In driving partridges, the purpose of the shooters is to collect a number of coveys into a field or strip of roots lying alongside a fence, on the other side of which are posted the guns. If possible, these guns should stand in a grass field or on stubble, in order that the partridges killed in the drive may be collected easily and quickly. A drive begins with a line of beaters, with flankers working on the right and left of the line, advancing over a chosen number of fields and driving the partridges before them towards the selected strips of roots. The beaters and flankers carry flags, the latter being charged with the duty of waving their flags so as to keep the birds from breaking out at the sides. Throughout, the head keeper (or possibly the host) is in charge of the drive, and it requires a considerable knowl edge of the country and of wind and weather to ensure suc cess. The beaters on reaching the strip of roots into which the coveys have been driven advance slowly and the partridges are flushed so as to fly over the fence behind which stand the guns. As they top the fence and catch sight of the guns the birds swerve and swing in every direction, with a disconcerting sudden ness that tests the quickest eye and hand. Indeed, there could be no higher criterion of the all-round skill of a game shot than to describe him as first rate with driven partridges.
Pheasant shooting, compared with grouse and partridge shooting, is an artificial business; or it is true, at all events, to say that only under more or less artificial conditions can pheasants supply the sporting chances of shooting which modern sportsmen prefer. Wild pheasants, to speak gen erally, make dull work for the gun. It is a pheasant's natural instinct to run rather than to fly, and if forced to fly, to regain shelter as soon and as near as possible. Therefore when a covert containing wild pheasants is beaten out, few of them will be found to fly high or far, or to go straight in any particular direction; the birds will fly out anyhow and anywhere, possibly back over the beaters' heads. Only a small proportion can be put over a line of guns, and the shots offered will be poor and uninteresting.
With hand-reared pheasants the case is different. A line of beaters enters the wood in which the pheasants are fed, and pushes them out by advancing slowly and tapping the trees quietly; the birds run before the advancing line and can be pushed in this way, either running or flying low from one wood to another, until they have been manoeuvred into a covert previously chosen, at the far side of which is placed a line of stops, that is, men or boys tapping trees, fences, etc.—beyond which the pheasants will not go. When the birds are collected into this covert the guns will take up their position in a line between the covert and the birds' home ; the keeper and one or two chosen assistants then enter the covert, and flush the birds a few at a time. The pheasants thus put on the wing rise into the air with the object of regaining their "home," and as a rule will attempt to do so in a single flight. It is upon this home-flying habit of pheasants that the whole
principle of modern covert-shooting is founded, and there can be no question that pheasants flying in this way, high in the air and at a great pace, and often swerving or curling in a high wind, provide as exacting a test of skilled shooting as is possible.
Most of the shooting of other game in Great Britain is corollary to the sport to be had with grouse, partridges and pheasants. Black game, for example, are to be found in most places where there are grouse, and the methods of shooting the two species are identical. Ptarmigan, on the other hand, belong only to the higher ranges of grouse country, or perhaps, rather, deer forests, and if walked up provide uninteresting shooting owing to their tameness. Caper cailzie may occasionally be found on the open moor, but only in the neighbourhood of trees ; the name is "cabhar coille," or cock of the wood, and it is in the heart of pine and fir woods that the capercailzie makes its home. The birds are driven in winter, and afford remarkable shooting, for they sail out from the trees over the glen at a great pace, and may easily be out of shot.
Two or three other forms of shooting may be pursued for their own sake. Snipe are to be found on most grouse moors, but snipe shooting is a sport by itself, to be enjoyed wherever there is bogland adapted to the snipe's feeding habits. The bird rises from the ground like a flash, twisting this way and that, and to hit so elusive a mark needs a quick eye and hand. Snipe-shooting is a sport of the winter months, for the home-bred birds are joined by the migrations from the Continent in No vember. The largest bags of snipe have been made in the Hebrides, but Ireland and Wales, especially the former, provide some of the best snipe ground, and in England there are possi bilities of good shooting in Norfolk.
Woodcock shooting, as a sport by itself, belongs principally to certain localities on the line of the birds' migration. As is the case with snipe, large numbers of woodcock arrive every autumn from the Continent, and pass through the British Isles in a general direction from north-east to south-west. The furthest limit of this migration is the west and south-west of Ireland, and the shooting at Ballykine and its neighbourhood on the shores of Lough Mask is possibly the best in the world. But large bags are obtained in Cornwall, which is the limit of the line of flight in England, and in the west of Scotland, particularly the isle of Islay, which is a stage of the birds' migration both on the outward and homeward journey. The supposed difficulty of the shooting arises from the erratic movement of the bird, whose sight is adapted for night conditions rather than day, when flying among trees. A woodcock in the open is a comparatively simple mark.