approach, and although they will, where the ground permits it,
run a good deal, they are not usually difficult to flush the first
or second time, but after having been twice raised, they are
very unwilling to fly a third time.
No bird probably affords prettier shooting than do Quail
in some seasons in many parts of Northern India. A hundred
brace may be, and have been, bagged in a single day by
one sportsman ; but using full charges, as I did in the days
when I saw most of Quail, in the Mecrut district, most men's
heads arc splitting from the continual firing before they have got
much beyond half that number. With small charges, such as I
have already described, (p. 119) it is impossible to say what
bags might not be made.
The best time, of course, is when about three-fourths of the
wheat and barley has been cut, the birds being then, at any rate
from 7 A.M. to 5 P.M., massed in the still-standing patches.
That the reapers are at work in these makes no difference ; they
may be making any amount of noise, but ten yards from
where they arc cutting the Quail begin to rise, and thenceforward
the whole field seems converted into a gigantic Gattling,
discharging Quail in all directions to the front (they hardly ever
come back upon you), until, just at the very margin of the crop,
a final feu dcjoic bursts along the whole line.
The husbandmen do not mind one European or one or two
natives walking carefully through the standing corn (and when
Quail are very thick this is the best way of shooting them if
you have good retrievers), but they do most strongly object to
a dense line of native beaters trampling through their ripe
crops ; and when the birds are only fairly plentiful, the best
plan is to use a cord to beat with. You take a thin cord about
two-tenths of an inch in diameter, and forty or fifty yards in
length, and at every yard you insert a white feather through the
strands. One man walks on each side of you at a distance of
twenty or twenty-five yards, each holding one end of the cord,
which they strain pretty tightly between them. You walk about a
yard behind the cord, which just brushes the tops of the highest
cars, and which, at each step they take, the holders flap down on
to the corn. This docs no harm (the rope must not drag
along the field), makes little noise, and yet suffices to flush
almost every bird. If, as is almost essential, you have good
retrievers, arid your men have kept count of each bird that fell,
when you have completed shooting out the field your men, with
the dogs, take up the running, and should recover every bird.
Without dogs, Quail-shooting, excellent as it is, is most trying to
the temper. If, when a bird falls, you allow a beater to rush
to the spot, he probably flushes twenty others in recovering or
trying to recover that one If you allow none to be picked
up until the line has passed, you lose certainly half your birds.
In the first place falling rapidly right and left at every step
as they do, no human being can remember where the birds fell.
In the second place, if not killed outright, Quail hide up in such
a way (running freely into the rats' holes so common, at any
rate in the Punjab) that no man can find them. With steady
dogs put into the field as you leave it, and made to work in it
until they have retrieved the full number counted, the sport is
most satisfactory.
When flushed, Quail rarely fly far; in moderate-sized fields,
especially during the hotter part of the day, fully half drop
within fifty yards, and I do not think I ever saw a Quail, even
one that had had two barrels fired at it, fly for more than three
or four hundred yards.
Did any of my readers ever try Quail-shooting in good high
ripe jfowar or Bajera well over their heads ?
Capital sport it is ! " Absurd" ! you say ; " why, how can you
see the birds ?" Very well indeed, as I will explain. First you
look out for the machan whence the people watch the
crops to keep off the birds, which is almost always at one edge
of the field, and where that abuts on some barren plot or bare
field intended for the spring crops. If this particular one is
not so situated, you move on to one that is. Then you put your
beaters—and they should be numerous and each have a stick—
in at the opposite side of the field. Then you ascend the
"machan" light a cigar, and, as the Walrus says to the
Oysters, " admire the view."
In the meantime the beaters, if they know their trade, will
beat very slowly through the field in a more or less semicircular
order, the concavity towards the machan, not talking, but
rustling vigorously about with their sticks at the bases of the
dry stalks. Probably the first thing that distracts your attention
from the surrounding scenery is a tremendous rush and a
general hoorush (the best trained beaters are but men!), and,
swiftly parting the waving stems, you see an old black buck
coming at a headlong pace towards you, his nose straight in front
of him, and his horns laid well back on his shoulders. You don't
move (and even if you did, when he was close to you he would
see nothing above him), but just as he emerges in the open,
if not more than twenty-five yards distant, you roll him over
with a buck shot or S. S. G. cartridge in the neck. If further
and you have a rifle, it ought to come (though it sometimes
don't) to the same thing. Then your Pathan, who has been
crouching at the base of the machan, glides out and solemnly
cuts that buck's throat in the name of the Almighty.
The beaters have by this time repented of their enthusiasm ;
they are dimly conscious that that " hoorush" may not be viewed
in a favourable light, and that it would be well for them if the
" Protector of the Poor" aloft (on the machan I mean) got a
good many shots before they again interviewed him. As they
advance, perhaps two or three greys, a whole brood of Pea-chicks,