never, or hardly ever, come at you or go away
from you in a straight line. The line is almost always
a curve, and sometimes a very sharp one. When you
add to this the variations of pace and light, and the
necessity for shooting over, it becomes obvious that
the calculation is too complicated to be made at the
moment of firing, and must therefore be instinctive.
But I am convinced that men who are beginning to
shoot can improye themselves greatly by following the
principle of calculation, that is, by treating the bird
as an object that has to begso to speak, cut off or
intercepted at a certain spot, and not as an object to
be aimed at.

The first-rate man will astonish you much by the
amazing long shots he will kill, aye, and kill stone
dead, and that very often. Forty yards (usually
described as fifty or even sixty) is a long shot,
but when your gun makes a good plate at forty yards
there is very little chance in favour of the bird,
Our friend acquires this, one of the most beautiful
things to see in good shooting, by his invariable
practice of allowing a good distance in front of the
bird. It is the same system at long shots as that

‘TOUJOURS PERDRIX' 107

which leads him to strike them in the head and neck
at closer distances. Referring again to my diagrams on
pages 101-103, you will see that, taking the length of
a partridge in profile (as in a cross shot) to be a foot,
the shot in fig. 1 is about fifteen inches too far back,
although it kills the bird, and the moderate shooter
would be consequently quite satisfied. But there is
such a thing as the angle of deviation, and fifteen
inches out at twenty yards becomes thirty inches out
at forty yards, which places your bird outside the
possibility of being struck at all, We see at once by
this of what immense value is the habit or practice of
treating the tip of the bird’s beak, in close shots, as
the point to be arrived at. To increase the allowance
proportionately when the bird is farther off follows
instinctively upon this habit at closer quarters ; but
the man who cannot or will not do the one will never
do the other, and will to the last day of his life, when
he sees the first-rate man kill long shot after long shot,
believe that the latter has a stronger shooting gun or
a heavier charge than he has. I know one or two
men who are so conscious of their inability to kill
anything beyond thirty-five yards that they will not
fire beyond that range; and I admire them for it,
for they would only waste cartridges and occasionally
wound birds.

108 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

As a matter of fact, the inferior performer does
not wound much in shooting long shots; for if, as we
have been showing, he is inaccurate at short distance,
he will be often many feet out at the farther range.
Probably the distance by which birds flying very fast
at long ranges are missed often amounts to as many
yards as it is popularly supposed to be feet. But a
really good shot should be chary of firing at game
beyond the real killing distance; for, as he is seldom
much off the mark, he will strike nearly every bird with
an outside corn or two. I have always seen a much
heavier pick-up on the following day when the guns
have been very good, and there can be no doubt this
is the reason. It is odd that the contrary is usually
supposed to be the case, but I think all those who
have been used to shooting in first-class company
will corroborate my view, although, as a matter of
humanity, it may tell against themselves.

IT must recur again to the value of pigeon-shooting
from traps in competition with others as fine practice
for game. You have to maintain a very high average
of kills even to pay your expenses, and the rivalry, as
well as the penalty you pay for missing, causes you to
take greater pains. The body of a blue-rock pigeon
is smaller even than that of a partridge, and unless you
get this little object in the centre of the charge you will

‘TOUJOURS PERDRIX’ 109

never kill a long series. This immensely raises your
standard of accuracy, and obliges you, as it were, to
screw your aim into the very bull’s-eye. I have found
it pay better to begin by shooting rather slower, if
anything, at very fast birds, so as to be sure to be well
in the middle, and as the range and size of the bird,
as well as often the flight, are much like what you
have to deal with in walking up partridges, I think
the one will improve you for the other. It is a well-
known fact among pigeon-shooters that some practice
at starlings just previously to a match improves your
form ; in the same way practice at pigeons will im-
prove it at partridges. This is not the place to enter
upon the merits or the evils of pigeon-shooting, but
as I said I would set down my experiences, I cannot
omit this one.

Without yielding to any one in my aversion to the
slaughter of anything that is not a legitimate object
of pursuit as game or food, I would still recommend
practice with the gun whenever and wherever possible
consistently with humanity. If just before the shoot-
ing season you like to plant yourself in the line of the
sparrows passing to and from the cornfields, you will
be saving some bushels of corn to the distressed
farmer without violating your humane conscience and
you will find your form at partridges vastly improved.

110 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

Whoever takes advantage of this hint to slay swallows,
starlings, or other insectivorous birds, must also take
the responsibility ; I onlysuggest this where there are,
as in many agricultural districts, very large quantities
of grain-eating birds.

The first-rate performer is always a safe man to
shoot with. Pages of good advice have been written
on this head, and by the best authorities. I will only
add one thing: bear in mind that you are more likely
to shoot the man two or three places off than the man
next you. Let your mind while you are out shooting
be always studying and comparing distances and
angles, a perfect judgment of which is an invariable
attribute of a gunner of the first quality. I have been
fortunate enough to shoot sometimes for weeks to-
gether without ever hearing the rattle of a shot near
me, or seeing a gun even pointed for a moment in a
dangerous direction.

‘I am a great believer in style; I never saw a
good shot yet who hadn’t style,’ said Mr. Purdey
to me one day ; and I quite agree with him. Mr.
Purdey’s recollections of the great shots of the last
generation as well as of the present are varied and
interesting.

Now, what is it that makes up ‘style,’ that indefin-
able, but invariable, attribute of a first-rate man? I

‘TOUJOURS PERDRIX: Ww

have seen men who must be described as good shots,
even very good, but who are without it; they never
seem to kill the bird at the right moment nor in the
right way, and yet they will contribute their full share
of the day’s total, and do as well as better men, unless
exceptional opportunities or conditions give the latter
their chance to show their superior quality. Let there
come a really heavy rush of birds, lasting for some
time, or a very queer light, or a heavy gale of wind,
or all these three conditions combined, and these men
will fall far behind our first-rate friend, so far that you
would hardly believe the difference could be due to
anything but luck, having seen them miss so little
previously.

The style of a first-rate man is unmistakable,
difficult as it may be to define or describe. It is, no
doubt, primarily due to a mixture of activity and
strength, combining to assist exceptionally fine eye-
sight. To these must be added, I think, some intel-
lectual ability. I do not recollect an instance of a
first-rate shot being a stupid man, nor do I see how
he could be. A certain mathematical aptitude, which
finds vent in calculation of distances and study of
angles, is an essential ; and combined with this, and
perhaps producing it, is a love of accuracy in all
things. This latter quality assists the development

112 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

of the first-rate sportsman and naturalist no less than
of the first-rate shot. Here is a simple instance: A
whole posse of keepers, beaters and loaders of the
ordinary sort may agree that a bird dropped just over
a fence. The first-rate shot (I can find no better
term to describe him) alone expresses doubt. The
bird, no doubt, got over the fence at the point unani-
mously agreed on, but he alone doubts his having
dropped at once. On seeking for this bird much
time is wasted in following the verdict of the majority,
and it is eventually found to have crossed the whole
of the next field before dropping under the next fence
beyond. This is not experience, for the keepers, and
probably some of the beaters, have plenty of that in
such matters. It is simply that the accurate mind
of our first-rate friend, though he expected the bird
to drop after topping the fence, was not satisfied,
although it lowered its level of flight again, that it did
so ‘in articulo mortis.’

I have perhaps wandered from the question of
style to that of thé attributes which produce it
naturally ; but a great deal of style in shooting is
acquired. ‘The feet must be firm on the ground, the
body not bent forward, as shown in so many inferior
pictorial representations, but ‘trunk erect,’as Kentfield
has it in his book on billiards. What you will find

‘TOUJOURS PERDR1X’ 3

out of date in watching John Roberts, or any modern
light of the billiard world, is very much ‘up to date’
in shooting. The shooter must stand well up to his
gun, and it is a fact not generally known, that a
powerful man who does this will cause a gun to shoot
harder than a limp man who does not.

The left hand, as we have been rightly told in the
Badminton Library and elsewhere, should be well
forward on the barrels ; but this is not all. It is the
left arm, wrist and hand, which must do all the work
of swinging and directing the gun. If you hold your
gun as recommended in old books, the left hand on,
or close to the trigger-guard, you will find that to
swing it quickly you have to push from your right
elbow, and that this will affect the whole inclination
of your body. You will not succeed in swinging the
gun rapidly or accurately, and you will inevitably twist
the barrels over to the left; this is one of the most
frequent sources of missing, and one the avoidance of
which, though an essential point in the education of a
trained rifle-shot, is usually lost sight of with reference
to the shot gun. It is of the last importance that your
gun should be Zeve/ to get acorrect aim. The left hand
alone, with its strong forward grip of the barrel, can
insure this result, while the bad habit of allowing the

elbow of the right arm to be too high is distinctly
I

114 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

against it. I have seen very fine shots who raised the
right elbow much too high, but they were very strong
with the left wrist as well, and, at any rate, the lifting
of the right arm could be of no possible help to them.

Years ago I designed a sight especially to
counteract this fault, primarily in rifle-shooting, and
had it made by what was then the firm of, Gye &
Moncrieffe, to be fixed on my deer-stalking rifle. But
when made in an experimental manner out of wood,
and fitted on over the rib of a shot gun, it is an
admirable lesson to show the result of twisting the
barrels.

Fic. 8

AA, ebony or ebonised wood ; 8, rectangular nick; c, platinum or ivory
vertical bar; p, foresight as it appears over nick ; G, breech of gun.
If you aim at an object, then close the left eye and

look along the ‘barrels, you will find that the very

slightest twist throws the foresight off its proper place,

‘TOUJOURS PERDRIX' 15

just over the nick. This will occur, no doubt, to a
certain extent with any sight ; but this one, which was
christened the ‘Wortley’ sight, is designed on the
principle of vertical and horizontal lines exclusively,
and any deviation from the level is much more readily
detected than with a V or a pyramid sight.

Holding the left hand far back, close to the trigger-
guard, is long ago obsolete, but there are many people
who, though they hold it fairly forward, yet do most
of the work by pushing or pulling with the right arm.
I have always noticed these to be very bad shots.
As regards the safety of holding the left hand forward,
I can only relate my own experience. I was, as a
boy at a private tutor’s, lent a gun by a country gun-
maker while he repaired mine. This piece incon-
tinently burst the first day I took it out. I had
already acquired the habit of stretching my left hand
well forward, and it was lucky I had, for a large piece
was blown clean out of the right barrel close to the
breech, and whizzed over the heads of my neigh-
bours, thirty yards off. If I had held the gun in the
old-fashioned way I must have lost at least three
fingers of my left hand. The gun was a muzzle-
loader.

Never be put off by being told that rifle shooting
will spoil your game-shooting. This is. absolute

12

116 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

rubbish. The two forms of shooting are so unlike
that there is no necessity for allowing the one to
confuse you for the other. I remember going to stay
with de Grey at Nocton, in Lincolnshire, which then
belonged to Lord Ripon, accompanied by the late
George Ward Hunt, almost the most brilliant shot
with gun and rifle that I have ever seen. The rooks
were in thousands, very forward, and though many
still sat on the trees, the majority flew as well and as
high as good rocketing pheasants. We were each
armed with two breech-loaders and one, or perhaps two,
rifles, and the way those rooks rained down alternately
from trees and sky was a sight. I think we killed
about 1,100 in three hours one day at Gautby, an
old property of the Vyners across the fen. Wecame
up to London the next day, and on turning up at
Hurlingham were, of course, told that not much
could be expected of us as we had been rook-shooting.
De Grey, however, won the cup, and I was second.
I was also lucky enough one year to win the principal
prize at the Running Deer at Wimbledon on’ the
Thursday, and a cup at pigeons at Hurlingham on the
Friday, having had a deer-stalking rifle continuously
in my hand during the whole of the Wimbledon fort-
night.

My readers will, I hope, forgive my relating this ;

‘TOUJOURS PERDRIX’ 117

but I have so often had to listen to the reiteration of
this nonsense about rifle-shooting being fatal to game-
shooting that I have thought it well to record these
facts. I am very sure that either de Grey or Henry
Whitehead of Bury, who were in constant practice with
both gun and rifle, and no doubt others, would have
been equally capable of doing it.

Another important feature of good style is ‘time.’
There is, no doubt, one moment in the flight of most
birds you shoot at when they are more A7//able than
at any other. Whether this be really so in all shots
it is hard to say, but at any rate it always appears so,
and if you are looking on at a first-rate shooting per-
formance you will notice that the discharge and the
death of the bird always occur precisely at the moment
when you feel that they should do so. A bad or
moderate shot nearly always appears to shoot either
too soon or too late.

Now, “me is very essential in partridge-shooting,
The partridge is a small and not a tough bird, and
often very close to you, both when you are driving
and walking ; consequently he must not be smashed.
But he is a very fast bird, and, therefore, must not be
allowed to go too far. If one can at all lay downa
tule, I would say shoot soon at him when he is driven,
and late rather than too soon when he rises near you.

118 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

Of course, in driving you must shoot sooner, if you
mean to try and kill two in front of you, than you need
or ought to shoot at a single bird. You may kill four
birds out of a covey, but to allow you to do this they
must either be streaming, so to speak, in column, with a
long distance between the first bird and the last, or
they must break up on clearing the fence and fly more
or less round you, and it must be early in the season,
when they fly slower. To kill, late in the year, four
birds out of a covey that comes straight over your
head, all more or less abreast and with any pace on,
is to my thinking impossible ; I have never seen it
done, and never expect to.

119

CHAPTER III

DRIVING

‘Tue Driving of Partridges is more delightful than
any other way of taking them ; the manner of it is
thus :—make an Engine in the form and fashion of a
Horfe, cut out of Canvas, and stuff it with ftraw or
fuch light matter ; with this artificial Horfe and your
Nets you mutt go to the haunts of the Partridges, and
having found out the Covie and pitcht your nets
below, you muft go above and taking advantage of
the Wind, you muft drive downward ; Let your Nets
be pitcht flope-wise and hovering. Then, having
your face covered with fomething that is green, or of
a dark blue, you muft, putting the Engine before you,
ftalk towards the Partridges with a flow pace raising
them on their feet, but not their wings, and then they
will run naturally before you. If they chance to run
a by way, or contrary to your purpofe, then cross
them with your engine, and by fo facing them, they
will run into that track you would have them. Thus

120 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

by a gentle flow pace you may make them run and
go which way you will, and at laft drive them into
your Net, and fo difpofe of them at your pleafure.’

Thus the worthy Nicholas Cox, in the ‘ Gentie-
man’s Recreation,’ printed in 1686. What would he
say, I wonder, could he resume this mrtal habit, and
see us driving partridges nowadays? ‘The Driving of
Partridges is more delightful than any other way of
taking them ’—and so it is; but what a contrast
between this old-world fowler of the time of James II.
with his nets, his ‘engine’ of a canvas horse stuffed
with straw, for ‘driving partridges,’ and the keeper of
to-day, ashplant or flag in hand, commanding a line
of 40 men across well-hoed turnips or bare stubbles,
to bring the birds to another line where modern
breechloaders and smokeless powder, cracking lightly
like the musketry fire of battle, bring down these
swerving racing birds; to be tossed in clusters after-
wards into the modern game-cart, with its protecting
roof, its hooks for partridges and hares, its confusion
of magazines, cartridge-bags, gun-covers, and over-
coats, and its trusty pensioner with book and pencil
to keép the tally of the slain.

Not but what the old fowler knew a thing or two,
not tobe despised by’ the driver of to-day. Observe
how; ‘having found out the Covie, he directs you

SaGAluad FHL HIIM

DRIVING 121

‘having pitcht your nets below’ to ‘go above and,
taking advantage of the Wind, drive downward.’
Substitute guns for nets, and the sentence may stand
as it is for instruction to-day. Right he is indeed to
spell Wind with a capital W, for is it not a most im-
portant factor in driving or any other form of sport?
In the days of Nicholas Cox every fowler, hawker, or
keeper was brought up to study the direction of the
wind as his first guide to securing game ; and it is
lamentable to see how little this fundamental con-
dition is attended to by the modern keeper or
sportsman. It seems in our day (with a few notable
exceptions) to be the monopoly of Scotch stalkers and
ghillies. I have heard a Scotch beater describe the
locality of a dead bird which was difficult to find, as
lying ‘a wee thing wast of the dog’s nose’ that was
pointing it. They reckon by wind. What English
keeper, excepting always a very few whose knowledge
of this subject has helped them largely in acquiring
their well-deserved reputations, would talk of anything
as being ‘west of a dog’s nose,’ or, for the matter of
that, would know whether the wind was blowing from
east or west? He and his master arrange the order
of the drives days beforehand ; and whether it blows
lightly from the south-east, or heavily from south.
west, the programme is carried out, the order is main-

122 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

tained, the fence where ‘we had such a fine drive
last year’ yields but little, and the whole day is a
succession of disappointments. Why? Because the
wind is entirely different, and has not been taken into
consideration.

Nothing can be better than the remarks and
instructions on partridge-driving and wind in Payne-
Gallwey’s ‘Letters to Young Shooters,’ p. 239. I
can add but little to them, but further urge both
hosts and keepers to study the wind, and to lay
out for the following day alternative plans for drives
which can be adopted or not according to its direction.
Begin at the top of the wind and drive down ; your
up-wind drives which come after will then contribute
the heaviest part of your bag. And in driving across
the wind, the most difficult of all, remember that
every driver on the up-wind side represents in value
six men on the down-wind side. Let the down-wind
flank of your drive be most numerously protected and
by your most active drivers, and, if you are not draw-
ing lots for places, by your best guns. On this side
nothing but the deadly tube in the hands of a very
good shot will stop a partridge when in the swing cf
his flight. He can only be guided to the front or
centre by what he hears before rising, or sees the
instant he gets off the ground. The flankers on the

DRIVING 123

down-wind side must therefore be well ahead—as at
Ain the accompanying diagram—before the drivers
at B have begun to move or have flushed the birds.
c is the centre of the line of guns to which it is
desired to drive the birds, and the arrow points in the
direction of the wind. When once the birds are up

Fic. 9

and in full swing down wind, an army would not turn
them towards the point c. But if while still squatting
on the ground they hear or see men passing on at A,
they will, when they rise, push on to c to avoid them.
If the wind be heavy, there is little fear of their
breaking out at D; and one judicious driver of ex-
perience creeping a little ahead of the others on that

124 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

side can prevent this. No shouting or waving of flags
on the windward side, but plenty of it on the other
side as soon as ever birds are on the wing.

The main‘ direction of the flight will be towards
the point x, and you will notice that many of the birds
after the fright of passing over the line of guns will
swing more than ever with the wind. You will there-
fore do no good by trying a return drive over the same
fence from ground straight behind the guns, as ignorant
keepers often do when there is a cross-wind. Your
birds will have all gone to x; and from there you
must proceed with your next drive if you wish to
bring back the same lot of birds. In a hilly country
the tendency of all birds is to fly along the hill,
though they may be pushed pretty straight up it.
But they never drive well down hill unless there is
some covert on the opposite side which they must
make for. If the ground dips heavily behind where
you stand for the drive, and you have leisure to
observe the birds, you will notice how they scatter
right and left after passing over you, and how few
keep straight on over the valley to the opposite hill.
In this they resemble grouse; though they are of
course more influenced by the situation of the root
crops or other covert.

What a delightful sensation is the condition of

DRIVING 125

expectancy after you have been placed for what you
know is going to be a good drive! Perchance it is a
bright October day, the temperature perfect, the sun-
shine warm, and as your feet rest on the sandy soil of
Cambridgeshire, so congenial to game, you survey
the scene around you with an easily formed resolution
in your mind to forget your worries and cares, and
give yourself up to all the enjoyment which a lovely
morning, an orderly digestion, and (let us hope) a
good conscience can combine to afford. You have
adjusted your distance to the fence to a nicety ; and,
lightly, but warmly, clad, you balance yourself on your
shooting-stick in complete comfort ; heightened by
the consciousness of your perfect pair of guns, your
carefully-loaded cartridges, and the trustworthy quali-
ties of your servant or loader kneeling close behind
you ; his prospective services supplemented by one of
your host’s smartest under-keepers, and a third season
wavy-coated retriever of the best breed and varied
olfactory experience. It is the third drive of the day,
expected to be one of the best; you are No. 3 of
the line of six guns, and all your neighbours can be
relied on not to shoot near the line. In front is an
ideal fence for driving, some ten or twelve feet
high, with broken interstices through which you catch
the blue-green glint of the swedes, and where, later

126 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

on, you will get a warning glimpse of approaching
wings.

Twenty yards to your left an oak, gnarled and
weather-beaten, but disdaining to turn a leaf until the
later frosts, mingles his foliage with the russet and
green of the tangled fence. About the same distance
on your right-is a gap, with a sort of rude stile or bar
across it, close to where the cross fence on the other
side—there is none on yours—divides the turnips
from the stubble. Between the oak and the cross
fence they will surely come, and especially must the
gap be watched, for it will draw them from both fields,
and is just at the right killing distance. Behind and
on your right a glimpse of greyish green hill, sur
mounted by a plantation, on which crawls swiftly a
little file of living objects. Slender as mosquitoes,
flashing back here and there a note of white or blue
to the October sun, seeming hardly connected, so
impalpable are they in detail, with the long strip of
grey green along which they move with easy but
deliberate precision. The Limekilns! and a string
of the best blood in England returning from their
morning gallop, with, likely enough, next Wednesday’s
Cesarewitch winner among them. Farther on, directly
‘behind you, surrounded at odd intervals by long, low,
isolated specks of white or red, nestling in plantations

some SUGLVEG FHL 40 IHOIS Lsula HEL

DRIVING 127

or fronting the white roads, lies Newmarket, the out-
lines of its buildings not yet distinct amid the blue
smoke of its breakfast fires and the golden haze of
this glorious autumn morning. Away and beyond the
town the long thin lines of black green belt intersect
the rolling stubbles and fallows of Six-Mile Bottom,
Dullingham, or Cheveley, until, melting in the far
distance, a faint cloud of brownish smoke mingles
with the azure atmosphere that aptly hangs over the
Light Blue University.

Or change the time and scéne; the actors and
the characters the same. The grass crackles as you
shift your feet to keep them warm, crushing the
frosted splinters from the blades ; the gorse, coated
in crystal globules, sends down a powdery shower as
you kick it, revealing its spiked clusters underneath,
green, warm, and living, or tawny and dead, but
clasping the golden blossom which, like the kiss, is
never out of season. The black green belt of firs
against the northern blue in front sways lightly as the
breeze comes to it from the east, turning your eyes to
where, far on the right, the village with its square
church tower guards the heath. Beyond again, with-
out a break or. undulation, without a hill or hollow,
stubble, heath, and fallow stretch away, until, melting
in a still grey bar, you know the ocean ; unbroken.

128 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE.

save where, one black speck upon the steel, the hardy
collier ploughs along, daring the wintry dangers of
the North Sea. As the tardy December sun peeps
from the haze, the chirping call from all parts of the
heath and from the light lands in front and to the
west tells that the coveys scent the growing danger.
Dull in tone, and weird in form against the sky, the
Norfolk plover makes away towards the sea, as a
far-off shout tells of the drive begun, and light reports
of other guns booming from more than one quarter
remind you that this is the king of game-counties,
and that all the world—the Norfolk world—is out

shooting.
Ille terrarum mihi preeter omnes

Angulus ridet.

Again the scene is changed. You stand on Itchen
Down, and while you sniff the bracing air you strain
your eyes to mark, amid the blue distance, beyond
the rolling slopes of sheltering woods and open field,
the spire of Salisbury or the clustering towers of
William of Wykeham ; to trace the specks of light
that tell where the silver stream of Test gives back
the November rays, or to wonder whether, far in the
south-west, your eye can reach to where the great
ocean liners are thundering up and down the Solent.
The tinkle of sheep-bells strikes sharply on the ear,

DRIVING 129

and you watch on the lower stretch of down opposite
how the shepherd guides the sheep, down past the
chalk-pit cutting like a white wound in the hill,
through the junipers and straggling patches of gorse
to the great yew-tree overhanging the gateway, till the
flock pours like a stream of oil into the turnip field
where they are to feed. A feeling of contentment
spreads over you as you survey the great fence of
thorn in front of you, so big and thick that a dozen
or so of stunted oaks and hollies are almost lost in it,
while not a speck of sky shows through till ten feet
from the ground. A white butterfly, the last of the
year, comes dancing down the stubble, settles on the
fence, uneasily flickers over the top, and disappears.
Aimlessly you push the safety bolt of your gun up
and down as the barrels lie at ease in the palm of your
left hand, and lazily you wonder whether that bit of
bright red down the fence is an autumn leaf, or a bit of
cloth, or what; and then whether the birds will come
to the right or left of the big holly, or over the tall
spray of briar which sticks up, still bearing one bright
golden leaf, just where the butterfly disappeared !
And the butterfly takes you back to the summer,
and you dream fora spell. Is it of the big trout you
lost in the Test, or is it of the night she looked so
heavenly as the diamonds flashed on her white skin
K

130 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

at the opera, or of the little lock of chestnut hair,
which even she does not know is lying now in your
pocket, so near—so much too near—your heart?
‘Non, je mourrais, mais je veux la revoir,’ sings in
your ears the glorious voice of Jean de Reszké. Again
your thoughts fly off; to the tropical marsh and the
snorting rush of the wounded rhino through the
reeds ; to your shares in the new drifts of Mashona-
land, and their possible value; to the horse that
failed by a short head to land the ‘1,000 to 30,
twice’ that might have saved you ; to the dire con-
fusion following, and your flight by reason of this to
Afric’s coral strand ; to the cares and complications,
the duns and dilemmas of London life. And as these
almost bring you back to consciousness, a fresher
gust of breeze sweeps down the fence, and—‘ Hold
up those birds there, on the left ; hold ’em up, hold
’em up!’ The clear voice of Marlowe, prince of
partridge-drivers, ringing out from the down-wind
side, the crack of his whip, and the rattle of his
horse’s feet tell you that he is already round and into
the turnips, and with a sharp whirring rattle, like the
flutter of a moth’s wings in a cardboard box, three
birds are over the fence on your left, and almost on
you before you see them. Up and round you swing,
killing one stone dead, but the second was too far,

DRIVING 131

and they are gone. Involuntarily you look at your
neighbour, a man there is no deceiving, for you know
you were caught napping, and ought to have killed
one of those in front of you, and the little half-
sarcastic glance out of the corer of his right eye,
though he never moves his head, tells you he saw it
all. ‘Over, gentlemen—over the right !’ is now the
cry, and with a whirr that is almost a roar a big lot
breaks all over the fence to your right and in front.
Now thoroughly awake, you kill three neatly, quickly
followed by a smart right and left—one in front and
one behind—at a brace that come straight at you,
immediately followed by misses with both barrels at
one hanging along the fence and inclined to go back
over the beaters. You strike him underneath with
the second, he winces, rises a little, and just as he
seems to turn is crumpled up dead by the professor
on your left, a beautiful long cross shot, and you are
fain to touch your hat and acknowledge a clean wipe.
But now they come thick, and being just angry
enough, you settle into form; for though your left
arm feels like iron, and your grip on the fore-end like
a vice, yet your actions are getting the looseness and
your style the freedom that good form, confidence,
and lots of shooting inspire, and you begin to ‘ play
the hose upon them’ properly. Here and there a
K2

132 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

miss, sometimes two running, generally poking shots
at birds which have passed close by while you were
changing guns, and which somehow baffle you against
the rising stubble behind. Why you don’t know, but
you miss three or four in the same place and in the
same way, though otherwise you are ‘all right’ A
great big lot, three or four coveys packed together,
pours out at the upper end over the left hand, and,
swinging round in the wind, heads straight down the
line of guns. Here they come, streaming high and
fast, getting a broadside from each of the men on
your left. ‘One—two’ with your first gun, ‘ three—
four’ with your second—the last a beauty, and as
they come clattering down like cricket balls about the
head of your right-hand neighbour, you feel you have
done your duty.

A hare leaps through a run in the fence bottom,
sits foolishly with ears laid back for a second, and
then dashes for it past you. Let her go, she will do
to breathe the farmer’s greyhounds in February ;
‘here’s metal more attractive,’ for birds are still com-
ing. But the whimpering of your retriever at the
close view of the forbidden fur, and the consequent
objurgations of the keeper behind, sufficiently
distract you to make you snap at and miss an
easy bird in front with your first, and turn and

DRIVING 133

fiercely drive it into him much too close with your
second,

‘D-——n the hare,’ you mutter aloud as you change
your gun ; but the men are getting near, you hear the
whish and rustle of the flags, a few more desultory
lots come screaming over, and pretty it is, looking
down the line, to see them drop out as they pass, for
the performers on either side of you are picked from
the best in England. A few more ‘singletons’ to
each gun, all killed but one, at which four barrels are
fired, and which towers far away back.

‘ Anything to pick up this side, gentlemen?’ sings
out Marlowe ; in another minute he and his horse
come crashing through the gap, the white smocks
and flags are peeping through unforeseen holes in the
fence, all the dogs are loose and ranging far and wide,
the guns and loaders scattered, picking up in all direc-
tions, and the drive of the season is over.

Seventy-five brace in the single drive, of which
forty birds you can honestly claim, having laid their
corpses in a fair row ere they are hurled by the
old pensioner into his sack, and you find yourself
shouted, whistled, nay, sworn at, to get on to the
next drive.

Glad are you in your heart, for that was a good
score, well and truly made. You will not always be in

134 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

the best place of the best drive, nor always in your
best form when you are there, and forty partridges in
one drive falls not to a man’s lot more than a few
times in his life.

How different it is when on some other day you
are on the flank, when birds are scarcer, and such as
come stream persistently to the other end of the line ;
when gales blow and waiting is long, when raindrops
stand like beads on the barrel of your gun, drip from
the back of your cap on to the chilled marrow of your
spinal column, and trickle chilly from the wrist to
the elbow of your forward arm ;—when through numb-
ness of fingers and genefal want of circulation you have
missed the only two shots you have had for an hour ;
when the drivers have hardly energy to walk or shout,
cloyed as their progress is by their dripping smocks ;
when, as the storm grows blacker in the north-west,
there is nothing before you but one more dreary drive,
in which your position on the other flank will give
you no chance to retrieve your temperature or your
reputation, and then a long soaking walk home of
three or four miles, which you, being at the farthest
point from home, are left to share with the only one
of your party in whose society you take no pleasure,
depressed, disappointed, damp, and, worst of all,
defeated.

DRIVING 135

Why dwell on such a day? We will not, nor need
we mention it, but that I think it helps to give the
other days their value. And as the sun will not always
shine, nor the wind always blow right, nor birds :
always come to you, neither can we, any of us, always
be in tiptop form. Have you not often heard said, or
said yourself, ‘I have found out what I was doing
with those guns all last week, I was shooting 7” front
of everything’? and then added, but not out loud,
‘Ah! I shall never miss again.’ Fond and fatal
delusion! You are really shooting more in front
than last week, for you are fitter; but on your days
of ‘rheum and cholick’ you will shoot ‘2 front of
everything’ many a time again. The man who makes
the most even performance is he who lives for it, and
his is the greater certainty and the greater reputation.

Here a word or two to my young readers. Many
a time have I left London, as I hope they will, for a
real good week at a place where I was most keen
to excel. Unconsciously excited from the start, my
keenness has increased as I sniffed the glorious air of
a good game country on arrival. Bright eyes and
cheerful company, ’74 champagne, ’40 port, and ’20
brandy, to the accompaniment of reminiscences of
flood and field, of hopes and anticipations and record-
breaking bags, have sufficed to raise the fluid in my

136 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

veins to fever pitch, and I have gone to my comfortable
bedroom feeling that life was really worth living.

- This is, no doubt, good living ; but it will not mean
good shooting next day. After an almost sleepless
night breakfast will revolt your feverish eye, and the
hurried start still further discompose your turgid
brain and congested liver. The simplest partridge
will defeat you, and though you may kill a proportion
of birds from knowledge, you will achieve nothing
from form, whilst even Schultz or E.C. may not save
you from that peculiar class of ‘head’ which feels
after each shot like the opening and shutting of a
heavy book charged with electricity. This miserable
state of things always reminds me of the burly vendor
of hot potatoes in Leech’s inimitable drawing, who
thus to the small boy in the big muffler on the pave-
ment holding his ‘tummy’ with both hands, ‘Made
yer ill, ave they? Ah, that’s ’cos yer aint accustomed
to ’igh livin’.’

Well, you may or may not be accustomed to ’igh
livin’, but high living and high birds never did go to-
gether, and unless you cut down the one you will never
bring down the other. Change of air and excitement,
the latter probably a much more frequent condition
of your mind than you are inclined to suppose or pre-
pared to admit, will upset any one; but a very little

DRIVING 137

care on first arriving at the scene of your week’s sport
will keep you fairly right. Eschew the late afternoon
tea, which is too often only a severe astringent dose of
tannic acid, rendered still more noxious by luxuriantly
buttered toast ; eat and drink lightly at dinner, make
but moderate love (this book is not written for ladies,
and if it were they must know that ‘there is causes
and occasions why and wherefore in all things,’ as
Fluellen says) ; curtail the hour of the smoking-room
and the consumption of the weed ‘by one half; the
spirits and soda altogether ; and when you go to bed
take about a teaspoonful of mixed bicarbonate of soda
and ditto of potass ; then you will.sleep, as well as
wake, cool and fit to take your part, at any rate up to
your usual capacity, in the day’s sport.

This to those who wish to feel there is no distance
they cannot walk, no bird they might not kill, and no
one they could possibly hate, in short, to feel fit and
shoot really well. To some others, if they will for-
give me, I would say, Eat the buttered toast, swallow
the tea, drink the champagne, discuss the port and
sample the ‘old,’ make love to the prettiest woman,
tell all the best stories and sing the latest songs,
smoke the largest regalia and go to bed last, in short,
enjoy everything, but don’t for the love of heaven
go out shooting. And who knows but that you may

138 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

enjoy your week, and be as great an acquisition to
your host and hostess as the most serious gunner of
us all?

I have purposely interpolated this advice in the
chapter on Driving, because it is precisely at the places
where the driving is of the best that we are likely to
be most. tempted to the indulgence of our appetites,
and equally because driving is precisely the sport
wherein we shall the most suffer for the indulgence.
The host who does his shooting really well, most
probably ‘does you well’ in all other things, and the
combination of Nimrod and Lucullus is often to
be found in the England of to-day.

It is impossible, in my opinion, to tell any one how
to shoot driven partridges, further than it has been set
down already in what I have written in a former
chapter about calculation. In the matter of how to
make the most of your chances, however, there is
a word or two to be added. The importance of
standing at the right distance from the fence cannot
be over-estimated. Stand well back, even as far as
twenty-five or thirty yards from a really high fence,
unless, as sometimes happens, you are asked not to
do so, because of the ground being near the boundary,
or for some reason connected with the succeeding
drive. Let there be no one under the fence in front

MONG HOIH VY NOU HOVE ONIANVIS

iS SS es

ee

ules

DRIVING

139

of the guns—the practice of allowing spectators or
keepers to squat under the fence in front is very

unsafe and much against the in-
terests of the bag.

If there are persons under the
fence in front of you, it is not so
much against your interests as
against those of your neighbours.
The line from where your neigh-

bour stands to where these people B

sit, when the guns are placed a
long way back from the fence,
falls just at a very killing angle
for him. In the diagram here
shown there are two people under

the fence at the point m, opposite C J

the gun A. Now, A. need not
shoot them, though they are prob-
ably not safe even from him, as I
will presently show ; but B., C. and
D., especially B., could all kill
birds at the points denoted by x,
which ought to be perfectly safe p
for those shooters ; but, as the lines

Ae

Fic. 10

show, would not be if there are people at m As
far as B. and C. are concerned, the point x is

140 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

one at which a first-rate man would kill a good
many birds in the course of a good day’s driving,
while though it would be rather a close shot to
the line for D., yet, if the bird were fairly high he
would be justified in taking it ; but he would in that
case be at exactly the right distance and elevation to
blind the people at #. The point that it gives the guns
two lines of danger to bear in mind, instead of one, is
also an important one, and considering the number
of accidents that have taken place through people
forgetting one line, it is not fair or right to add to the
risk by making a second. N either are they really safe
from A. himself, if he is to fire, as he certainly should,
at birds coming straight to him over the fence and
over their heads. There is always danger of dropping,
or, to speak more correctly, diverging shot below the
point aimed at. I had a very practical experience of
this, which is worth quoting. At the Gun Club we
used to allow ‘byes,’ that is, trial birds, before the
competition began. As we were only allowed one
each, we used to back each other up, so that, if the
shooter whose bye it was missed it altogether, we got
a shot at it to try and wipe his eye after he had done
with it! I backed up somebody who missed his

1 This ‘ backing up’ has long since been forbidden both at
the Gun Club and Hurlingham.

DRIVING 141

bird with both barrels, and by a fluke I killed it
quite dead at about seventy yards off, close to the
boundary ; but the dog who retrieved the birds, and
who was allowed loose during the bye-shooting, was
careering about some eight or ten yards in front, and
between me and the bird. Instead of rushing after
it, he yelled and ran in among us, with his tail down,
whimpering ; a shot from my gun had penetrated his
head through the thick hair, and drawn blood. That
it was a diverging or dropping shot was proved by
my having the luck to kill the bird, the line of which
was much above him, while the force with which it
struck him was remarkable. But they used to chaff
and call out, ‘Who shot the dog?’ to me often
afterwards, and I have never fired directly over any
one since, except ata high elevation. The gunmaker’s
assistants present, men who are constantly ‘plating’
guns, told us that so well did they know this danger
that they never allowed one of their own dogs to run
about in front when they were shooting trials. Yet
I have seen men who are good and careful shots
plugging away at birds coming at them over the fence,
with their loving wives or children sitting under it,
and exactly exposed to this risk. Close behind the
gun and his loader, in a sitting or kneeling posture, is
the safest and most convenient place for spectators.

142 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

Undoubtedly, the more shooting you can do in
front, before birds pass you, the better ; and as long
as there are birds coming on, you should never turn
round at all.

On the whole, I am against scoring, as a matter
of rivalry, one against the other. It is not always a
true test of form, although the luck will generally
equalise itself over a certain number of days, and
if it promotes good shooting it also encourages
jealousy, greediness and grumbling. But it is very
necessary to master the art of counting the number of
birds you have killed in each drive, that you may
know how many you have to look for, and so not
leave them on the ground, and as a check on the
pilfering of birds by beaters or spectators. This isa
much vexed question, but it may be easily settled by the
host keeping count of each person’s claim after every
drive—only birds actually picked up being counted—
without putting them against any name, as thus :

5 —14—I1—I3—2—9 = 54
1o—I1i—1 —7 —8—3 = 40

Here are ninety-four birds claimed in two drives, but
no individual name against the individual scores,
which, not being put down in the order of the stands,
will by the end of the day be well nigh untraceable ;

DRIVING 143

while so long as each claim is made honestly, the
collective amount is what should be found in the bag.
I remember once persuading my host, a man generous
and easy-going to a fault, to let me do this, though it
had never been the custom at his place. The tally
was kept—we were all well used to driving and scoring
—and the claims were undoubtedly genuine. At
luncheon-time the bag returned was eighteen brace
of partridges short of our claim. The keeper, a very
good man, was sent for and told to look closely to the
matter. At the end of the day eleven brace out of
the missing eighteen had been recovered, and the bag
for the afternoon tallied exactly with our claim. Little
heaps of birds, forgotten or missed over by the collector
with the cart, will sometimes be left to rot on the
ground, unless some sort of score is kept. Everything
possible should be done to pick up or kill wounded
birds after the drive, provided always that in hunting
you do not go far enough to disturb the ground of
the next drive. This is an unpardonable crime. By
shooting birds which rise as you walk from drive to
drive, I think you do more good than harm, for they
are of no use where they are, and in most cases are
slightly pricked; but there should be no firing
or noise of any kind as you get close to the fence
where you are to drive. If the fence be scanty,

144 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

and the wind blowing from you and against the birds,
you will ruin the finest drive in the world by talking
as you go along the fence to your places. This point
is not half enough observed, but it is often the absolute
reason of the majority of the birds breaking out at the
sides instead of coming forward.

Where possible, let the host place the guns and the
head-keeper come with the drive. The keeper may
do both if, as Marlowe ' does, he rides on horseback
and gets round quickly enough to avoid keeping the
guns waiting ; he should always take the centre of the
line, and have sole command. Often the flank drivers
cannot see that birds are coming towards them with
a view to break out, and it is only from the centre
that they can be warned in time to turn them.

If you have to wait at your stands, while drivers -
are sent round, always look out for birds put up by
them as they skirt the ground to be driven ; some of
these are sure to turn back over you, and if you are
on the flank may give your only chances in the drive.
The good man having gone to his post, is ready from
that moment, and his eyes are seldom off the fence or
ground in front of him. Nothing moves within the
range of his vision that he does not see, and many a
bird will he kill at the beginning of a drive that comes

1 See p. 130.

HONGA MOLT V OL dO ONICNVLS

DRIVING 148

unexpectedly over the fence, swerves from one of his
unready neighbours, and flies, an easy prey, into his
range.

Neither will he as a rule walk empty-handed from
drive to drive. By this means many pretty chance
shots are lost, whilst a loader unless very practised is
seldom really safe carrying two guns, a heavy bag of
cartridges, and possibly a shooting-seat across field,
fence and ditch. If fatigued by carrying too much
weight, it is natural also that he will not be as keen -
and lively to mark or pick up your birds.

When standing up to a low fence, do all you can
to improve your position. When you have time, cut
down or make up the fence in front of you as seems
necessary, and see that you stand if possible on level
ground. When standing on rough fallow it is well
also to smooth the ground a little, that you may not
be discomfited by falling over great clods of earth as
you swing round at fast-flying birds.

To those who are keen, and who love partridge-
driving well conceived, well managed, and well treated,
all these things will soon come as second nature. To
those who go out merely to air their guns or their
clothes, to talk money or racing, politics or women, to
smoke and eat luncheon, not caring for a good bag
nor how it is made up, these remarks are not addressed.

They will never trouble to read them.
L

146 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

CHAPTER IV

WALKING UP

Unper this head we must include all that there is
to be said, and I fear that can be very little in these
days, about shooting partridges over dogs. The
almost complete abandonment of the pointer and
setter on the manors and fields of England was pri-
marily due to the disappearance of the old-fashioned
stubble. General cleaning of lands, clearing out of
ditches, and trimming down of the old hedgerows to
the level of the modern fence, which shelters neither
bird, beast, nor crop, have swept away the necessity
for them on large estates. In former days the par-
tridges had to be found, now you can see them in
most counties three fields off from the main road. It
is idle to say we are unsportsmanlike because we do
not employ dogs, whose vocation it is to detect with
their noses what we cannot see with our eyes, for
hunting game which exists in such large quantities

WALKING UP 147

that its whereabouts can be ascertained easily without
their aid.

I must here be clear as to which class of shooter
I am addressing. In consulting with A. (to adopt
the symbol by which I designated him in a former
chapter), I have to deal with one who habitually
shoots on large estates, where partridges are plentiful,
where there is a strong staff of keepers, with beaters
at command, and where from three to six and even
seven guns will often be sent out to walk up partridges,
and the bag may be anything from fifty to two hundred
brace.

In taking counsel with B., of whom we spoke
before, conditions are different. The manors over
which he shoots are small, likely enough they are
surrounded by small freeholds, or unpreserved ground,
marsh or common, keepers are few and poachers
from the neighbouring villages are many, and it be-
comes a question of five to twenty-five brace of birds
in the day.

The former has the birds found and driven in for
him, and has then only to take his part like a gentle-
man and a sportsman in the day’s proceedings. Even
this seems to tax some shooters beyond their powers,
and on this head I shall have a word or two to say
presently. The latter has to find his birds, manage

L2

148 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

them, consider his narrow boundaries, beat for them,
and possibly carry them himself when killed.

There is much more ground in a high state of
game preservation at the present day than there ever
was, and the comparative values of famous sporting
estates, with the doings of those who shoot over them,
are much better known. All improvements in guns
and gunnery, in rearing, stocking and preserving,
beating and managing partridges or other game,
originate on the larger properties and with those who
shoot in the more luxurious and accomplished fashion,
and have wider experience of different counties and
climates ; so I will address myself to the latter in the
first place.

Tastes vary, with sportsmen as with other people,
and although I would not in sporting matters quite
endorse the old French proverb that ‘tous les gofits
sont respectables,’ yet there is much to be said in
favour of each of the different methods of killing
partridges or grouse. You cannot expect a man who
from indifferent eyesight, lack of judgment—of pace
or distance—or deficiency of early training, finds that
he cannot kill driven birds, and that consequently each
succeeding day’s driving is to him a fresh defeat or
disappointment, while he is a fair performer at birds
rising in front of him—you cannot expect such a man,

WALKING UP 149

I say, to go on denying himself what suits him best,
and to drive his ground because it is the fashion. He
may be the owner of a good partridge estate, where
he, his keepers, farmers and labourers are all on good
terms, and the head of game is consequently always
up to a certain average. He and his guests, and his
father, and grandfather, and their guests, may have
been able from time immemorial to kill eighty or
a hundred brace of birds to four or five guns, while
the keepers and beaters aforesaid may have inherited
the traditions and perfected the knowledge which
three generations of good sportsmen and loyal servants
have handed down.

Such an one should not be cavilled at, nor con-
sidered to be behind the times because he prefers
walking to driving his partridges, and some of his
friends will find that he can teach a thing or two to
those who devote themselves exclusively to the latter
form of sport.

Again, he may havea fancy for breeding retrievers,
or may have a boy or boys, fresh from Eton or
Harrow, for whom it is his great pleasure to find
amusement, and his great ambition that they should
turn out good all-round sportsmen. Here again he will
be quite right to walk up his partridges. A retriever
who has not been broken to heel, and to stick to a

150 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

winged bird in turnips, will never be first-rate, even
for driving purposes ; and a boy who does not know
how to carry his own gun, or use it when walking in
line, nor how to handle that retriever, will never be a
pleasant neighbour nor an accomplished performer in
a good week’s driving. One thing, however, I would
beg of him—to decide finally which he prefers, and
not to walk up his birds as well as drive them on the
same ground. This is trying to eat your cake and
have it, both with partridges and grouse. The walk-
ing up skims the cream, spoils the subsequent driving,
and undoes the good the latter sport may do to the
stock. The driving, after the ground has been already
walked, is not worth having, and, if persisted in, is
hard upon the stock of birds.

Driving partridges is the cream, the luxury, and
poetry of the sport ; walking up is the very marrow
and essence of it. I defy any one to handle a line of
men, or arrange a beat for driving, who has not plenty
of experience in walking after them. The partridge,
like most things, must be known from all points of
view that he may be properly appreciated and dealt
with. Walking up, or shooting partridges over dogs,
is, in my judgment, the finest training of all for a
young shooter. Here he can learn everything of the
habits of the birds, of the instinct or the merits of the

WALKING UP 151

dogs, of the faults and failings of the men ; and if he
masters the art thoroughly, and can kill them really
well, he will find himself, when he comes to joina
select team for high-class driving, well able to hold
his own, and will discover that there is no special
‘knack’ in killing driven birds. I have known a
youngster, well trained to other sorts of shooting, to
top the score at grouse the first day he ever sawa
driven bird, and that against a more than average
team.

On some manors, where driving nas never as yet
been adopted, and where only moderate bags have
ever been achieved, it may be well to try it for three
or four years, to disperse the coveys, change the
blood, and kill off old barren birds. But this is only
worth doing if you are prepared to stick to it, and
to give up entirely the old-fashioned system, while
you must expect some very disappointing days—days
when the waiting is long and the shots scarce. For
when, on poorly stocked ground, you have allowed
the necessary margin for birds that must break out at
the sides of the drives, the amount left to come over
the guns will be small enough to try your patience
greatly. If, after this experiment, which must be
strictly’ carried out—that is to say, no walking or
shooting over dogs allowed—you find your stock

152 SHOOTING THE PARYRIDGE

greatly increased and your bags proportionately
higher, it is worth while to persevere. But if, as in
many places, the soil is not favourable to a large
stock, and you still cannot raise enough birds to kill
say from eighty to one hundred brace in a day, it is,
in my opinion, better to stick to the system of walk-
ing, and to rely upon good keepering and judicious
management for the best sport which this class of
country will afford.

A great many partridge manors are much too hard
shot, and have nothing like the stock upon them that
the ground will carry (of this I shall have more to
say in another chapter) ; but this is accounted for in
many cases by the clinging to the old traditions in the
early part of the season, shooting every beat by walking
in the old way, and in the later part imitating the
fashion, and pandering to an unworthy and hopeless
desire to vie with the places where good bags are
made by exclusive driving—a fatal combination which
reduces your stock of birds, disappoints yourself, and
enrages and discourages your keepers. Ground which
has been shot over by walking, if decent bags have
been made, is not worth driving, and I know nothing
more dispiriting than to be told, as you are placed
for a drive, ‘You know, we have killed eighty brace
off this ground already, and saw an awful lot of birds.’

WALKING UP 153

‘Yes,’ you feel inclined to say, ‘but the “awful lot”
are no longer there ; one hundred and sixty of them
have been picked, trussed, and eaten, a few more
died and were never retrieved, and what are left,
though they would make a pretty wild sporting
second-time-over shoot, will give us a very poor day’s
driving. If they were still here alive, together with
the fifty brace which six of us will with difficulty
secure to-day, we should have a pretty day.’ To
this his answer will probably be that he prefers
smaller bags and more days. Well and good, but he
has no business with the second day at all. It is too
much for the ground, and if two days were to be
made on the beat, this is not the way to make
them, especially as he probably shot his eighty brace
with inferior guns, and asked his best guns to the
later driving. In these days the demand is not so
much for a great number of days’ shooting as for good
and well-managed days, quality as to the number of
days, quality and quantity combined, where possible,
as regards the shooting.

There are now many more resources and localities
open to every one. Life is busier, and most men have
too much to do to shoot six or even four days a week
right through the season. I am far from saying that
aman has not a perfect right, or is not often justified,

154 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

in subdividing his sport over a large number of days,
especially if he lives from week to week at home for
the greater part of the year. In this case he will do
much more good on and near his own estate than he
who is constantly travelling about, racing or ‘London-
ising’; but he will be dependent on a different class
for his guns. He cannot expect men to come and
assist him in his days of forty or fifty brace, walking,
who have the choice of other places where they can
kill 150 brace, driving, unless there are other strong
reasons to induce them to do so.

But there is room for all these points of view, and
I, for one, cannot join those who turn their noses up
at days of forty to sixty brace of partridges, walked
up, in pleasant company. It must also be borne in
mind on the side of the ‘ walker’ that he can enjoy a
number of days of a perfectly charming sort with two
or three intimate friends, and without the trouble or
expense of a large organised party ; indeed, there are
no days pleasanter than those which are thus spent in
the pursuit of the partridge, where every beat ona large
sporting estate is tried in turn. I used to pass many
such at different places, and nowhere more pleasantly
than with my uncle, the late Lord Wenlock, at
Escrick. He and his eldest son, the present Governor
of Madras, and I shot many a day together, and so

WALKING UP 155

well did we know one another’s form and every inch
of the 17,000 acres, or thereabouts, which make up
that well-known sporting estate, that I verily believe
on that ground no three men could have beaten us.
My uncle was almost like a boy himself, singularly
active and powerful, and an exceptionally fine shot.
We understood every wave of his hand or look of his
eye, and learnt thoroughly all that can be done by
three guns and a few well-trained men on the war-
path for partridges, whether in the hot days of early
September, when a good-natured tenant of the old-
fashioned sort would insist on our walking through
the standing barley and beans, or in the late October,
when the fields were cleared, and by running, circum-
venting, half-mooning, and occasional impromptu
driving, we managed to get the birds into a scanty
field of cold wet swedes or a welcome bit of gorse-
cover.

He had a little Irish red retriever, called Gunner,
the best, I think, I eversaw. It was a treat to see this
little beast on a winged bird: No jumping about with
his head in the air, but with nose to the ground and
at a terrific pace he would carry the scent down
the drill right through fresh unsprung birds to the
end of the field, double back, down and up again,
lose it for a moment, execute a perfect cast for him-

156 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

self, off faster than before down to the end, racing
along the fence towards the corner, and just as any
one who didn’t know him would be inclined to shout
him back, a little whirr, the flash of the under-
white of a wing, and Gunner caught the bird in the
air, and trotted proudly back to his master without
ruffling a feather.

In those days there were many hares, and in
threading his way through a turnip field after a winged
bird a dog must be trusted to pass by the temptation
of the scent of fur as well as of fresh birds. I fear
that since the introduction and spread of driving there
are fewer masters and keepers who understand break-
ing and working a retriever than there were formeriy.
The well-broken retriever is more needed every day,
as the pointer and setter recede before nineteenth
century conditions of shooting, but I am afraid that he
becomes scarcer. The demand is vastly in excess of
the supply, and as there is no difficulty about multi-
plication of the species, and as the health and treat-
ment of dogs are more humanely and scientifically
understood than ever, we are forced to the conclusion
that it is their training that is deficient.

Much as I love driving, I afn afraid that it is
largely responsible for this. As I hinted above, no
dog will ever be really useful in the field, even where

WALKING UP 157

driving is the exclusive method, who has not had
birds shot 0 4im, and been handled well in the pur-
suit of wounded game which is difficult to find, as,
for example, of partridges in turnips on a bad scent-
ing day. One of the most fruitful causes of demorali-
sation in retrievers that have only been used to driv-
ing is that they have been in the constant habit of
seeing dead birds in numbers upon the ground.
Where possible the line of guns is always placed in
a field of pasture, stubble, or other tolerably bare
ground, to facilitate the pick up after the drive, so
that by the time a drive is over the dog has, perhaps,
six or eight brace of birds within easy view lying
quite dead. In the majority of places the retrievers
are assigned to under-keepers, mostly under thirty
years of age and of limited experience. These are
chiefly recruited from one class, that is the sons
or relations of older keepers. They are entirely de-
pendent for their knowledge upon such instruction as
they may have received from the chiefs under whom
they have borne arms. But the chiefs themselves are
no longer of the generation which studied the break-
ing in of dogs as one of the most essential parts of
their functions. Modern shooting, with its rearing
and watching, its diplomacy, its generalship, and all
its elaborate machinery of organisation and detail,

158 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

leaves a head-keeper no time for the breaking of dogs,
still less for the instruction of his subordinates in such
an art. We have advanced in this as in other things,
and must pay a penalty for our progress. We have
more knowledge, more game, better management and
better shooting, but incomparably worse dogs.

I can only offer one suggestion to remedy this
state of things, which occurs to me irresistibly when-
ever I am lucky enough to stay with men who can
afford to do their shooting on a handsome scale, and
I believe it would pay even those who cannot afford
in any way to add to their expenses. This is toemploy
a man—call him dog-man, under-keeper, or what you
will, which merely means that he would be under the
authority of the head-keeper—who should devote
himself entirely to the breaking of your dogs, and on
shooting days to attendance on the guns and retriev-
ing the game. Of course, I am now more particu-
larly speaking of England and partridge-shooting, for
the same class of man, though devoted entirely to
pointers and setters, is to be found on many well-
ordered estates in Scotland.

It is really lamentable to any one who has ex-
perience of shooting by the side of well-broken and
well-handled retrievers, to see the modern under-
keeper, with very limited knowledge of working birds,

WALKING UP 159

and still more limited experience of good retrievers,
hopelessly floundering in a turnip field in charge of a
raw though keen and well-bred dog after a strong
running bird. He does not lead the dog to the spot
where the bird first struck the ground, for this he has
not been trained to mark accurately himself ; he has
no notion of giving him the wind or making a cast ;
he calls af him and not ¢ him ‘every few seconds ; he
tries to get him back by whistle and curse should he
at last hit off the scent and carry it to the end of the
field; he has no apparent notion of the direction
the bird is likely to take in running, and his prevail-
ing feeling appears to be that of a man who has set a
power in motion which he is incapable of checking,
and of which he does not know the elementary prin-
ciples. The dog, often born with a magnificent nose,
high spirit, and tender mouth, an invaluable com-
bination when trained to perfection, has by this time
only two strong characteristics, a desire to see the bird
instead of scenting it, and an ineradicable fear of his
master ; fatal conditions, making it absolutely impos-
sible for the latter to extract any value from the
splendid qualities of scent, perseverance, and attach-
ment which Nature has bestowed upon the retriever.
‘It is difficult to suggest a remedy for this, except-
ing in the directions I have indicated. If your under-

160 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

keepers are incapable of breaking or handling a dog,
you must try to give them an example of how it
should be done, and they will quickly see the advan-
tage of the knowledge, and try to acquire it for them-
selves. It is surely possible on any estate to reserve
outlying portions—they need not be large—which may
be devoted to the all-important department of break-
ing and training your dogs.

Shooting must be done on this ground for the
benefit of the dogs and their trainers alone, but no
great amount of birds need be killed, and it strikes
me that to take part on off days in this wild shooting
and dog-breaking would be a pleasant change for any
owner or tenant of a good sporting property. More
than this, it would probably pay him, for his retrievers
would command high prices in the market, and the
numbers of birds retrieved from loss and lingering
death would go some way in value towards the expense
of the department. The dog-breaker, while training
his dogs, would bring up and train a boy apprentice,
who would, besides doing the dirty work of the kennel,
and looking after the dogs in his chief’s necessary
absences, soon be capable of supplementing his efforts
in the field.

You are walking, say, four guns in a line, and to
each gun there is a keeper and a retriever. Asa rule,

WALKING UP 161

if one dog out of the four is any use you may be thank-
ful, and in case of difficulty this one and his master
have to be summoned, often from the opposite end
of the line, to help out the hopeless efforts of one of
the others. I firmly believe that one man thoroughly
up to his work, handling a couple of perfectly trained
retrievers, and with another couple in reserve for the
time when these are tired, would attend upon a line
of even six guns with more success than the divided
and incapable efforts one is usually dependent upon.
For this purpose the system advocated by Payne-
Gallwey, in his ‘ Letters to Young Shooters,’ of giving
the beaters light sticks or wands, and obliging them
to plant one in the ground at the spot where a bird
has fallen, should be adopted.

This brings me to one of the most important and
difficult points in walking partridges, the picking up
in thick cover. It is simple enough when there is
only one bird, or perhaps two, down, and both are
stone dead. It is when birds are rising thick and
fast, seven or eight are dropped in front of the
different guns, one or two more behind, and of
these, say, two are evident runners—that the trouble
begins. If this takes place at the end of the field
there is less difficulty ; but when it is in the middle
of the field, there are more fresh birds in front

M

162 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

of you, and the turnips are high and thick, the whole
organisation usually seems to collapse, the line gets
into confusion, the dogs run too far ahead, and
put up fresh birds out of range, or the pause js sé
long that all the broken birds in front of you run
gradually to the end, and then get up in a bunch
without much execution being done among them.
Now observe how your dog-breaker, assisted by
the beaters, trained to mark the fall of the birds and
plant sticks, would simplify all this. You would send
him first for those that fell behind the line, which he
would have marked himself. While he was picking
up these, the line would advance slowly to where the
fallen birds are in front, and plant the sticks wherever
they cannot at once see and pick them up. If, as is
likely, more rise and are killed as you advance, they
must be marked as well as possible in the same way.
The dog-man will have by this time retrieved what
fell behind, and will be following close, and seeking
wherever sticks are planted. If he comes to the mark
of a bird that is a runner, he should leave it till he has
gathered all the dead ones, knowing that it must either
have run forward, or to one side, on to fresh ground ;
the line meanwhile advancing to the end. If there
is another beat to be taken in the same field, and the
runner has not yet been found, he will be on the fresh

WALKING UP 163

ground, and have joined the fresh birds there if
possible. You will probably come upon him as you
walk this strip, but if you do not the dog-man will
take up the search behind you, laying on his dogs at
the marked spot where he fell, and whatever pains it
may cost to find him, at least the progress of the line
will not be delayed, nor the fresh ground disturbed
by thesearch. A winged bird will invariably run away
from the line, and almost always down the drill to the
fence. The scent of him keeps alive much longer
than in the case of a dead bird, so that there is no
great reason for hurry. You will also observe that a
dog will always hunt closer and more rapidly with no
one near him than surrounded by a number of people,
of whom several will very likely be carrying dead game,
and thereby confusing the scent. The scent of a hare
or rabbit is much stronger than that of a partridge,
and no dog can be expected to stick true to the scent
of the bird, when there are men dragging either of
these, freshly killed and bleeding, through the cover,
within a few feet of him.

I had the shooting of several thousand acres of
very good partridge ground in Perthshire given tu me
years ago. I took the same eight beaters out every
day, and by paying them a little more than the market
rate of wages, found no difficulty in getting them

M2

164 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

regularly. They soon got to understand the sport,
and were keen about it, so I drilled them thoroughly,
until it became a pleasure to shoot alongside of them.
One drill, or two feet behind the gun, the line was
kept exactly ; the next man on the right of a gun
marked his first barrel, he on the left his second, and
if more rose and were killed, the next two on the right
and left took up the marking in succession. The
birds, unless plainly to be seen on the ground, were
always lifted by a keeper, of whom we had two out,
with four dogs; the spot marked was indicated on
getting near it by the beater, and under no circum-
stances was he allowed to advance to the spot itself
~ until after the dog had been laid on, nor to interfere
in any way with the search. We hardly ever lost a
bird, and there was really no difficulty about the
matter at all. The men knew their places in the line,
which were never changed, and what they had to
do ; so long as they stuck to their orders they were
sure of their extra pay and a good lunch, and the
whole business suited them, and us, very well. We
killed 105 brace there on our best day, with four
guns, and often fifty or sixty brace with two guns.
Perthshire is in some districts a fine country for
partridges, the only drawback to it being the pre-
yalence of stone walls, and alas! barbed wire, which

WALKING UP 165

are naturally not much help to the stock of birds.
But in many parts of the Lowlands, as in the north
of England, the fringe of the moor or hill ground,
lying next to the arable land, affords good protection
for nesting ; and the extensive cultivation of potatoes
provides a class of cover which the birds are very fond
of frequenting, and which is a welcome change from
the eternal turnips, as birds can run very freely along
them. In wheeling in a potato field, I would always
recommend that the pivot flank should retrace its steps
on the return beat overa portion of the same ground ;
that is, when you are beating across the drills. You
will often find that, owing to the protection of the deep
drills, they have crossed back again on to the ground
you have beaten.

I would always try to force birds into potatoes
rather than turnips, early in the season, while the
cover in the former is pretty good, supposing that the
management of the beat admits of it. Besides that
they are pleasanter walking, birds show better, and are
therefore more likely to be well killed, as well as more
easily picked up than in turnips. There is always a
better scent, and dead birds are more easily seen in a
potato field.

The question of finding the birds, in spite of the
bare character of the modern stubble, is much more

166 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

vital in walking than in driving partridges. In driving
the broad line of beaters sweeps the whole country
before it, there is a widespread alarm and noise, and
but few birds escape being absorbed by this general
advance. In walking the breadth of the line corre-
sponds at most only to the width of the field, and
though you may send out men, as the German army
send out their Uhlans, to spy out the surrounding
country, yet these, like that distinguished military
force, move only in small bodies, and may miss many
odd corners and patches of cover.

Driving also takes place, as a rule, later in the year
than the best season for walking; more fields are
cleared, the potatoes are all picked, and there are the
farmer s men all over the ground, ploughing, cleaning,
harrowing, burning weeds, &c. In September walking, ,
just after harvest, you must be prepared to find par-
tridges almost anywhere. They are particularly fond
of grass fields, and besides have a habit of basking
on the leeside of a thick fence, and sitting particularly
close in such a situation. It follows that if your
beaters all get through the gap in this sort of fence
and then spread out imperfectly over the field, they
will often leave whole coveys behind them squatting
under the fence they have just come through. As
men go round a stretch of several fields to drive it in,

WALKING UP 167

or walk the same ground in line with the guns, they
must be taught to beat every fence before getting
through it, and after getting through to spread at once
right and left, so as to cover the whole field before
advancing in line.

On days when there is a stiff breeze, perhaps from
the east, with a warm sun, half the birds on a beat
will be enjoying the shelter and warmth close under
the fences, and unless the ground is carefully beaten, as
indicated above, only half the stock will be shown and
brought to the guns. I remember Lord Walsingham
and myself killing seventy-three brace one day, before
five o’clock, on an estate in Yorkshire where thirty to
thirty-five brace to three or four guns was the highest
previous record. We had to leave off at that hour,
with a quantity of broken birds and good cover in
front of us, and often have I regretted we were not
able to go on till dusk, for we should certainly have
made roo brace of it, which I think would have been
a remarkable record for that part of the West Riding.

But on the commonplace lines of beating the
ground we should never have done anything like this.
I knew every inch of the ground, and had besides
the man of all others as a partner who was capable
of taking part in breaking a record. The country
consisted largely of grass fields and bare stubbles,

168 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

there happening to be remarkably few turnips or thick
cover of any sort. We beat every fence and every
corner of each field—grass and all—rvunning round
many of them to gain time, and to get the right side
of the birds before they were disturbed, and though
the total was nothing remarkable, and might be easily
doubled in Norfolk, or other better partridge countries,
yet it was a good example of what can be done ina
very moderate country with no great stock of birds.
The commonplace keeper has what I may be for-
given for calling a ‘rooted’ idea that turnips are the
natural home of the partridge. As a general rule my
experience is that partridges are seldom found in
turnips, especially swedes, until they have been driven
into them, and many a bag is spoilt by the time
consumed in laboriously walking such fields without
getting more than a chance shot, while the coveys
belonging to the ground are sitting quietly in the
fallow, stubble, or grass within a hundred yards of
you, fields which the keeper does not think worth while
beating. They will no doubt resort to white turnips
in hot dry weather to dust and feather themselves,
especially when the crop is sown broadcast, as there
are then certain open spaces here and there about the
field, in which, as well as at the edges, you will find
traces of their scratching and feathering—but swedes

QaId GHAFAOL FHL

WALKING UP 169

they hate, and only go there for shelter when alarmed
or hustled. The same may be said of clover, in which
crop you will rarely find a bird unless it has been
driven there. It must be borne in mind that when,
on first attacking your ground in the morning, you
find birds in these crops, which they do not frequent
because they cannot run comfortably in them, it
is possible that they have been disturbed by men
working in the fields or crossing by foot-paths. In
the afternoon, during feeding-time, it is of course
utterly useless to beat turnips unless you have driven
birds to them off the stubbles.

A word or two is necessary on the subject of pace
in walking. It is, no doubt, a good rule to walk
slowly, and when birds are broken all over a turnip
field, and lying well, you can hardly go too slowly.
But the rule is by no means invariable, and when you
enter a fresh field, the birds in which have not as yet
been disturbed, and are inclined to keep rising just
out of range, while those that do not rise are running
from you towards the end, you will get many more
shots by going fast than slow. In wheeling also,.
unless again birds are lying very close, the wheeling
flank should get round rapidly. It isa fact that at
times you can vv right on to birds, when you could
not walk to them.

170 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

Again, it is all-important, as often happens, to push
birds forward, and when your whole force has to enter
the field by one gateway or gap, the more quietly
your right and left wings spread out and the advance
begins the better. This must be done in silence, and
the whole line will then be behind the birds before they
are fully aware of it, and as a natural consequence
when they hear the rattle of the advancing force they
will strive to get away forward. There are often birds
lying to the right or left of the line, not far into the
field, and near the side fence. If your spreading
out to get into line is done too slowly or noisily, these
birds, which will not sit very long after they are aware
of danger in the same field, will inevitably rise, and
possibly go out over the side fence where you do not
wish them to go, before the gun which should advance
opposite to them has got to his place. Of course, 1
am here presuming that you are handling a line of four
or six guns, and probably taking a whole field at a time.
I would then recommend also that the flank beater
should walk say ten or fifteen yards in advance of the
rest, to keep the birds towards the forward centre,
the point aimed, at. This position of the outside
beater or gun is an important one, and it is essential
that the formation should be as shown on next page,
in fig. 11, if it is desired to keep birds by this means
away from one side or the other.

WALKING UP 171

If carried out as in fig. 12, the result will never be
so good, since it is the outside man who does all the
work, and who, creeping ahead next the fence, turns

L © ew @ © &
ye :
LLL.

Fic. 11

the birds inwards after they are on the wing, and who
is heard by those that have not risen, which con-
sequently make away from the danger. He must
keep very close to the fence, and if the flanking

Fic. 12

operation is of vital importance, he should be a
‘gun’ rather than a beater.

A story is told of the late Sir Henry Stracey, who,
being a complete type of a ‘ British officer and gentle-

172 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

man’ of the old school, was wont to conduct the
shooting at Rackheath, his place in Norfolk, as much
as possible on military lines. Calling to his keeper,
as they entered a large turnip field full of birds, to
halt the line, he announced that he wished this field
beaten en échelon. ‘Very good, Sir Henry,’ was the
response, and then with his hand to his mouth in
stentorian tones the keeper shouted, ‘Now, all yew
beaters, Sir Henry he dew wish yew to take this here
field on the re-ound.’

Whether he knew the superiority of the ‘re-ound’
formation, or merely meant it as the best popular
translation into Norfolk language of the word échedon,
history does not relate. But a line formed on the
‘re-ound’ is most certainly better under almost all
circumstances than ez échelon.!

What is called ‘half-mooning’ is a system of walk-
ing up partridges that merits more notice than it
seems to receive, and for October shooting ought
to be, to my thinking, universally adopted where
practicable. But it demands large fields, well-drilled
men, and very careful shooters. It used to be carried
to great perfection by Lord Leicester, at Holkham in
Norfolk, where I fancy it was invented, and where

1 On referring to the Badminton Library, I am glad to find
myself in accord with Lord Walsingham on this point.

WALKING UP 173

I was lucky enough to take part in it on several
occasions. Lord Leicester’s name has been famous
these many years for his consummate skill in the
management and organisation of shooting, and cer-
tainly when he directed the half-moon it was a most
beautifully executed manceuvre, very effective and
very simple withal.

I need hardly say that complete discipline must
be maintained by both shooters and beaters, as it
invariably was at Holkham.

On entering the field, the line of six guns is formed
at the base, the spaces between the men being very
evenly kept. Ona signal from the host, or person
directing the operations, who must always be at or
near the centre, the two outside men, who must be
shooters, begin to advance straight up the field.
When they have proceeded say ten yards, another
wave of the hand directs the next two to begin
moving, and so on until the whole are in motion,
none venturing to advance without signal from the
commander-in-chief; the centre keeping well back
until the last, and often until the outside men have
advanced more than half-way up the field. By this
time a great many shots will generally have been
fired, especially by the flank men, at birds breaking
out at the sides. But presently the birds lying in the

Re Be “@r-+-@r**@

ios)
e

Fic. 13

1. The first formation.

2, The half-moon in process of formation.

% The half-moon completely formed and in motion
he larger dots represent the guns,

WALKING UP 175

middle of the field, having heard that danger has
passed by on each outside, and gone beyond them,
will, when they rise, begin to turn in and fly back
over the centre and other guns. Then comes the
trial of patience and careful shooting. The bird
which rises at your feet, if you are, say, No. 4 or 5,
tempting as he is, you must not fire at, for he flies
straight for the head of No. 2 gun, and so on till
the end of the field. It need hardly be added that
the swinging curling shots afforded by the birds
coming back are most difficult, and therefore enjoy-
able when successfully dealt with, and it is wonderful
to see a covey rise inside the magic half-circle, and at
once come back straight over the centre or sides.

It must be borne in mind that partridges, being
very close to the ground, are very sensitive to sound,
and they hear the rattle of a man’s feet very quickly
as it comes to them under the turnip leaves. It is
this which causes them to turn back. They have
probably not seen the outside men, but they have
heard their tread as they passed by, and may even
have seen their feet as they look along the drills (for
half-mooning should always be done across the drills
where possible). The centre, lying far back and not
having yet moved much, the birds have not become
aware of, and so knowing that danger has passed by

176 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

and gone beyond them, they think to sneak back and be
safe. Thus many which would be quite unapproach-
able by an ordinary straight line of guns, afford instead
beautiful overhead shots. You never seem to get a
great deal of shooting, yet it is wonderful how the
total mounts up, for some of the guns, according to
luck, get shooting in every field, however wild the
birds may be.

Half-mooning with a more extended line, and
embracing a large stretch of country at a time, also
answers very well, but the spacing is naturally much
more difficult to keep, as the intersecting fences hide
one part of the line from the other. It is then well
for the men to carry flags, but more will depend upon
the discipline and intelligence displayed by the
shooters. Those in the centre must allow time for
the flanks to get forward, and each gun must keep
touch with his right and left hand neighbours, pausing
for them if they have to stop to pick up or get through
a fence, and quickening or slackening his pace accord-
ing to that of the flank outside him.

In this way birds may be pushed off a large tract
of country on to any heath or desirable piece of cover,
while during the operation many wild pretty shots will
relieve the monotony of walking.

I remember once, when out alone with Lord

WALKING UP 177

Walsingham at his place, Merton in Norfolk,
probably the best shooting property for its size in
England, we were walking up a narrow and rather
bare field of swedes. A covey rose wild, a long way
in front, and out of shot of him, and for what reason
I know not, for there was no half-moon, they turned
and came back over my head at a good pace. I was
luckly enough to kill a right and left, not very difficult,
but satisfactory overhead shots. Poor old Buckle,
the famous keeper so lovingly remembered in the
Badminton Library, and by every one who ever shot
at Merton, was toiling along some twenty yards behind
me. He had years before been shot in the stomach
by a poacher, and always went ‘a bit short.’ As the
two dead birds came clattering down by him, and he
turned to pick them up, he said to me: ‘ Well, that’s
a thing I couldn’t ever do so long as I’ve lived, and I
dessay I’ve seen a deal more shooting than you have,
too.’ So, no doubt, he had, and from a privileged
person of his experience a remark in the nature of
a compliment was nothing but gratifying.

The hints, suggestions or descriptions, I have
ventured to give so far on walking up partridges, have
been, as I said, mainly addressed to those who shoot
in organised parties on well-preserved estates. But I
must not neglect my friend B., of whom I spoke above,

N

178 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

and whose opportunities are neither so great nor so
frequent. Many pleasant days have I had with men
of the B. stamp—and much of the groundwork of
partridge-shooting did I learn from them. Now, in
return I must, while thanking them for what they
taught me, urge upon them that most of the improve-
ments in the art of managing partridges on closely
preserved estates include lessons which they, on
smaller properties, and with less expense, can learn to
follow on a smaller scale. The half-moon principle,
for instance, can and should be carried out in minia-
ture by a party of, say, four or five persons, all told.
In approaching birds under these conditions, and on
ground where the boundary must be made a constant
study, it is of vital importance that somebody should
be between the birds and the dangerous quarter defore
they rise. When your party consists of, say, two guns
and three beaters or keepers, I can conceive very few
circumstances under which you should move in a
straight line. One must be prepared to run while
the other stands still ; one to be forward while the
other keeps back. It is a game of working well
together, and though probably one will always be
the host and manager and the other the guest or
subordinate in theory, they must in practice consider
each other equally, and give way as circumstances arise.

WALKING UP 179

For this class of shooting I think pointers are most
useful ; still more so for the man who likes to go out
single-handed and kill his eight or ten brace of birds,
accompanied only by one man to carry game, ammu-
nition and refreshment. It is essential under these
circumstances not to blunder on to the birds unex-
pectedly, and so probably drive them in the wrong
direction. It is a very pretty manceuvre, and one
requiring all the qualities of the true sportsman, to
get round a covey of birds lying fairly near the
boundary fence, work yourself in between them and
the enemy’s territory and put them back into the
centre of your own ground. To do this it is essential
to know where they are lying in the first instance, and
you cannot do better than employ a steady pointer
for this purpose.

I would go farther than this, and recommend
pointers or setters for the class of shooting I mentioned
having had in Perthshire—two or three guns and about
eight men—in short, what may be described as the
average or popular form of partridge-shooting. I well
recollect the dismay with which, in spite of consider-
able keenness and activity, we used to survey a thirty-
acre field of turnips as high as your waist, and into
which we had driven, say, only two coveys and a

brace of odd birds. To beat the field properly would
N2

180 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

take an hour’s hard walking, possibly in a hot sun, or
worse still, in pouring rain—and the prospect only
three or four brace at most to the bag. Then again,
with a narrow line—for you must walk pretty close in
the thick cover—in a field of this size the birds would
often run completely round you, and I have seen the
whole of such a field beaten without even flushing the
birds which were undoubtedly in it.

Now, here a good pointer is invaluable. I would
not recommend working a brace at the same time, for
it is not here as with grouse, where very wide range is
desirable, and the eventual flight of the birds is of no
moment. ‘This is a close matter of working the birds
in the direction you want, and if you had two points
at the same time you would run the risk of spoiling
the one while dealing with the other. But your
single steady dog would show you the whereabouts
of the birds, save you much time and laborious
walking, while it would enable you to approach
them from the side most desirable, according to your
ground.

It has often struck me as lamentable that in
small, or shall I say average, partridge-shooting the
pointer should no longer be employed, because, for-
sooth, he has become unnecessary to the large and
carefully organised parties which have to deal with

WALKING UP 181

large quantities of birds on a practically unlimited
extent of ground.

I have purposely dwelt on this point, because I
have been accused of being an absolute partisan of
exclusive driving, and of a consequent contempt for
this class of shooting. I must claim a more catholic
disposition, and a genuine sympathy, founded on
experience, with the beautiful art of making a bag of
partridges, practised by those who have a genuine
love of sport, but have not the advantages of the great
landowner or millionaire. This consists so far as one
can sum it up, and granted that you as well as those
with you are both active and keen, in so managing
your birds that you push them in the first instance
in the required direction and deal with them in detail
afterwards. To do this you must neglect no cover,
open ground, or hedgerow ; you must vary your pace
and positions, circumvent, lie in wait for, or drive
rapidly on to your birds as circumstances arise, and
above all there must be complete harmony and ab-
sence of jealousy between you, your colleagues in sport,
and your assistants. While you are young, and your
game-book as yet contains many blank pages, you will
assuredly keep a score of your kills, whether I or anyone
else dissuade you or not. But be honest to yourself
in this, and remember that the only value your score

182 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

can have is to show that you have made the most

of your opportunities without interfering with your~

neighbours.

Some mention must be made, in a work of this
kind, of the method of shooting partridges with the
aid of an artificial kite. I cannot say much in favour
of it, although I think that the objection most fre-
quently urged against it—viz. that it drives birds off
your ground—does not, except on very small properties
or shootings, carry much weight. But as we are now
discussing the small and unpretentious manor with our
friend B., who is the most likely person to make
use of it, I would venture to point out one or two
other things.

That it gives very poor, poking shots, and is .
strictly pot-hunting class of sport, nobody can deny ;
but the excuse generally pleaded for it, that when
cover is scarce and an organised drive may be, from
lack of men or means, impracticable, birds cannot be
got at any other way, is, to my thinking, inadmissible.

There is no prettier art than driving partridges to
one or two guns, with only three or four drivers 3 and
any one who has experienced the pride one feels in
taking home fifteen brace of birds secured in this way
on ground circumscribed in area and not too plenti-
fully stocked, will agree with me that this is the way

KITING

WALKING UP 183

to kill them under the above conditions. Success
depends entirely on intimate knowledge of the ground,
the whereabouts of the coveys, and their probable
or usual line of flight ; but w7¢# this knowledge, and
straight shooting, you may kill all you want to on
any ground, however bare and limited, so long as it
is not blowing a gale of wind.

But if you must secure birds for the pot, and do
not mind easy slow shots out of hedgerows, then try
the kite. The important thing to bear in mind is that
the kite-flyer, if he walks in front of you, is likely to
be in your way when the birds rise ; therefore, instruct
him to walk rather behind you while he flies the kite
in front of you.

I have seen it used with good effect in shootings
on a larger scale, notably at Merton, as a flank pro-
tection, to keep birds on a Norfolk heath; but I
believe even here it has been found unnecessary, and
in most cases has been abandoned. It makes the
birds sit so close that when the heath is driven, many
would be passed by the drivers, though it undoubtedly
prevents their breaking out on the side where it is
being flown.

Another essential to shooting partridges really well
is to be ever ready, for the partridge that rises thirty-
five yards off in breezy weather, though quite realisable,

184 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

must be dealt with at once. To shoot properly you
must study your walking, and train yourself to the
habit, which becomes eventually second nature, of
surveying the ground just in front of you before you
put your feet down. If you are stumbling over tur-
nips or treading indiscriminately among the drills,
you will miss many shots, for the partridge is up and
off like a firework without your knowing where the
fuse is lighted that sets him off. Study the possibilities
of a shot when getting over a fence, and so order
your going that without danger to others you are
always ready.

In conclusion, if possible, let no one be of your
party who is not keen and ready to abide by orders.
If he does not care to help towards making a good
bag, and to do exactly what you tell him, you are
better without him.

185

CHAPTER V

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING

PopuLaRr as pheasant-shooting undoubtedly is, and
great as are the improvements in this branch of sport
which the present generation has witnessed, whether
in the science of rearing the stock, or of realising
from it in a workmanlike manner, yet if you were to
poll the shooting men of Great Britain at the present
day, you would assuredly find that the great majority
would rather have a good day at partridges than
pheasants. The partridge is the popular bird, not only
of to-day, but also of the future.

It is, therefore, worth while to enquire whether
owners, sporting tenants, and keepers have studied
and improved their methods of producing and pre-
serving partridges to the point required by the un-
doubted demand for this branch of sport.

I should say, without hesitation, that for the most
part they have not; and if I offend or surprise the
shooting world by some of the remarks I propose to

186 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

make, I beg them to believe me sincere, and anxious
only, in the interests of all sportsmen, to publish
what I conceive to be the true deductions from a long
experience of various manors, large and small, plenti-
fully stocked, and the reverse.

I will start by saying that most English manors
have not anything like the stock of partridges which
they ought to produce. This I attribute to three
causes. First, the keeper’s work is not, so far as
partridges are concerned, well understood or properly
carried out. Second, which is a result in part of the
first, there is a good deal more egg-stealing and
poaching than there should be. Third, the stock,
being low, is too much reduced by hard shooting.

Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire are, without
doubt, the pick of the English counties for game, yet
in 1887, every one was electrified to hear that all the
records of these counties had been beaten in Hamp-
shire! Had it been Yorkshire or Essex, or say
Nottinghamshire or Northamptonshire, many would
have wondered, but have recollected that in these
counties there have always been the traditions of
great ‘shikar.’ But Hampshire seemed incredible.
A few, who had years before noted the good soil and
the improving totals of this county, were not so much
surprised, but to the majority of the world it was

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 187

inexplicable. Holkham, Elvedon, Merton, and Six-
Mile Bottom could not have had their records lowered
without wholesale buying of eggs and artificial rearing
of birds. Agriculture had doubtless been sacrificed,
and nets, wire, kites, and other illegitimate means
been used galore to produce such a result in a second-
class game county. The thing could not have been
done by fair shooting in the open fields.

All these things were said at the time; yet none
of them were true, and the marvellous record made
at The Grange in 1887, of which fuller particulars will
be found on a later page,! was achieved under the
fairest possible conditions, and on ordinary agricultural
land producing a more than average rent to its owner.
What, then, was the explanation? And how is it
that the same estate has, during the past three years,
again proved itself capable of producing the two
biggest weeks’ partridge-driving in England ?

The answer is, undoubtedly, good keepering, good
management, and a good understanding all round
between owner, keepers, farmers, and labourers.

It would be neither politic nor convincing, in a
work intended to appeal to all classes of sporting
readers, to extol unduly a particular place or keeper,

1 See p. 227.

188 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

merely because one had enjoyed the hospitality of the
one, or admired the skill of the other. Yet it would
be unfair not to award the palm where it is due, and
the results above mentioned are so largely due to the
talents and knowledge of Marlowe, Lord Ashburton’s
head keeper at The Grange, that I must place him
first among all the keepers I have ever seen, for pro-
ducing a fine stock of partridges, as well as for
managing and realising from them when produced.

I must mention two others who run him hard for
ability and partridge management : Jackson, H.R.H.
the Prince of Wales’ keeper at Sandringham, and
Robbins, for many years in Lord Londesborough’s
service at Selby, in Yorkshire. I am, no doubt,
leaving out others with great claims to be named and
recorded, there being, for instance, half-a-dozen men
on the famous manors of Cambridgeshire, within a
few miles of Newmarket, and another half-a-dozen
in Norfolk, who have consummate knowledge of the
subject ; but I cannot pretend to adjust exactly the
comparative merits of all the good keepers in
England.

T revert to the results at The Grange, because they
make a very remarkable test case. The late Lord
Ashburton, in whose service Marlowe had been for
many years on the well-known estate of Buckenham,

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 189

in Norfolk, undoubtedly, when he took him to
Hampshire, provided for him exceptionally advan-
tageous conditions. The estate was in magnificent
order, a large capital having been sunk in it, the
.telations between landlord and tenant were, owing
to the munificence of the former, of the most friendly
order, the labourers were contented, and everything
was, as it still is under his son, the present owner,
most favourable to the preservation of game. Many
other wealthy and liberal landlords exist, I am happy
to say, in England, yet we have all seen these con-
ditions without the corresponding results, so far as
partridges are concerned, even where the owner is
keen enough for a large stock and high-class shooting,

The high average maintained at The Grange is due
to a combination of the above conditions and the
system on which the keepers’ work is conducted ;
and it is here that I think a lesson may be learned
by other owners and keepers. First and foremost
the latter are taught to treat partridges, and not
pheasants, as the first consideration. Here lies the
vital point. Partridges require a better and more
watchful keeper than pheasants, and if you wish for
the former as your principal and most attractive
sport, the old-fashioned system of leaving them to
take care of themselves in the nesting season, while

190 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

your keepers are devoting themselves exclusively to
the pheasantry and the coops, must be abandoned.
You may arrange to divide the work as you please,
and a great deal may be done for your young pheas-
ants by the keepers’ wives and by others, The
pheasants and other game under Marlowe are by no
means scarce, big bags being made in the covers at
The Grange; but the partridges are the principal
object of care and attention.

Everything must be done to watch and thwart
egg-stealers and poachers. To arrive at this it follows
that the whereabouts of every, or nearly every, nest
must be known, and these must be watched and
visited practically every day. An under-keeper at
The Grange is expected to know how many par-
tridge nests he has, and exactly where they are;
moreover, if any disappear, he is required to know
how, where, and when they ceased to exist. The
head man is quite likely to turn up unexpectedly on
the beat at 4 A.M. on a May morning, and require to
be taken round by his under-keeper and shown the
actual nests which he has reported to exist on his
beat. The destruction of vermin must be very closely
attended to, especially where the fences are, as in
Hampshire, very big and thick, and form the main
nesting-ground of the birds,

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 191

While on this branch of the subject, it may be
well to remark that partridges and their nests are ,
safer in fences or banks that are not too thick. In
looser covert the vermin are more easily traced and
trapped, and cannot so easily steal unawares upon the
birds. If making artificial covert for birds to nest in,
dry banks with rough grass, patches of whin or broom
and with only occasional trees, are preferable to
very thick fences or belts of trees closely planted
together. In proof of this, where such exist you
will always find the nests close to the edge of the
strip or fence, where the shelter is not too thick
and the birds are not exposed to the drip from the
trees.

Foxes are a great difficulty, but I am convinced
that with modern appliances and close care the
neighbouring M.F.H. need never be disappointed
while a good stock of partridges is maintained. There
must be a complete check upon the whereabouts and
well-being of the nests. Egg-stealing is very profitable,
and unless the head-keeper is trustworthy and very
watchful, labourers and tramps may not prove to be
thé only persons engaged in the illicit traffic. I fear
that many a young keeper falls a victim to the temp-
tation of the diabolical agents of those who advertise
‘20,000 partridges’ eggs for sale.’ In most cases

192 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

these are all stolen, and the traffic should never be
encouraged by true sportsmen.

Norfolk and Suffolk have been the principal hunt-
ing grounds of these people in the last few years,
and I do not hesitate to say that these counties are
most terribly ‘egged.’ I remember a few years ago,
having to wait some time for a train at Thetford, I
had a long conversation with the stationmaster on
this and kindred subjects. ‘Ah, sir,’ he said, ‘it
would break any gentleman’s heart who is fond of
shooting to see the scores of boxes of eggs that go
through this station in April and May. I know
what they are, but I have to put them in and forward
them ; I have no power to prevent it.’

This is a very lamentable state of things, but it
will never be remedied until there is better and more
powerful combination among owners, sporting tenants,
and shooting men of every degree. There is, I
believe, a society called the Field Sports Protection
Association, but it has as yet achieved no very re
markable results, though there are a few well-known
names on its list. But an idea of its management
may be gathered from the simple fact that two out of
every three shooting men you meet have never heard
of its existence or been asked to support it.

What is wanted is a much more powerful federa-

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 193

tion or league, whose arm should be long enough and
strong enough to reach those who deal in poached
game and stolen eggs, and which should unceasingly
watch the interests of the game question in Parlia-
ment.

If only one-fourth of the men in this country who
care about shooting, and wish to see sport kept up,
would subscribe half-a-guinea pet annum to such a
league, enough funds would be provided to maintain
an effective and organised campaign against egg-
stealers, poachers, and illegal destroyers of game.
Detectives of experience could be selected, who should
at the proper seasons proceed to the suspected
districts, trace the sources of the supply of eggs, and
of the illegally killed partridges and grouse which
come into the market before the season opens, and
where evidence was complete institute prosecutions
against all concerned in this nefarious trade.

To do this properly, however, the sale of game eggs
should be made illegal. How can a man with only a
few acres in the near neighbourhood of JLondon pro-
cure all the partridge eggs which he advertises for
sale unless they are stolen? No gentleman would
sell his eggs to such a person, but it is a regrettable
fact that many will buy from him. Eggs should only
be bought from owners of sporting property. If you

ra)

194 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

advertised that you were prepared to give a fair price
for them, enough would always be forthcoming from
genuine persons to enable you to make the required
addition to your stock. Many a man has paid 52a
hundred for his own eggs stolen from his own preserves.
The only remark to be made on this is that it serves him
right. It proves that he has not the wit to check his
own keepers, and that he is absolutely unscrupulous
as to what happens to his neighbour’s property.
Scores upon scores of hampers, or more usually
boxes, of partridges and grouse reach London long
before the legal hours of possession and sale on
August 12 and September 1. A proper enquiry as to
where these come from, and to whom they are con-
signed, would vastly open the eyes of some owners of
game estates. All these birds are stolen or poached,
just as those sold out of season as Hungarian or Russian
partridges and Norwegian black game are for the most
part stolen, poached, or illegally killed on British ground.
One reason why I have dwelt on the totals of The
Grange is tg point it out as a typical large estate
where the result is in great part due to the fact that
these practices do not exist there. I have no right to
say or think that they do on the estates immediately
marching with it, but it is certain that on absolutely
identical soil and nature of ground in the same county

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 195

and climate nothing like the same amount of par-
tridges are to be found.

Now here we see the advantage of a standard to
go by. It has been proved conclusively on a par-
ticular estate that a certain large number of birds can
be produced and a certain average maintained through
good and bad seasons, rising to a very high total
in exceptionally favourable years. Remove Lord
Ashburton, Marlowe, and the system, and the totals
would probably sink in a couple of years to those
of the average Hampshire estate ; whilst under the
new végime it would be said that it was not after all
a first-rate game soil—which it is not—and that so
many brace, giving an average sort of total, was all
that could be expected from it.

The same might be said of Holkham, Merton,
Elvedon, Londesborough, or a few more really well-
managed estates. In these places there is a proper
standard to go by, and were the stock to fall too low,
the owners would know, and all those in the habit of
shooting there would know, that there was something
wrong.

But if the owner of a property, large or small,
does not know, and has never taken any pains to test,
in the ways I have described, what amount of stock
can be produced on the ground, what can he expect ?

02

196 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

This is not a wholesale accusation of English
keepers, for often—I may say usually—there is no
connivance on their part with poaching or robbery.
But the average preservation of partridges has not
kept pace with the increased numbers and advantages
of the poacher, the egg-stealer, and the egg or game
dealer. The indifference of the latter as to the source
whence he procures his wares is sad, but hardly
acrime. But the calm neglect with which the nests
and eggs of partridges are treated in the nesting
season, and the birds themselves during the shooting
months, is, from a good partridge-keeper’s point of
view, so culpable as to become almost criminal. A
very little bushing, and that only in the grass-fields,
appears in many places to be all that is thought
necessary to preserve partridges. Often in such places
you would find on enquiry that there is a deadly and
perennial feud between the keepers on one side and
the farmers and labourers on the other.

What on earth can be expected under such con-
ditions? Naturally, the stock of birds is almost
always below the proper mark, and the owner is
constantly disappointed. He finds that, however
favourable the season, he can never get the bag that
in spite of his neglect he is always hoping for. The
birds and eggs are left, while the keepers are busy all

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 197

day with pheasant-coops, seldom showing their noses
far’ from the main coverts, an easy prey to mowing-
machines, vermin, dogs, and human depredators,
who, either from hostility to the owner and his
keepers or from greed of gain, make it certain that he
cannot realise anything like the number of birds which
his property should produce.

: The scope of this work does not admit. of my
giving every technical detail of the means for rearing,
protecting, and preserving game, and, in fact, this
has been so well and exhaustively done by others that
it would be unnecessary. But whether you dally over
the graceful pages of Richard Jefferies, ‘The Amateur
Poacher,’ or search through the mass of practical detail
provided by such experienced men as Lord Walsing-
ham, Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, Carnegie,! or others,
you will find them all agreed upon one point. The
farmers and farm labourers must be made your
friends, or they will assuredly be your most formidable
enemies.

On the average estate, where the pheasant and
partridge shooting are of about equal value, and still
more on a property where it is intended to make
partridges the principal consideration, I would strongly

| Practical Game Preserving, by William Carnegie.

198 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

recommend a division of the functions of the head-
keeper. There should be a partridge-keeper and a
pheasant-keeper, each with his staff under him, and
entirely independent of the other. In all probability
it would be found that the partridge-keeper would
require the larger staff of the two, since all small
spinneys and copses, and even small outlying woods,
would come under his supervision ; the attentions
of the pheasant-keeper being confined to the two or
three main coverts where pheasants are to be reared.
This is a system I have advocated for years past, and
since beginning this work I have heard that it has
been adopted in two or three places with very satis-
factory results.

To arrive at the proper point of good relations
with the farmers and labourers, it is necessary that a
keeper should be always about in the fields, and,
besides having an exact knowledge of the routine of
the farm work and in what field the labourers are
employed on any particular day, he must also have
the opportunity of making friends with them, of in-
spiring them with a desire to help him in his vocation,
of studying their interests and individualities and
reporting them to his master, and of watching and
checking any instance of dishonesty or poaching that
may occur among them.

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 199

If, on a certain day in June, all his sitting hens
have to be looked to, his food mixed, a number of
his coops to be shifted, or any other of the absorbing
duties connected with pheasant-rearing occupy all his
hours, how can he get to where the large meadow is
being cut with the machine, and where all the farm
hands, reinforced by half a dozen strangers—probably
roving Irish or gipsies, and little better than common
tramps—are running riot over the hay-making ?

How can he keep his eye upon the encampment
of that ubiquitous tribe on the little bit of rough
commonland close to his best partridge ground,
whence they will mark every nest in their vicinity, and
man, woman, and child exert all their well-known
ingenuity and experience to have the eggs out of
those nests ?

There may be eight partridge nests on one thick
hedgerow, which ina good year will produce from forty
to fifty brace of birds belonging to that field alone ;
but how is he to protect these from foxes, weasels, or
dishonest human beings, when it takes him all his
time to keep his young pheasants from the same
dangers, supplemented by those of dogs, cats, rats,
jays, magpies, and hawks in and around the woods
where he is responsible for the rearing ?

Later in the year, does not the dishonest farm

200 . SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

labourer know the keeper’s regular hours of feeding
in the woods, which leave him free to set and watch a
steel trap in the turnips, or stealthily to pull up and
remove the bushes in one or two fields he knows of
where coveys roost, spots which his very good friends
with whom he drinks at the lonely alehouse on the
cross roads propose to visit with their nets, in a night
or two, when the moon is down, the clouds drive dark
and low, and a rising south-westerly breeze, whistling
over the stubble and grass, drowns the sound of their
footsteps ?

This little alehouse, the robbers’ cave of the
locality, can be very easily overlooked with its in-
comings and outgoings in the week before the First,
from the little spinney on the opposite slope, peeping
unobserved through the hazel boughs, the watcher
having crept there unseen down the hollow lane
behind ; the intended theatre of the poachers’ opera-
tions may then be arrived at with tolerable certainty,
keepers’ forces mustered, and a warm reception given
the rascals at night, with the triumph of capturing
their net and hanging it up as a trophy on the beams
of the old keeper’s gun-room at the Hall. But
how is all this to be carried out and the pre-
cious coveys saved if the keeper has to be shifting
his pheasant coops for the last time in the sunny

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 201

meadow which has no outlook between the two big
woods P

How, in short, can a keeper look after the
pheasants and partridges at the same time, and do
justice to both? They are very distinct and different
functions, and I wish, leaving ground game out of
consideration—which, since the passing of that dis-
honest measure known as the Hares and Rabbits Act,
is a mere matter of money or arrangement—to em-
phasise the fact that it is in the open fields, in con-
nection with partridge management, that a keeper
finds the key to the preservation of game, and the
occasion of establishing cordial relations with farmers
and labourers, and of enlisting them on the side of
law and order, peace, plenty, and partridges.

The netting of partridges I have alluded to above,
meaning thereby the usual method of dragging a
net (which is more destructive as well as more easily
carried when made of silk) across the field where
birds roost at night, and so dropping it over the
covey. The whereabouts of such a net, especially if
of silk, should not be difficult to trace anywhere
in the neighbourhood if keepers are well up to
their work. In the colliery districts, where keepers
are obliged to look very closely after their ground,
and where, besides doing a certain amount of detec-

202 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

tive work themselves, they have to maintain cordial
and constant relations with the police, they generally
know pretty accurately where every long net, the
kind most used for rabbits, is kept. This knowledge
is essential in those parts to enable them to watch
and break up the big gangs of poachers, who would
otherwise strip them of every head of game. They
are, however, exposed to the visits of strange gangs
from a distance, who will sometimes have travelled
fifty miles by train to visit some particular preserves
in a locality where they are not known.

In all districts, however good the keepers, there is
danger from the visits of such strangers. The only
material protection is exhaustive bushing, but the real
remedy lies in knowing the owners of the nets and their
movements. Bushing must not be confined to grass
fields only, as partridges often roost on stubble or
fallow, and it must be thoroughly done, the bushes of
thorn not too few and far between, and so stuck in as
to be almost prone upon the ground rather than
upright.

The tunnel-net is, so far as I know, obsolete, but
a:quaint description of the method of using it is given
below.! The account is remarkable, as is also the

’ © Tunnelling partridges is a most destructive method ; it
cannot be so well practised in an enclosed country, from the

aVaL THHLS HLIM ONIHOVOd

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 203

extract from the ‘Gentleman’s Recreation,’ previously
quoted above in the chapter on Driving, for the
knowledge shown by these old-time sportsmen and
poachers of the use that may be made of the running
rather than the flying instinct of the partridge, a
point not half enough studied or utilised.

This instinct may and should be largely taken
advantage of in managing pheasants, but except in
half-mooning I do not know that it is ever turned to
account with partridges.

The ubiquitous watchfulness necessary to a par-
tridge-keeper must be employed against the setting of
snares, which, as it can only be successfully done on
banks or at the edges of fields where the birds pretty
regularly dust themselves, ought to be easily detected
and frustrated. Killing partridges by steel traps is

hedges darkening the moon’s light, when the partridges will
drive no farther, but instantly fly; the poachers, however,
spring them in the evening with a spaniel, and mark the spot
by a stick and piece of white paper ; the tunnel is. then set down
on the spot where the birds jucked from, and to which they are
certain to return, they thus readily find and drive them with a
horse under the net. To prevent this, take some partridges
from the outskirts of the manors, cut off the bearing claws, and
turn them out ; they cannot then wz, and always spring ; if one
bird springs, the rest of the covey are also sure to rise ; this
plan is perhaps the best for defeating the havock made by the
tunnel-net ; the poachers themselves term it taking an unfair
advantage of them.’—Daniell’s Rural Sports, vol. ii. p. 407.

204 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

though fairly destructive not too common, and, as it
demands more care to watch and detect, merits a
short description.

It is almost always practised by men employed to
work in the fields, whether regular farm hands or
‘casuals.’ Having observed a convenient bare place
in a turnip field, usually in white turnips sown broad-
cast, an ordinary rabbit-trap or gin, easily carried in
the pocket, is set, slightly sprinkled with mould. A
few: grains of corn are then scattered on and around
it. All this is done while crossing the field and
passing near the spot in the ordinary course of the
day’s work. The trapper may then lie under the
hedge and watch, but he need not even do this if at
work close by ; for on a bird being caught, the snap
of the trap and fluttering of the prisoner will cause
the rest of the covey to rise alarmed, and give him
warning that he has taken a prize. To saunter care-
lessly by and put trap and bird in his pocket is very
simple, and it can be easily reset in another part of
the field. A good many brace are made away with in
this manner, where the keeper does not have a watch-
ful eye for what is going on on the land.

Practical protection of nests from foxes and other
vermin is strangely neglected. A single strand of
wire about ten inches above the ground, stretched

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 205

from stout pegs, will deter almost any fox from crossing.
Where, as is often the case, there are four or five, or
perhaps even a dozen, nests along one hedgerow or
belt, so simple and cheap a form of protection is
surely worth trying. The wire can then be stretched
all along the fence a foot or two below the nests, and
on both sides if necessary.

A more elaborate affair is a frame made of wire
netting of the same pattern as the ordinary rabbit
netting, but with a five or six inch mesh, made of a
circular form, in shape like a round dish cover, and
about three feet six inches in diameter. The fox
cannot or will not get through the meshes, nor reach
his paw through to the nest, which is, of course, in
the centre of the frame, while the sitting partridge
will creep through the meshes and not disturb herself
in her incubations.!

These have been tried with very successful results
on the Duke of Rutland’s Belvoir estate, another
property where the stock of partridges had, under
the old system, fallen to nothing, but which has now,
under different management, begun to yield very good
bags.

1 The only drawback to this invention is that the wire
frames may too easily indicate the position of nests to egg-stealers
or poachers. The ground must, therefore, where these are used
be watched with extra care.

206 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

I must now revert to the third cause to which I
attribute the much smaller numbers of partridges than
should be found on most manors—too hard shooting.
The practice of walking the ground and killing all
you can, and of driving it and doing the same thing
afterwards, alluded to above, is in many places the
reason why birds become scarce, and I must again
urge that the practice cannot be too severely con-
demned. It must be remembered that the standard
of shooting is much higher than formerly. Although
you will meet many young men who have neither
the desire to study, nor the qualities to master, the
art and craft of true sportsmanship, yet you will
find that, as a rule, they shoot up to a certain
average. Three or four of these gentlemen walking
in line, each with a practised loader and a pair of
first-rate guns, having ejectors to accelerate re-charg-
ing, and the best possible cartridges, will make un-
deniable havoc among the coveys ; and though they
may probably not often pick out the old birds, will ope-
rate with deadly success upon the young ones, in both
cases producing the most destructive effect possible
upon your stock of birds. If after this the ground is
driven as well, the stock likely to be left will be very
small, and, what is worse, will consist mainly of old
birds. A very scanty supply in the ensuing season will

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 207

be the result. Yet in many places the shooting goes
on exactly the same in good and bad seasons, without
regard to the amount of stock on the ground.

The question whether a large or only moderate
stock should be left on the land is one which has
divided the best authorities. In my humble opinion,
there is no doubt that the verdict should be given in
favour of maintaining always a large stock. I base
this upon what I have actually seen on different
estates, having noted that on those where the biggest
bags are consistently made the ground is shot over
lightly—practically only once in the season—every-
thing, however, being done on that one occasion to
realise heavily.

I do not wish, not being fortunate enough to
possess an estate of my own, to lay down the law on
this point, especially as I have found a difference of
opinion between two such undeniable authorities as
Lord Walsingham! and Marlowe, the latter holding
that you can hardly leave too large a stock. I quite
agree that the moment disease appears you cannot do
better than follow the example of Lord Leicester, and
kill off every bird on the diseased ground. But the
kind of disease here alluded to is rare, and has
nothing to do with ‘the ordinary malady of gapes,

' Badminton Library, Shooting, vol. i. p. 155.

208 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

which destroys so many young birds, even in good
breeding seasons.

But the prevalence of the latter pest, and the
many dangers of all sorts, the worst being the frequent
recurrence of cold, wet weather in June, which make
a stock of partridges so delicate and uncertain a
quantity, seem to me to outweigh altogether the pos-
sibility of birds being a trifle close upon the ground
in the nesting season, and the consequent inroads of
the older birds upon the incubations of the younger.
The latter undoubted evil is better provided against
by driving the birds rather than walking them up, and
by a judicious thinning of the old cocks at the com-
mencement of the pairing season, a necessary practice
not half enough resorted to.

Partridges will not grow out of stones, and if after
killing them close a bad hatching season succeeds,
you will have nothing to shoot at all, unless you
draw birds from your neighbour’s land, which is not a
desirable state of things.

To sum up, on a large majority of properties very
little is done to protect and preserve the partridge,
the most desired and appreciated of all game birds,
causing the stock to fall below its proper mark, while,
notwithstanding this shortcoming, many owners year
after year—either from recklessness or want of know-

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 209

ledge, or sometimes from an envious desire to rival
the totals of better managed estates—relentlessly
pursue the already diminished stock to the death,
trusting to the chapter of accidents and the futile
idea that one good breeding season will set matters
right.

When the one good breeding season does come,
their careless management leaves them quite unpre-
pared to cope with the conspiracy between poachers,
egg or game dealers, and dishonest keepers, which I
regret to have to say widens and deepens every year.

The improvement or enlargement of the natural
nesting cover by means of belts, or banks sown with
broom and gorse and wired in, is a simple means of
helping the stock of birds not half enough attempted.
Where money is no object, artificial banks should be
thrown up, especially in low-lying, flat country, to
give the birds the chance of protecting their nests
from heavy wet, and of leading their broods on to the
slope of the bank, out of the danger of furrows or ruts
full of water, which are to the young chicks as great
rivers and pools, in which they are easily drowned.
I heard last year of six young partridges being found
drowned in the huge print of a cart-horse’s hoof, after
a heavy thunder shower. Such banks should be left
bare, except for a little seed of broom and gorse, and

P

210 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

not allowed to grow too thick, and, unless wired in,
the young broom—which is the best cover of all for
partridges—will be eaten by rabbits and hares, while
the cover itself will be too easily hunted by foxes.
These will not be entirely kept out by wire netting
after it has been up a year or two, but they will
always be loth to trust themselves much inside it,
and any little alteration, such as an extra strand of
wire along the top, will make them suspicious of a
trap, and, in all likelihood, keep them out altogether.

Banks or belts of this description are, I think,
better than fir-belts, though they do not afford such
pretty shooting when birds are driven over them. If
the neighbouring fences do not answer for driving,
artificial stands of hurdles can be placed in the belt.
These hurdle-stands should always be made either
of two hurdles set at about a right angle, the point
towards the drive, or of three hurdles, forming a
three-sided shelter. When made of only one hurdle,
the birds coming right and left of you catch sight of
you, and swerve or turn back altogether.

Again, if expense need not be considered, I would
go much farther than the making of these belts or
banks, and have one or more sanctuaries or partridge
preserves in the centre of the ground. I cannot
understand why this idea is not more adopted where

THORN FENCE

No. 1.

The plan shows preserve for
breeding partridges, and boxes for
shooting, numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c.
It is situated in the midst of large
fields, and surrounded by a natural
thorn fence. Roughly speaking,
it is 500 yards long by 110 wide.

‘A’ marks the site of a tall
tree which serves as a good land-
mark for the beaters.

*B’ marks an artificial pool,
where a constant supply of water
is kept in the summer.

The shading

by privet, box, and yew—also arti- '
chokes.

The shadin:

shows cultivated portion, which is
sown with buckwheat, mustard,
and barley.

The boxes, 2, 2, 3, &c., are
formed of growing fir.

The driving to the preserves
nay be bya circle (the Hungarian
method) or by half-circle, bringing
up beaters in two divisions.

TBs
FIG. 14

Pian oF PARTRIDGE PRESERVES, LAID OUT IN 1892, ON THE ESTATE
or H.R.H. THE Prince or WALES AT SANDRINGHAM

" Scale 18 in. to one mile

P2

212 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

partridges are the main desideratum. I append the
ground-plans and description of two such preserves,
made last year at Sandringham, and furnished by
Jackson, the head keeper, which I am able to re-
produce and publish in this volume by the gracious
permission of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.

These could not, I think, be improved upon, the
only criticism I could make being that the centre
ride in No. 2 preserve does not appear to have any
practical value, and might, one would, imagine, be
more usefully employed as cover or crop. Whether
or not they would answer better if wired in cannot
as yet be said, as, up to the moment of writing, the
results of the first season after laying them out are
not to hand.

There is one more point with regard to stock
which must not be omitted. I mean the insane and
much too common practice of killing down the game
near the boundary. This jealousy or mistrust of your
neighbour defeats itself. If the land on your boundary
is favourable to birds, it will draw them from your
own centre as fast as you kill them off. If it is not,
constant pursuit will the more readily drive those
which you do not kill on to your neighbour’s centre.
The boundary beats of your property should be
carefully preserved, and lie very quiet, though there

Fic. 15

Grounp PLAN oF SANDRINGHAM PaRTRICGE PRESERVE No. z.

The shadin ndicates cover for birds—privets, &c.

as in No. 1. Temporary boxes; Nos. 1, 2, 3, &c., will be removed when
the shrubs have grown up sufficiently high to hide the guns. The shading

shows the parts planted with gorse. The shading

shows cultivated land, buckwheat, &c.,as No.1. ‘A

and ‘B’ indicate artificial pools. This preserve is in centre of large fields,

214 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

is every reason why you should shift the eggs from
such nests as are in a dangerous position, and either
add them in detail to those in your centre ground or
set them under hens.

If your neighbours are friendly game preservers,
and will act upon the same plan, so much the better ;
if not, you will always be the gainer by leaving your
ground very quiet, and will, to a certain extent,
attract their birds) When they show jealousy or
greediness by continuing to kill close, this will only
serve them right.

In conclusion of this branch of the subject, I
should like to make what I believe to be a novel
suggestion. This is the construction, alongside of
artificial belts or cover, or even of your best natural
breeding fences, of long, low penthouses, formed of
rough 11-inch boarding, say three or four boards
wide, supported on stout rough posts, and about two
feet high in front and three at the back. On heavy
soil, where the birds suffer much in a wet season,
these would, I imagine, be a great protection for the
young birds to run under during continued heavy
rain, and if set on a slight slope, and the means are
at hand, the ground under them could be covered
with a slight coating of gravel. All the gallinaceous
birds suffer greatly from wet feet, and I believe they

GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 215

would readily take to such protection. They would,
no doubt, be somewhat unsightly, but the use of
Stockholm tar, which keeps a very pleasing and
natural colour, and the rustic character of the short
uprights, would greatly minimise their plain appear-
ance. I should be much interested to hear the result
of any adoption of this suggestion.

216 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

CHAPTER VI

SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS

I HAVE several times alluded to Holkham in the
preceding chapters, and to Lord Leicester’s admirable
management of game. Probably no estate in ail
England has such a game record as this. From the
wild goose to the rabbit, nearly every fowl or beast
which the sportsman can desire has been killed there,
and their habits and natural history, as well as the
best method of securing them in a scientific and
sportsmanlike manner, have been studied by the
members of a family who for several generations have
been known as representative types of English sports-
men.

Situated as it 1s, near Wells in Norfolk, on the
northernmost point of that celebrated game county,
overlooking the North Sea, with nothing between
it and the ice-fields of the Pole, it seems, with
its huge park and ample acreage, its woods of

SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS 217

fir, oak, and ilex, its inland lakes and salt marshes,
to be the typical home of British wild birds, game
and fowl, as it is of a hardy and vigorous race of
men.

The Holkham records of partridge-shooting must,
therefore, always be interesting to all who are fond of
this branch of sport, and though individual bigger
bags have here and there been made in other places,
yet up to 1887, when it was surpassed at The Grange,
Holkham held the record for a week’s shooting of
four days.

This estate furnishes, also, a strong instance of
the effect of driving upon the number of birds, the
more remarkable on account of the high standard of
knowledge and management which. had prevailed
there before it became the exclusive practice.

By the kindness of Lord Coke, I am enabled to
give some figures, which on this point are as startling
as they are instructive.

Up to about 1875 walking up and half-mooning,
with a rare occasional drive, were the methods
pursued. After 1875 driving was more and more
practised, until after 1880 it became the exclusive
custom. In other words, taking two representative
decades, from 1865 to 1875, driving was the rare
exception ; from 1880 to 1890 it was, as it still is, the

218 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

rule. The two best years of the first decade under
the walking system yielded as follows :

Year Partridges
1868 . F ; ‘i e + 3,308
1869 . . . . : » 3,385

The two best years. of the second decade, after
driving became the exclusive practice, yielded as
follows :

Year Partridges
1885 . . . . . . 8,100
1887 . ‘ : - é + 7,512

As I am assured that no extraneous or artificial
means have been introduced for the increase of the
stock since the driving began, I think it is hardly
necessary to go farther in order to settle for ever the
question as to the effect of the latter system upon the
totals of a partridge manor. I confess these figures
show an increase which exceeds what I should have
expected in partridges, although it is well known that
with grouse the increases are, on many moors, much
larger in proportion. The fact that 1887, known as
the ‘Jubilee’ year, was the most productive season
known, say for a quarter of a century, makes the
value of the total for 1885 still more remarkable.

To turn to another famous game county, though
vastly inferior to Norfolk in conditions of soil and

SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS 219

climate—Yorkshire—here is the record of the best
week ever seen on Lord Londesborough’s well-known
estates in the East and North Ridings.

1887 Partridges} Hares | Pheasants &
Oct. 4—Seamer . . 744 157 60
9» 5—selby % ¥ 522 Io |. 60 8
>», 6—Seamer . 3 376 78 101
x» 7—Selby é is 669 2 36
2,311

T have included the totals of hares and pheasants
for this week because they are typical of the country,
and valuable as touching upon a point I wish to
allude to later on, viz. the killing of hares and
pheasants in the fields whilst out after partridges

Seamer is close to Scarborough in the North
Riding, and Selby between York and Doncaster in
the East Riding. This is undoubtedly the best con-
secutive four days’ partridge-shooting ever known in
Yorkshire. There is no other estate in that county
which produces such totals, whether capable of doing
so or not; and I may add that for many years past
driving has been the exclusive practice on the
Londesborough property, and that the ground is, for
the most part, rarely shot over a second time.

222 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

where, in the coverts, more than once over 800 have
been killed in one day.

Sept. 1868 (4 days)—GEDLING

Partridges Hares
205. «» «© « «+ 307
97: . 8 - 159
160 . 5 é . - 167
203- «© 6 «© « 134

What would most modern farmers say to 300
hares killed in a day in the open fields?

Now Gedling is, I should say, every bit as good a
country for partridges as any of Lord Londesborough’s
ground, and I think there is no doubt that, had
partridges been as much studied at the former as they
have been at the latter place, fewer hares would have
been kept, and the birds would have done better.

Where farming is good there is always room for a
fair stock of hares, but too many of these creatures,
besides causing discontent among the tenants, dis-
turb and foul the ground required for birds, encourage
poachers and dogs, and, last but not least, are a great
nuisance out partridge-shooting. When walking up,
the dogs are constantly put off the scent of a winged
bird ; they are often tempted to chase a long way,
tiring them out and leading to disastrous results,
whilst a hare that escapes the shot will, in racing

SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS = 223

across the field, frequently put up a quantity of birds
as she runs through them. When driving, they only
distract attention from the birds, cause shouting,
chasing, and other evils, and when the shooters are
expected to kill them as a matter of duty, you will
often find your best men, having fired off all their:
barrels at hares, with empty guns at the moment
when a covey comes over them.

Out of consideration for the farming interest,
hares should be killed off as much as possible in the
fields by the middle of October, as up to then they
do very little harm. But after the sharp frosts set in
they punish the root crops severely, their habit of nib-
bling ten turnips for every one they fairly eat causing
each root so attacked to be destroyed by the frost.

The best way to kill them, as well as the most
amusing, is to half-moon a large stretch of country
towards a gorse-cover, osier-bed, or some small out-
lying covert which they take to readily, and then,
having set nets round three sides of it, and placed
some of your guns forward, to beat the covert. As
the half-moon closes in, they will turn back and
charge the line at full speed, and if you wish to save
your partridges for a drive later on, you can spare
them on these days, while you will get a great déal of
sport and do a great deal of good by devoting your-
self exclusively to the hares in this manner.

224 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

A farm will perfectly support a certain proportion
of hares, and where none are allowed to live and
there is great hostility to game generally, the farming
will usually be found to be bad. I have seen, in
certain parts of Scotland, where the tenants were all
anti-Game Law Radicals, some of the worst crops
imaginable. There were tons of weeds, but not a
hare to be found, and very little of any other game.

The hare, with his four or five pounds of good
flesh, and useful skin, is too valuable an animal to be
treated as vermin, but he should never be allowed to
disturb friendly relations with good farmers, nor to
interfere with the interests of the partridge.

The many wonderful records given in chapters ii.
and viii., vol. i, of ‘Shooting,’ in the Badminton
Library may be studied with interest, and give rise to
some reflections and comparisons. In the Holkham
totals, for instance, it will be observed that in the
years 1797, 1798, and 1800 more partridges were killed
on the estate than in 1868 and 1869, the two best
seasons of that decade. There are several scores, which
I need not here reproduce, proving that very large bags
of partridges were made at the end of the last and
the beginning of the present century, both on the
Continent and in Great Britain. A little later the
totals of partridges begin to deteriorate, and those of

SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS 225

pheasants—which, up to then, were usually small—to
improve with steady and wonderful rapidity, and it is
only in very recent years, and in a very few places,
that, in spite of the advantage of the breechloader,
these bags of partridges have been ever equalled. ,

Does not this appear to corroborate the view,
expressed in the last chapter, that in proportion as a
keeper's time is occupied with pheasants, so will his
partridges suffer? Of course, the reduced shelter to
the birds afforded by more modern farming and the
reclaiming and clearing of all waste or rough land,
has a good deal to do with it, as no doubt has the
ill-feeling on the subject of game which has been
engendered in places among the tillers of the soil
by injudicious and greedy landlords, as well as by
agitation for political objects. But the re-increase of
partridges in many places appears to show that these
evils will right themselves, and the farmer may cease
to look upon the gamekeeper as an atural enemy
whom he only sees on the rare occasions when a few
hard words pass between them in the neighbourhood
of a covert overstocked with ground game.

I here append the totals of the best weeks at The
Grange, Lord Ashburton’s place in Hampshire, be-
fore spoken of, in 1887, the Jubilee year, as well as
in 1891 and 1892, this estate having in those years

Q

226 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

secured the highest record in the British Islands.
The years intervening between 1887 and 1891 were bad
breeding seasons everywhere, from which nothing can
be gathered, as no effort was made to make big bags.

But first it will be worth notice to recapitulate the
Holkham week of 1885, which up to the Jubilee year

held the record :
Hoikuam, 1885

Date Beat Partridges | Guns
Dec. 8 Branthill . . . 856 8
» 9 Savory's Warham 3 885 8
3, 10 Nelsons and Blomfields 678 8
9 ET Branthill and Crabb . 973 10
Total 5 3,392

Here is the account of the week at The Grange in
1887, which constitutes the ‘record’:

THE GRANGE, 1887

Date Beat Partridges | Guns
“Oct. 18 New House : . 1,344
» 19 Itchen Down. . 1,093

3» 20 Totford . = : 732 7
9 21 Swarraton . ‘ . 940
Total . 4,109

In a description of this week, sent me by Lord
Walsingham at the time he says, ‘No red-legs, all

1

SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS 227

grey birds, one very weak gun in the team. Fifteen
to eighteen short drives each day. I got 340 the first
day, my best drives, 42, 62, 74. Another good gun
would have made a difference of 600 in the week.’

It will be observed that the guns were only seven
during this week, whereas at Holkham they were eight
and ten. Taking the two teams all through, the
form would not show much difference, there being
two or three first-rate guns in each.

A second week at The Grange in the same year
on four different beats yielded 2,604 birds to six guns.
Adding the totals of the two weeks together, you get
6,713 partridges, or an average of 420 brace per day
for eight days, the big week yielding by itself an
average of over 500 brace a day for the four days !

The best week at The Grange in 1891, a bad
breeding year, yielded only 1,432 partridges for the
four days to six guns, of whom I was one. The two
best weeks of 1892 were as follows :—

Date Beat Partridges | Guns
Oct. 4 Dunneridge F - 600
sie oti Swarraton . é 7 670 6
» 6 Stoke. é . 7 569
ae Totford . : : 583
Total | 2,422

228 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

Date Beat Partridges | Guns
Nov. 1 Chilton. ji ‘ 670
ign 22 Abbotstone 5 . 507 6
» «3 New. House 4 0 583
» 4 Itchen Down. - 564
Total . 2,324

In the first of these two weeks I was again for-
tunate enough to be one of the guns, and can safely
say that in both years I never saw such good driving
combined with such a high average of shooting. The
two totals added together give 4,746 partridges, or a
fraction under 300 brace a day for eight days.

In both 1891 and 1892 these totals for a week of
four days’ shooting at The Grange were the highest in
England. The triumph of this estate—where under
the present Lord Ashburton the excellent system of
management inaugurated by his late father and
Marlowe is more perfect than ever—is the greater, since
Norfolk and Suffolk must still be regarded as the most
favourable game counties in England. They are run
very hard by Cambridgeshire, and the lighter lands of
Essex. In the former county all the properties around
Newmarket fetch immense sporting rents, and dis-
tinguished members of the Jockey Club, with many
other visitors to the racing metropolis, may be seen

SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS — 229

on the Saturdays and Mondays of the First October,
Second October, and Houghton weeks, motionless
behind the fir belts of that favoured country, ruminat-
ing, no doubt, upon the weights, acceptances, or odds
of the great handicaps, but watching the flag of the
driver over the turnips as keenly and closely as they
do that of Mr. Coventry on the Heath.

The Duke of Cambridge succeeds his friend, the
late General Hall, at Six-Mile Bottom. Mr. Henry
McCalmont has purchased the beautiful estate of
Cheveley from the Duke of Rutland at a figure which
goes far to reassure owners as to the rehabilita-
tion of values in land, and where he can occupy the
intervals between the victories of his horse Isinglass
in manceuvring over almost the finest partridge
ground in England. The well-known Chippenham
Park estate, which disputes with Heveningham (Lord
Huntingfield’s) the claim to be the birthplace of
partridge-driving, is shared between its owner, Mr.
Tharp, and his tenant, Mr. Warren De La Rue, who
also rents Tudnam from Lord Bristol, whilst at Dul-
lingham,, the great Captain Machell, still one of the
surest shots as he was one of the best athletes of his
day, gauges the style of his neighbours behind a belt
with as shrewd a judgment as he would apply to the
weights of a handicap or the form of a two-year-old.

230 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

Stetchworth, Babraham, Ickworth, and Culford,
with many another fair manor within the triangle
of country which lies between Cambridge on the
west and Thetford and Bury St. Edmunds on the
‘east, testify, by the rents they command, to the
magic value which the nurture of the little brown
bird can bring to the land. Beyond, to the east,
Elvedon and Merton, Riddlesworth and Wretham,
Henham, Benacre, Sudburn and Rendlesham keep
up their records, while past Lynn or Norwich,
Sandringham and Houghton, Gunton and Melton
lead you still farther north, to where, under the
November moon, the earliest woodcock, making for
Swanton Wood, dashes his weary breast against the
light of Cromer, or the rare hooper, drifting with the
snowstorm from the Arctic Circle, finds his first rest
under the walls of mighty Holkham by the North
Sea.

Dear as all this region is to the shooter’s heart,
favoured by soil and bracing air, there is many
another county in England and Scotland where he
for whom the partridge affords the favourite form of
sport can find material in plenty ready to his hand.

In Scotland, Wigtown—long ago matched, with
Lord David Kennedy as champion, against Norfolk
and Mr, Coke—Kirkcudbright and Dumfries, Rox-

SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS 231

burgh, Ayr, Fife, Forfar, and Perth, all embrace, .
within the marches of their lowlands, fertile plains
and valleys where, as he reckons up a plentiful bag
of partridges, the shooter can see the leap of the
salmon in the pool, or hear the cock grouse crow
upon the range of moorland, which, crowned by the
snowy outline of the Highlands, closes the distance.

In England, Yorkshire and Nottingham fall but
a short way behind the Eastern counties, while
Chester, Salop, and Stafford, in the north-west,
Northampton and Hertford in the centre, Wilts, Hants,
and Dorset in the south, have thousands of acres of
stubble and fallow, turnips and clover, on which the
coveys are neither few nor far between, and a bag
may be made worthy of any team of guns.

In many of these there are spots where the oppor-
tunities for game, and partridges in particular, have
not been studied or developed. Wherever there is
light and well-drained soil, good water and a bracing
climate, with thick fences or other natura nesting
ground, there can partridges be made to increase and
multiply.

Let landowners, large and small, carefully consider
whether, by studying the production and protection
of partridges on the principles followed by the few -
who have made these a scientific study as well as a

232 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

labour of love, they cannot, as the demand increases,
add a value to their land which they have hitherto
neglected or disbelieved in.

Land is, and must remain, however charged with
burdens, the greatest of all luxuries. Whether for
agricultural purposes its value will improve I have
not the knowledge to predict, although I know that a
few of the wisest and shrewdest men of the day have
been investing largely in it during the late depressed
period. But that as a luxury, for its amenities and
its resources, its sports and its pastimes, its value will
rise I have no manner of doubt. Sport is a large
component part of that luxury, and partridge-shooting
of sport.

So long as it is looked upon in this light, so long
will the: game laws be safe, and sport continue to
contribute its valuable quota to the race of men who
have, piloted by the instincts of the hunter, planted
our flag all over the world. Sport, like charity,
begins at home, at least to Englishmen ; and it will
be a bad day for us when the American millionaire,
and still more the successful colonist, cease to look
upon a landed estate in England, where they enjoy
it in comfort and peace with their neighbours, as the
. goal of their desires. ‘What I like about fox’unting
is, it brings people together as wouldn’t otherwise

SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS 233

meet,’ says Leech’s little snob on his hired crock to
the amiable peer on his thoroughbred hunter. The
same may be said, above all kinds of other sport, of
partridge-shooting. Rightly understood, carefully
protected, courteously and liberally enjoyed, it should
prove a bond, rather than a bone of contention,
between all those to whom the plains and the valleys,
the downs and the uplands of this beautiful country,
are a profit or a pleasure.

No work on partridges could be complete without
some account of the most up-to-date developments,
and it will therefore be impossible to pass over the
extraordinary sport enjoyed of late years on the
estates of Baron de Hirsch in Hungary, which has
been discussed and wondered at by all the shooting
world, and in which several of our most prominent
English shots have taken part.

Baron de Hirsch has himself supplied me with
some details, and I am thus able to give a short
description of his method of partridge-shooting,
together with the record of last season’s shooting on
his various beats or estates.

As my readers are probably aware, the Hungarian
estates are often of vast extent, and their shooting
parties have always been conducted on a much more
extensive scale than in this country, the items of the

236 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

About 500 yards from the main covert are four™
smaller coverts, constituting a larger square, and the
intervening space is sown with crops suitable for the
feeding and harbour of the birds.

A very early start is made, and the drivers,
consisting of 200 or 300 men and boys, who move
with great rapidity, frequently running for long spells,
are posted by the time the shooting-party arrive at the
stands. At a given signal they start the first drive
of the beat, embracing one quarter, lying between
two of the roads, advancing in a gradually closing
half-moon right up to the guns.

There are usually four drives in the day, including
the four quarters, the first occupying half-an-hour,
the remaining three two hours each, the men having
for these drives to fall back and get round the fresh
quarter of the ground. As will be imagined, the birds,
disturbed from such an extent of land, approach
the guns from all sides, and even from behind, having
circled over the central covert, or swung away from
one end of the long line of guns, and the utmost
variety of shots is thus obtained.

Some of my English friends who have been the
guests of Baron de Hirsch have told me that nothing
in the way of English partridge-driving can give any
notion of the exciting nature of these drives, immense

SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS 237

quantities of birds coming by you at every variety of
height, angle and pace, while the complete freedom
from all consideration of your neighbours’ interests,
and of disputed claims on dead birds, constitute a
novel and very attractive element in the sport.

This system is of course quite out of the reach of
any one in this country, where land is of such great
value, either to purchase or hire, and Baron de Hirsch
makes no secret of the fact that it is a very costly
proceeding even in Hungary. But as a record of
what may be done with partridges, and what, so to
speak, ideal shooting may be afforded where hospi-
tality and enjoyment are more considered than
expense, by unusually able management and organi-
sation, it is undoubtedly worth studying ; and probably
any good sportsmen who are fortunate enough to
take part in it, ever ready, like all good men, to
learn, may bring back some hints or details which
may be of use to them on their own manors at
home.

Baron de Hirsch’s parties usually kill from 500
to 1,000 brace of partridges each day, his highest
record for one day’s shooting being 2,870, or 1,435
brace of birds.

As a curious supplement to our English records,
we give below the totals for the Autumn of 1892 on

238 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

nine of Baron de Hirsch’s beats of different descrip-.
tions at St. Johann.

a
a 2 3 3
gle] 8] 2 |ald/3|
= Ala! 4/3 5 s/2/3] 6
is] g BS) B 1OlA]eo] &
a | z
St. Johann . | x | 12 | 1,534] 1,062] 1,476 5,752] 19 | 34 | 58] 9,048
St. Georgen | 2 2| 3,464) 268) 287] 8,217] 9] 5] 16 | 12,270
eudorf. .| x 5 323| 82 8} — |—]—l1— 419
Zawod . .|—| 2 593| 193) 254| 1,386] 6|—]—| 2,434
Bur . . 2} —|— 670] — _ 1,674] —|—| I] 2,345
Kruschow .|— | 4] 156] — | — ie td 169
Kutty . .] 2 | 33 213 7 40 3/—-|]-|— 277
Brocks . .|—|— | 369] 324 59 iz{—!—|— 764
. +|—] 2] 337) 300] 43 Neel eee ane 486
5.| 40 | 71459 | 2236 | 2,267 | 27,048 | 34 | 39 | 75 | 29,103

239

CHAPTER VII

VERBUM SAP.

ADVICE cannot go much farther than to insist again
upon the policy, not to say necessity, of cultivating
harmonious relations with those whose business it is
to extract profit from the soil, who live upon it, and
who therefore, if not allowed to participate in some
way in the benefits derived from a stock of game, will
be apt to view its existence with a more or less hostile
envy.

In these days we must bear in mind that shoot-
ing becomes every day more distinctly a matter
of luxury, while the demand for it is constantly in-
creasing, and its value rising in proportion. The
game question lies very near the root of the land
question, and the responsibilities of an owner or
sporting tenant become more serious and delicate as
time goes on. In my humble judgment the preser-
vation of game should only be undertaken by those
who are prepared to treat it as a luxury, and who can

240 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

afford to leave all sordid or pecuniary considerations
on one side. The pleasures or profits arising from
this beautiful sport should be as much as possible
shared by those living on and around a game estate.
In whatever way you choose to do it, you should so
manage by tact, courtesy, and, above all, liberality,
that farmers, labourers, and neighbours must perceive
that their interests and yours are to a great extent
identical on the question of game. The better your
shooting the better for them should be the motto for
both.

It should surely not be a matter of great difficulty
to educate the farmers and labourers to this point of
view. Partridges are no enemies to the farmer. They
are largely insectivorous birds, and as they are a purely
indigenous race it is very certain that they have their
place in the balance of nature in these islands. Up
to the time when the corn is ripe they feed entirely
on insects and seeds of grasses, as well as of plants
which, from a farming point of view, are weeds. The
amount of grain which they eat, even where they exist
in large numbers, is insignificant, and as they do not
attack the corn in the ear, nor plunder the stukes, nor
injure the stems of crops, their share of the grain pro-
duced, entirely picked from the ground itself, would
in their absence be almost entirely wasted.

VERBUM SAP, 24t

Good farming and a large stock of partridges are
absolutely compatible conditions, and are often seen
together, as witness the Wold beats of the East and
North Ridings of Yorkshire, on such estates as Lord
Londesborough’s, or Sir George Wombwell’s at
Newburgh, and many properties in the lowlands
of Scotland. This the farmers cannot deny. If
they do, depend upon it they are discontented men
and bad farmers, and consequently not worth having
as tenants.

Again, the egg-stealer or bird-poacher is always
a bad character, and, as a rule, a stranger to the
locality. His trade is a nefarious one, and he there-
fore defrauds even those who are weak enough to
supply him with his contraband goods. It should be
easy by liberal treatment to make the labourers under-
stand that collectively they can make more money
by helping the game than by destroying it or surrep-
titiously conveying it away, in which case only a few
of the least reputable among them make any profit.

But if, as I regret often to have seen, .they are
treated as mere machines for beating or driving,
whom their landlord only sees during the one or two
weeks’ shooting in each year, if they are never ad-
dressed, or in any way taken into their superior’s con-
fidence on the subject, while they are rewarded for

R

242 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

their share of the week’s pleasure by a miserable
couple of hard-shot rabbits, and dismissed without a
word of thanks for whatever good-will they may have
put into a task where so much depends upon the
existence of this quality—if they are treated in this
way, what wonder if their attitude towards sport and
shooters is merely one of sulky if not declared hostility ?

Is it too much to suggest that something should
be done at the close of a shooting week which would
convert it into a joyful occasion for these men, in
whose hands lies so much of the success or failure of
what is after all a party of pleasure? As arule J am
afraid, though they are important members of the
party, they are not sharers of the pleasure. Would
not a small distribution of extra backsheesh, or even
a good hot supper or dinner, be cheerfully contributed
by the guests who have enjoyed the fruits of their
labours? If the host did not like to let his guests
contribute to this, would he not find it politic to con-
tribute it himself? Would it be a serious addition to
the heavy expense of entertaining a large party for a
modern shooting week? And might it not prove the
best invested portion of his outlay ?

Again, why should not the guests contribute?
At one well-known house in Yorkshire there is a
‘box for the drivers,’ and I have the best reasons for

VERBUM SAP. 243

knowing that no one ever grudges the voluntary con-
tribution. As a matter of fact, the drivers at this
place are the best I have ever seen. Cheerfully,
quickly, and willingly will they slip round an extra
two or three miles after a hot exhausting day to fetch
in a big lot of birds which have broken out that they
may give you one more good drive.

Nothing is a surer indication of the temper of the
beaters than the time they consume in getting round
and into their places for a fresh drive, whilst you im-
patiently pace up and down, munching grasses and
fingering the lock of your gun ; and time is of great
value and importance out shooting when there is a
good bag to be made. Good beaters, whose move-
ments are rapid and willing, contribute very largely to
the success of the operations and the magnitude of
the bag. They must be considered in a humane and
friendly manner, due arrangements made for their rest
and lunch, and some forethought exercised to prevent
their being exposed for an unnecessarily long time to
rain, snow, or cold when there is no object to be
gained by it. One should remember that the contrast
between their simple and frugal mode of life and
the luxurious habits of modern country-house exist-
ence is never more closely brought home to them
than on the occasion of a shooting party ; and one

R2

244 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

cannot see them, as many of us often have seen,
ordered off, after an illiberal lunch of bread and
cheese and flat small beer, to stand in their places
under a storm of cold rain or sleet, perhaps, thoroughly
chilled and soaked until such time as the shooters,
having leisurely finished their luxurious hot luncheon
under a tent, shall be pleased to take their places—
one cannot see this, I say, without feeling that such
management is as impolitic as it is unkind.

A very little conversation with or encouragement
to the beaters on each side of you will prove how
readily they appreciate being differently treated, and
how easy it is to rouse a little keenness in them
for the sport in hand. I remember being amply
rewarded on one occasion in Yorkshire for showing
some consideration for the men temporarily under
my charge, by an outburst of gratitude which called
forth a delightfully quaint and original expression.
It was a piping hot day, and the men, who had only
to tramp while I enjoyed the pleasure of shooting
partridges, were quite done up. I ordered a halt, and
sent a trap back to the house for a can of beer, which,
after a grateful rest in the shade of a huge tree, I was
glad enough to share with them. One big burly chap,
who had suffered much from the heat, and who spoke
his Yorkshire very broad, exclaimed, after in his turn

VERBUM SAP. 245

. he had drained a horn of ale, ‘Eh, sir, but that went
doon ma throat laike a band o’ music.’ Truly a ‘nice
derangement of epitaphs’—after which we all set to
work again with a will, and made a good bag.

An all-round liberality in the matter of game I
look upon as absolutely essential. It is not enough to
present a farmer once a year with a hare and a brace of
birds, especially when he has loyally supported and
protected the game on his farm. The old-fashioned
tenant-farmer on a generously conducted estate used
to take a pride in the head of game killed on his land,
loved to walk with the landlord and his friends to see
the shooting, and was allowed to take away practically
as much as he could carry home, after shaking hands
with the party all round. This condition of things
happily exists still in some places, and where it does
exist the shooting is usually good. Close-fisted
people cannot, however, be prevented from owning
or renting land, though they live to learn that mean
or avaricious treatment of men on whom their sport
greatly depends is never rewarded by a plentiful stock
of game.

I think I hear some captious readers say, ‘Is
shooting, then, to be confined entirely to the very
wealthy?’ My answer would be, on large estates
and where big bags are desired, wxdoudtedly, and it

246 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

is probably better that it should be so. But the
means of the man who either owns or rents sporting
property need only be ample in proportion to the
amount of land he has rights over, the number of
men he employs, or of farmers and labourers he has
to deal with. As remarked before, shooting is
becoming daily more of a luxury, but luckily it is
more universally popular, and therefore more widely
demanded than ever.

It naturally follows that it commands a more
certain price. It is eagerly sought and handsomely
paid for by all sorts and conditions of self-made and
hard-worked men. It is no longer the exclusive
privilege of aristocratic landowners of ancient family
and their friends or connections ; and it grows more
certain every day that the impoverished owner of a
purely agricultural estate, who has, after paying all
charges, to live upon the slender balance which may
remain, cannot afford it. This may be sad, but it is
true. The successful lawyer, doctor, stockbroker, or
‘business man,’ of whatever shade of politics, seeks
nowadays the relaxation and distraction which his
hard-worked brain requires in shooting or fishing.
He comes into the market with his store of hard-won
guineas, hires the land from the family of long
descent, looks upon the whole thing as a luxury he

VERBUM SAP. 247

has fairly earned and can afford to pay for, and treats
the dwellers on the soil with a’ liberality and cheer-
fulness to which they have long been strangers.

The avaricious parvenu, who at once gets to
loggerheads with the farmers, underpays his beaters,
takes but an interested view of the well-being of his
humble neighbours, and looks to saving two thirds of
his rent out of the sale of the game, exists no doubt
here and there, but he is rare.

What is the result ? The game laws, except in the
hands of a narrow band of faddists, who may make
a little capital by attacking them in low-class urban
constituencies only, where the electors are as ignorant
as themselves, have ceased to provide a popular
banner or a political weapon, and stand on safer
ground than they have ever done in the history of
England.

It is now exactly seventy years since Sydney
Smith employed his witty pen to expose the abuse,
and urge the reform, of the game laws. But all the
changes which he proposed have passed into law,
and it should be remembered that the same humorous
brain which suggested a ‘lord of the manor for green-
gages,’ and a batch of ‘goose laws’ carrying the
same heavy penalties as the game laws of those days,
also advocated making game a property, and the
theft of it a felony.

248 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

Curiously enough, to find bitter hostility to the
game laws, or supreme ignorance of the questions
they involve, we have to look in these days to at least
one of the highest legal dignitaries in England, or to
a Member of Parliament who professes to champion
the cause of the classes with whom his habits,
education, and ability permit him no genuine sym-
pathy, and at whom he laughs in his sleeve when
regarding the nakedness of the hook with which he
leads them by the nose.

A judge can rightly order the court to be cleared
when ignorant applause is uttered from the gallery,
but he should at least be above uttering from the
hench the claptrap which provokes it. A Member of
Parliament may deliver diatribes against landlords
and sport whenever he comes across a genuine
grievance, but he should at least know something of
the question, and not prostitute his undoubted talents
by endeavouring to impose upon the dwellers in
towns what are after all but the envious whimperings
of a cockney journalist.

Such treatment of the subject is worse than
malicious, it is stupid-‘C’est pire qu’une faute,
cest une méprise.’ It is, again, worse than stupid
from a modern point of view; it is not up to date. It
is as antiquated for attack as a medizval man-at-

VERBUM SAP. 249

arms, as obsolete for capturing votes as the birdlime
and stalking-horse of the ‘Gentleman’s Recreation’ for
making a bag of partridges.

Lord Coleridge, whose views upon the game laws
have proved of immense value to some of the worst
criminals in the country, but, so far as one can discover,
to nobody else, had a charming experience of the
popularity of his political views, as proceeding from
the mouth of an English judge, some years ago in
Liverpool. Being called upon for a speech after a
political dinner, and surrounded as he was by good
Liberals—it was before the Home Rule split—he
conceived. the ingenious idea, in that commercial
city, of adding to his popularity by an unmeasured
attack upon the laws relating to the preservation of
game. His philippic was received in ominous silence
by the twenty or thirty men present, constituting the
flower of the Liberal party in Liverpool. Turning to
his neighbour, he remarked that he feared his speech
had somehow fallen flat. That gentleman observed
that no doubt it had, since, with hardly an exception,
every man in the room was a keen sportsman, and
two-thirds of them preserved game.

The game laws constitute in a sense a political
question from their close connection with the land
question ; but, in spite of the cheap and antiquated

250 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

policy of the gentlemen to whom I have referred, they
can never again be made a party question. As well
expect to make political capital out of the law of
divorce, or the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill, which
has long ago shuffled together the division lists of the
House of Commons. In the midst of your polemics
you find that the distinguished Radical barrister or
manufacturer has taken heavily to game-preserving,
while your Tory peer, preferring foreign travel or
scientific study to shooting, has surrendered all his
sporting rights to his tenantry.

The late Mr. Peter Taylor, M.P., who was about
as good a judge of the relations between landlord,
tenant, and labourer as a modern alderman would be
of a Roman triumph, loudly demanded and eventually
obtained the last Select Committee on the Game Laws,
twenty years ago. His discomfiture was complete
when it was found that the great weight of evidence
given by farmers was in favour of retaining them.
There has never been another Select Committee,
and I make bold to say there never will be. It is
dangerous to prophesy, yet I think it is not difficult
to see that the Royal Commission on Deer Forests,
which is now wasting the taxpayers’ money in a search
for good agricultural land among the misty corries
and rocky passes of the Highlands, will have no

VERBUM SAP. 251

result, as it has no object, but to advertise the names
of four or five obscure Members of Parliament as
sham champions of supposed popular rights.

The truth is that all these questions are local,
nay, more than local; they are so individual that
they may as a rule be left to settle themselves by the
force majeure of local opinion or knowledge.

Dealing strictly with the question as it stands
to-day, we may be practically certain that it is out of
the power of one class materially to injure the other
in a matter like that of the preservation of game.
There is no need to introduce politics or legislation,
on account of the widespread knowledge of the
subject already existing, diffused as it is among all
classes of the population who have anything to do
with it.

Really the Lord Chief Justice and Mr. Labouchere
seem to be the only people who neither understand
nor wish to learn anything about it.

Politics should be out of place in a book on sport,
but I offer no apology in these days—-when you hear
the subject touched upon in every country house and.
inn-parlour—for insisting upon the fact that the
ordinary laws of humanity and common sense are
sufficient, when not neglected, to protect all the game
in these islands, and to preserve sport wherever

252 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE

there is open country enough to make it worth
having.

My object has been to point out that in too many
cases game-preservers play into the hands of the
malicious agitation which town-bred politicians, rely-
ing upon the ignorance of their audience, are always
ready to ferment, by neglecting to appreciate the
human nature of the question, and by not sufficiently
studying the point of view of those who live close
around them, on whose co-operation they are abso-
lutely dependent for a due enjoyment of their sport.

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

BY

GEORGE SAINTSBURY

THE COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

Nosopy who has been brought up on Aristotle can be
indifferent to the danger of ‘crossing over to another
kind,’ or confounding arts. Therefore, in beginning
to deal with matters of the art of cookery, let me at
once put myself under the protection of the names of
two of the greatest men of letters of this century, Mr.
Thackeray and M. Alexandre Dumas, who dealt with
that same art, and by their action sanctioned the in-
trusion of all others, however far below them, who can
make good their right to follow these glorious and
immortal memories.

There is no room here for mere antiquarianism,
and, therefore, the early cookery of the partridge
may be dismissed in a few lines—all the more so for
a reason to be mentioned presently. It is enough
that the grey partridge (the only one which a true
gourmand would ever admit to the table if he could
help it) appears to be a native of Britain, and must

256 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

therefore have been very early eaten by Britons. It
is classed by Gervase Markham—a great writer on
all subjects of domestic economy, and no mean man
of letters in the early part of the seventeenth century
—with pheasant and quail as ‘the most daintiest of
all birds’ ; and from further remarks of Markham’s it
is clear that he had a sound idea as to its preparation.
In the first place, he recommends for it and for all
birds the process of ‘ carbonadoing’ (grilling) on what
he carefully distinguishes as a ‘broiling-iron,’ an im-
plement which, I think, has gone out of our kitchens
with some loss. The broiling-iron (which, as Gervase
pointedly remarks, is xof a gridiron) was a solid iron
plate, studded with hooks and points much after the
agreeable fashion of that Moorish form of torture
which in his own time was known as the ‘guanches,’
and intended to be hung up before the fire, so that
smoke, &c., could not get to the bird, while the iron
background reflected heat against it. It thus to a
certain extent resembled a Dutch oven ; but, being
open on all sides, must have been more convenient
for basting, and must also have possessed that inde-
scribable advantage which an unlimited and un-
checked supply of air communicates to things grilled
or roasted, and which is gradually, by the disuse of
open fires, and the substitution of ovens under the

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 257

name of ‘ roasters,’ becoming aa if not unknown, .
to the present generation.

There is yet another point in which the excellent
Markham shows his taste. He prescribes, as the best
sauce for pheasant or partridge, water and onions,
sliced proper, and a little salt mixed together, and
but stewed upon the coals. ‘To this,’ he says, ‘some
will put the juice or slices of an orange or lemon ;
but it is according to taste, and indeed more proper
for pheasant than partridge.’ This at once shows
a perception of the roct of the matter in game
cookery, a perception which was not too clear even
to Markham’s countrymen in his own day, and
which, though we have gradually waked up to it,
is constantly dulled by contamination from abroad.
It cannot be too early or too firmly laid down that
in the case of all game-birds, but especially in those
which have the most distinct character and taste, the
simplest cookery is the best. If anybody is fortunate
enough to possess in his larder partridges proper, un-
contaminated with red-leggism, young, plump, and
properly kept, he will hardly be persuaded to do any-
thing else with them than roast them in front of the
fire, cooking them not enough to make them dry, but
sufficiently to avoid all appearance of being underdone,
for a partridge is not a wild duck. He will then eat

s

258 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

them hot, with whatever accompaniments of bread-
sauce, bread-crumbs, fried potatoes, or the like he
pleases ; and those which are left to get cold he will eat
exactly as they are for breakfast, with no condiment but
salt and a little cayenne pepper. He will thus have
one of the best things for dinner, and the very best
thing for breakfast, that exists. The birds in roasting
may be waistcoated, like quails, with bacon and vine-
leaves if anybody likes, but with good basting and good
birds it is not necessary. The more utterly ‘simple of
themselves,’ as Sir John Falstaff said in another matter,
they are kept the better. This is the counsel of per-
fection if they are good birds of the old kind, young,
wild, properly hung, and properly cooked.

But counsels of perfection are apt to pall upon
mankind : and moreover, unfortunately they are not
invariably listened to by partridges. There are par-
tridges which are not of the pure old kind—there
are (fortunately perhaps in some ways, unfortunately
in others) a great many of them. There are partridges
which are not young, and which no amount of
hanging will make so. There are partridges which
have not eaten ants’ eggs, or have in their own self-
willed fashion not eaten them sufficiently to give
them the partridge flavour. And there are human
beings who are either incapable of appreciating roast

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 259

partridge or who, in the words of a proverb too well
known for it to be lawful to cite it just yet, object to
roast partridge always.

The universality of these facts, or of some of them,
seems to be established by the other fact, that in the
case of no game bird are there so many receipts for
cooking as in the case of the partridge, which is also
of unusually wide distribution. It is true that the
Continental partridge is usually, though not always, a
red-leg, and that the American partridge is, unless
imported, only a big and rather plebeian quail. But
these facts are only a greater reason for applying the
counsels of zmperfection—the various devices for
disguising the intrinsic incompleteness of the subject
under a weight of ornament. It must be confessed
that the result is by no means always contemptible—
with the proper appliances and in the hands of a
skilful artist it could hardly beso. But with some
exceptions to be noticed presently, it is always some-
thing like a crime in the case of the best birds, and
something like a confession in the case of the others.

To the best of my belief there are only two forms
of what may be called the secondary cookery of the
partridge which bear distinct marks of independence
and originality. One is the English partridge pudding,
and the other is the French Perdrix aux choux.

82

260 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

Speaking under correction, I should imagine that the
former was as indigenous at least asthe bird. Pud-
dings—meat puddings—of all kinds are intensely

English ; the benighted foreigner does not understand,
and indeed shudders at them for the most part, and
it is sad to have to confess that Englishmen them-
selves appear to have lost their relish for them.
There is a theory that partridge pudding was an in-
vention of the South Saxons, and has or had its
natural home in the region (very lately sophisticated
and made ‘ residential ’) of Ashdown and St. Leonard’s
Forests. Either because of this localisation, or because
it is thought a waste, or because it is thought vulgar,
receipts for it are very rare in the books. In about a
hundred modern cookery-books which I possess, I
have not come across more than one or two, the best
of which is in Cassell’s large ‘ Dictionary of Cookery.’
It is true that an intelligent cook hardly requires one,
for the pudding is made precisely after the fashion of
any other meat pudding, with steak as a necessary,
and mushrooms as a desirable, addition to the par-
tridges. But the steak, wise men advise, should not
be cut up in pieces, but laid as a thin foundation for
the partridge to rest upon. The result is certainly
excellent, as all meat puddings are for those who are
vigorous enough to eat them—only much better than

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 261

most. And while it is perhaps one of the few modes
in which young and good partridges are not much
less good than when roasted, it gives an excellent
account of the aged and the half-bred.

Perdrix aux choux abroad is a dish not less
homely, though much more widely spread, than
partridge pudding in England ; and receipts for it are
innumerable in all French and many English books.
I find this succinct description (apparently half of
French, half of German origin) in ‘The Professed
Cook,’ third edition, 1776, by ‘B. Clermont, who has
been many years clerk of the kitchen to some of the
first families in this kingdom,’ and more particularly
seems to have served as officier de bouche to the Earls
of Abingdon and Ashburnham, from whom, let us
hope, that he continued, even unto Zouche and
Zetland. B. Clermont does not waste many words
over the dish, but thus dismisses it :—

‘Perdrix & la braze [sic] aux choux.—Brazed with
cabbages and a bit of pickled pork, with a good cullis
sauce. Savoys are the best for stewing. Such as
would have them in the manner of sowerkrout must
stew the cabbage very tender and pretty high of
spices, and add as much vinegar as will give it a
tartish taste. This last is commonly served in a
tureen, and then it is. so-called. Old partridges are

262 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

very good for brazing, and may be served with any
ragout, stewed greens, and all kinds of purée.’

This is simple enough and correct enough, but a
little vague. The truth is that perdrix aux choux is a
dish which, especially in the serving, admits of a great
deal of taste and fancy. For instance, take three of
the most recent of French-English cookery-books—
that of an estimable and very practical lady, Madame
Emilie Lebour-Fawssett (who is often beyond praise,
but who thinks—Heaven help her !—that the only
reason why English people prefer the grey partridge
to the red-leg is ‘because they are English’), the
famous ‘Baron Brisse,’ and M. Duret’s ‘ Practical
Household Cookery.’ There is no very great dif-
ference in their general directions, but the lady
recommends the partridge and bacon to be, above
all things, 4idden in the cabbage ; the Baron directs
the cabbage to be put round the birds ; and the ex-
manager of St. James’s Hall orders it to be made
into a bed for them. ‘The last arrangement is, I
think, the more usual and the best. There is also
a certain difference in the methods; for while the
Baron directs the cabbage to be nearly cooked before
it is combined with the partridges, which have been
separately prepared in a saucepan, Madame Lebour-
Fawssett prefers a mere scalding of the cabbage first,

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 263

and then a joint stew for two hours, if the birds are
young, and three if they are old, while M. Duret, giving
them a preliminary fry, ordains an hour and a half of
concoction together. But this is the way of cookery-
books, and without it a whole library would be
reduced to a very small bookshelf. The principle of
the whole is obvious enough. You have some pro.
bably rather tough, and not improbably rather taste-
less, birds, and you give them tenderness and taste by
adding them to, or cooking them with, bacon and
cabbage,—‘ poiled with the pacon and as coot as
marrow,’ as the Welsh farmer observes in ‘ Crotchet
Castle.’ You season with the usual vegetables and
sauces, and you add, partly as a decoration and partly
as a finish, some sort of sausage—cervelas, chipolata,
or was Sie wiinschen. Every one who has ever eaten
a well-cooked perdrix aux choux knows that the
result is admirable; but I do not think that it is
mere prejudice or John-Bullishness to suspect that
the Zerdrix has the least say in the matter.

The partridge, however, is undoubtedly a most
excellent vehicle for the reception and exhibition of
ingeniously concocted savours ; and he has sufficient
character of his own, unless in extreme cases, not to
be overcome by them altogether. If I were disposed
to take an unmanly advantage of Madame Lebour-

264 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

Fawssett (for whom, on the contrary, I have a great
respect), I should dwell ona fatal little avowal of hers
in reference to another preparation—partridge salmis
—that ‘if you have not quite enough partridge, some
cunningly cut mutton will taste just the same.’ No
doubt most meat will ‘taste just the same’ in this sort
of cookery ; but salmis of partridge when well made
is such a good thing that nobody need be angry at
its being surreptitiously ‘extended’ in this fashion.
Salmis ot partridge, indeed, comes, I think, next to
salmis of grouse and salmis of wild duck. It is in-
finitely better than salmis of pheasant, which is con-
fusion ; and, like other salmis, it is by no means always
or even very often done as it ought to be done by
English cooks. There are two mistakes as to dishes
of this kind into which these excellent persons are
wont to fall. The first is te make the liquid part of
the preparation—call it sauce, gravy, or what you
please—too liquid, and, so to speak, too detached from
the solid. The second is to procure body and flavour
by the detestable compounds known as ‘browning’
or by illegitimate admixture of ready-made sauces.
Ina proper salmis (which, it ought not to be necessary
to say, can only be made with red wine, though some
English books desperately persevere in recommending
‘sherry ’ for such purposes), the gravy should be quite

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 265

thick and velvety, and the solid part should seem to
have been naturally cooked in it, not suddenly
plumped into a bath of independent preparation.

Of the many ordinary fashions of cooking par-
tridges it can hardly be necessary to speak here in
detail. Generally speaking, it may be said that what-
ever you can do with anything you can do with a
partridge. To no animal with wings (always except-
ing the barndoor fowl) do so many commonplace, but
not therefore despicable, means of adjustment lend
themselves. It is said that you may even boil a par-
tridge, and that accommodated in this fashion it is
very good for invalids ; but I never tasted boiled par-
tridge, and I do not think that the chance of partak-
ing of it would be a sufficient consolation to me for
being an invalid. Partridge soup is not bad, and it
offers means of disposing of birds to those who in
out-of-the-way places happen to have more than they
can dispose of in any other way. But it is not like
grouse soup and hare soup, a thing distinctly good
and independently recommendable. Partridge pie,
on the other hand, is excellent. The place of the
steak which is used in the ruder pudding is taken by
veal, and in other respects it is arranged on the com-
mon form of pies made of fowl: but it is better than
most of its fellows. There will- always be bold bad

266 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

men who say that pigeon pie is chiefly valuable for its
steak, and chicken pie (despite its literary renown
from ‘The Antiquary’) because of its seasoning.
But the partridge has a sufficient value of his own to
communicate it to other things instead of requiring to
be reinforced by them. And perhaps in no case is this
more perceptible than in partridge pie, which should,
of course, like all things of the kind, be cold to be
in perfection.

It should be still more needless to say that par-
tridge may be grilled either spread-eagle fashion or in
halves (in which case, however, as in others, it will be
especially desirable to guard against possible dryness
by very careful basting, or waistcoats of bacon, or
larding) ; that he may be converted into various kinds
of salad ; that the process of braising or stewing may
be applied without the cabbage being of necessity ;
that in roasting him all manner of varieties of stuffing,
from the common bread variety with parsley (they
use marjoram in some counties, and it is decidedly
better) through mushrooms to truffles, are available.
Partridges can, of course, also be potted, either in
joints or in the ordinary fashion of pounding up the
fleshy parts. They make, if a sufficient number is
available, and sufficient care is taken in the compound-
ing, admirable sandwiches, and like every other kind

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 267

of game they enter in their turn into the composition
of the true and rare Yorkshire pie, from which nothing
can possibly be more different than the mixture (by no
means despicable in its way) which is sold under that
name as a rule. The true Yorkshire pie consists of
birds of different sizes (tradition requires a turkey
to begin with and a snipe to end with) boned and
packed into each other with forcemeat to fill up
the interstices until a solid mass of contrasted layers
is formed. The idea is barbaric but grandiose ; the
execution capital.

There are, however, divers ways of dealing with
partridges which might not occur even to an ordinarily
lively imagination with a knowledge of plain cookery.
I am driven to believe, from many years’ experience of
cookery-books, that such an imagination combined
with such a knowledge is by no means so common
as one might expect. But the possession of it would
not necessarily enable any one to discover for him or
herself the more elaborate or at least more out-of-the-
way devices to which we shall now come.

One of these (personally I think not one of the
most successful, but it depends very much on taste)
is a chartreuse of partridges. The receipts for this
will be found to differ very greatly in different books ;
but the philosopher who has the power of detecting

268 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

likenesses under differences will very quickly hit upon
the truth that a chartreuse of partridge is merely
perdrix aux choux adjusted to the general require-
ments of the chartreuse, which are that the mixture
shall be put into a mould and baked in an oven.
The fullest descriptions of both will be found almost
identical, the savoy cabbage being there, and the
bacon, and the sausage. The chief difference is that,
for the sake of effect chiefly, since the chartreuse is
turned out of the mould and exhibited standing,
slices of carrot play a prominent part. They are put,
sometimes alternating with sausage, sometimes with
turnip, next to the sides of the mould ; then comes a
lining of bacon and cabbage, and then the birds with
more bacon and more cabbage are packed in the
middle, after being previously cooked by frying and
stewing in stock with more bacon and the usual
accessories. A simpler chartreuse is sometimes made
with nothing but the birds and the vegetables, both
bacon and sausage being omitted; and it would
clearly be within the resources and the rights of
science to use the bacon but not the sausage, and to
introduce other varieties. For, in fact, in the more
complex kinds of cookery there are no hard-and-fast
rules, and the proof not merely of puddings but of
every dish is in the eating.

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 269

A dish which seems at first sight to savour of will-
worship and extravagance is soufié of partridge. Yet
it is defensible from the charge of being false heraldry,
for the partridge is a winged animal, and that which
restores to him lightness is not against nature. But
it is important to remember that it has to be made of
young birds—serdreaux,not perdrix—andlikeall things
of its kind it is not for every cook to achieve. Yet
the main lines of the preparation are simple. The
meat of cold partridges is pounded, moistened, warmed
with stock, and passed through a sieve till it becomes
a purée. It is then combined with a still stronger
stock, made of the bones of the birds themselves,
adding butter, some nutmeg, four yolks of eggs, and
two of the whites carefully whipped, after which it is
put into the soufflé dish and the soufflé dish in the
oven, and the whole, as quickly as possible after
rising, set before the persons who are to eat it. Much
good may it do them.

The perdreau trugé which so ravished Mr. Tit-
marsh at the Café Foy long since (I cannot conceive
what induced him to drink Sauterne with it, and after
Burgundy too ! it should have been at least Meursault,
if not Montrachet or White Hermitage) was no doubt
an excellent bird ; but there might be others as good
as he. The truffle, to my fancy, is rather for com-

270 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

paratively faint natural tastes like turkey or capon,
than for a strong nativity like that of the partridge.
Still, there are strong flavours that go excellently
with this bird. I do not know that there are many
better things of the kind than a partridge @ /a
Béarnaise. All things @ la Béarnaise have of course a
certain family likeness. There is oil, there is garlic
(not too much of it), there is stock ; and you stew or
braise the patient in the mixture. Some would in
this particular case add tomatoes, which again is a
matter of taste.

I have seen in several books, but never tried, a
receipt for what was called mayonnaise of partridge.
The bird is roasted, cut up, and served with a ot
green mayonnaise sauce of hard-boiled eggs, oil,
tarragon vinegar, and a considerable proportion of
good stock, with slices of anchovy added as a garnish.
It might be good, but as the bird is to be simply
roasted and merely warmed in the sauce, I should say
he would be better by himself, if he were in thorough
condition, and anything but acceptable if he were
not. The sauce, however, would be something of a
trial of a good cook, if that were wanted.

Few things lend themselves better than partridges
to the fabrication of a supvéme. As there may be
some people who share that wonder which Mr. Harry

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 271

Foker expressed so artlessly, but so well, when he
said, ‘Can’t think where the souprames comes from.
What becomes of the legs of the fowls?’ it may be
well to transcribe from an American, at least French-
American, manual one of the clearest directions 1
remember. It may be observed in passing that the
American partridge is probably for the most part the
Virginian quail, and that ‘over there’ they have a
habit of eating it boiled with celery sauce or purée of
celery, a thing which goes very well with all game
birds, and more particularly with pheasant. But
to the ‘souprames.’ ‘Make an incision,’ says my
mentor, ‘on the top of the breastbone from end to
end ; then with a sharp knife cut off the entire breast
on each side of the partridge, including the small
wing bone, which should not be separated from the
breast.’ The remainder of the bird is then used for
other purposes, and the supréme is fashioned in the
usual way, or ways, for there are many. This seems
to be a better and more individual thing than the
common chicken supzéme, in which the breast is if
used cut into separate strips, and the size of the par-
tridge offers this advantage. On the other hand, the
partridge cw¢/e¢—another fashion of securing most of
the meat of the bird in a comparatively boneless con-
dition—is begun at the other end by slitting the back

272 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

and taking out all the bones except the pinions and
drumsticks, which are left. Cutlets thus fashioned
can be accommodated in various ways, especially by
sautéing them with divers sauces. The name cutlet
is also given to less imposing fragments of the bird,
which can be dealt with of course in almost any of
the myriad manners in which cutlets are served.
The best known perhaps and the commonest in books,
if not best in the dish, is @ Ja régence. This isa
rather complicated preparation, in which the birds are
subjected to three different methods of cooking, the
results of which are destined to be united. The
roasted breasts are cut into small round pieces which
serve to give distinction to artificial cutlets, formed in
moulds, of a farce or forcemeat made of raw partridge
pounded with egg, mushroom, etc., into a paste.
These cutlets are then sent up in a sauce made of the
bones and remnants of the birds stewed with butter,
bacon-bones, herbs, wine, and brown sauce, finally
compounded with about half the quantity of celery
shredded, stewed and pulped to a cream. The effect
is good, but the dish belongs to the family of over-
complicated receipts, which to my thinking belong to
a semi-barbarous period and theory of cookery.
Partridge @ /a Parisienne, on the other hand, is
sound in principle and excellent in effect. The birds

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 273

are browned in butter on not too fierce a fire ; some
glaze, some stock, and a little white wine are added,
with a slight dredging of flour, pepper, and salt, and
then they are simmered for three-quarters of an hour
or thereabouts, and when done are served with the
sauce strained over them. Partridge @ Vestouffade is
a little more complicated, but not much. The birds
are larded, put in a saucepan with onions, carrots,
bacon, herbs, stock, white wine, and, of course,
pepper and salt, covered up, simmered till done, and
served as in the other case, with the sauce strained
and poured over them. To these two excellent ways
may be added, as of the same family, partridge @ /a
chasseur and partridge @ fa Portugaise, which are
slightly different ways of cooking the jointed and
dismembered birds in butter, with easily variable and
imaginable seasonings— including in the last case, of
course, garlic, and the substitution of oil for butter.
They are all good, and always supposing that the cook
knows his or her business. well enough to prevent
greasiness, there are no better ways of cooking really
good birds, except the plain roast. But as there will
always be those who love mixed, and disguised, and
blended flavours, let us end with two arrangements of
greater complexity —partridge @ da Cussy and partridge

& U' Italienne. ‘
T

274 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

Partridge @ da Cussy is a braised partridge with
peculiarities. In the first place, he is boned com-
pletely, except as to the legs. He is then stuffed with
a mixture of sweetbreads, mushrooms, truffles, and
cockscombs, sewn up, and half grilled, until he
becomes reasonably consolidated. Then a braising-
pan is taken, lined with ham, and garnished with the
invariable accompaniments of partridge in French
cookery—onions, carrot, mixed herbs in bouquets,
chopped bacon, the bones of the birds smashed up,
salt and pepper, white wine, and stock. Into this,
after the accompaniments have been reasonably
cooked, the birds are put, protected by buttered
paper, and simmered slowly, with the due rite of fire
above as well as below, which constitutes braising
proper. They are finally served up, as usual, with
their own sauce strained and skimmed.

The Italian fashion is not wholly dissimilar,
though it is usually given under the general head of
‘baking,’ as will be evident to every one whose idea
of cookery has got past words and come to things.
Indeed, though I have never seen it recommended,
I should think it could be done best in what I
am told is called at the Cape a ‘ Dutch baking-pot,’
which is a slightly more refined edition of our old
friend Robinson Crusoe’s favourite method of cook-

COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 275

ing. The partridges are simply prepared as if for
roasting, but instead of being left hollow, each is
stuffed with fine breadcrumbs, a little nutmeg, salt,
pepper, butter, parsley, and lemon juice. A sheet of
oiled paper being prepared for each bird, it is spread
with a mixed mincemeat of mushroom, carrot,
onion, parsley, herbs @ volonté, and truffles. In
the sheet thus prepared the bird, previously waist-
coated with bacon, is tied up. Then he is put ina
covered pan and baked, being now and again un-
covered and basted. At last, after three-quarters of
an hour or so, unclothe, dish, and serve him with the
trimmings and clothings made thoroughly hot with
stock, wine, and the usual appurtenances for such
occasions made and provided.

I think that this is a tolerable summary of most
of the best ways of cooking ‘the bird’ par éminence.
There are others which witvosa Libido, or, if any likes
it, refined taste, has found out. Thus, before making
a partridge salad you may, if you like, marinade the
birds in veal stock, tarragon vinegar, salad oil, and
herbs, using the marinade afterwards as a dressing.
And you may play the obvious tricks of filling
partridges with fote gras and the like. In short, as
has been hinted more than once, the bird, while
requiring a very little purely decorative treatment, is

276 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE

very susceptible of it, inasmuch as his taste is neither
neutral nor, like that of waterfowl in general and the
grouse tribe also, so definite and pronounced that it
is almost impossible to smother it by the commingling
of other flavours. I own frankly that to my own taste
these flavour-experiments of cookery should be kept
for things like veal, which have no particular flavour
of their own, and which are, therefore, public material
for the artist to work upon. I do not think that you
can have too much of a very good thing, and if I
wanted other good things I should rather add them
of a different kind than attempt to corrupt and de-
naturalise the simplicity of the first good thing itself.

But other people have other tastes, and the fore-
going summary will at least show that the catchword of .
toujours perdrix—a catchword of which I venture to
think that few people who use it know the original
context—is not extremely happy. For with the posi-
tive receipts, and the collateral hints to any tolerably
expert novice in cookery given above, it would be
possible to arrange partridge every day throughout
the season without once duplicating the dish.

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