Part 36

Sir Charles Forbes’ Edinglassie moor yielded 8081 birds in 1900.

Probably the record bag over dogs was the 10,600 grouse killed at Glenbuchat in 1872, where Mr. James W. Barclay (the owner) very kindly informs the author that driving was not started until after that year, whereas the greater number were killed by that plan at Delnadamph in 1872.]

THE LATEST METHODS OF PRESERVATION OF PARTRIDGES

At the present time there are in operation many more ways of preserving partridges than ever before. Indeed, the history of preserving these birds up to about 1860 could hardly be written for lack of material. For some strange reason, at the period when stubbles were cut long (and the author has shot in them a foot high as lately as 1870), and when partridges sat so close to the points of dogs that to all appearances they could have been easily exterminated, they nevertheless seemed to require no artificial assistance, and even no designed limitation of the reduction to the breeding stock. Perhaps it was that the close crouching of the birds in good covert was the natural method of assuring safety, and it may be that birds that could escape detection by the dogs could also escape it by the foxes and the vermin.

The wilder the game is, and the more it runs, the more scent it gives out to denote its presence to dogs; and with guns ahead, the birds that flush wild do not escape in driving, so that increase of wildness is not all in favour of the game even upon shooting days, and for the other 360 days of the year may possibly be against them, and in favour of the vermin that hunts by smell.

Whether this protection by the wits assists birds on their nests at all, and if so, as much as the loss of scent does, is too wide a question to enter upon here. It is only necessary to remark upon that subject that partridge preservation is to be divided, broadly speaking, into two systems: first, that which protects birds against foxes; second, that which is not called upon to add this heavy duty to the keeper’s ordinary business.

Roughly generalising, it is only in Norfolk and Suffolk where the keepers are not troubled with the fox question, and consequently it is only there that partridges can be safely left alone to find their own salvation. But this system can go too far even in those favoured counties, and naturally we find energetic shooters who try all round, declaring that Norfolk and Suffolk are “played out.” As a matter of fact, the very ease of preservation in those counties has done them a great deal of comparative injury, because, while they have been going back, or at least standing still, other counties have been going ahead in a wonderful manner. Probably the progress made in Nottinghamshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Cambridgeshire is far greater than anything done in the Eastern Counties, compared with what the respective stocks were in those districts twenty-five years ago.

The first phenomenal partridge preservation and the first break away from the system of letting birds preserve themselves occurred at Elvedon in the sixties of last century. Then large numbers of partridges were reared by hand on that estate, and at the same time, or a little later, a great many people began to rear partridges by hand. One of these was Lord Ducie, in Oxfordshire. The plan adopted there was to exchange pheasants’ eggs for those of partridges with anyone who would bring the latter; consequently, it may be said that Lord Ducie was one of the first men to prefer partridge shooting to covert shooting. Now, on the contrary, a very great many people set the partridge up as the first game bird, and his popularity is growing.

But to return to the hand rearing of partridges: the difficulty of this business is twofold. First, it is generally believed that the birds must be fed with ants’ eggs to make a success. Second, it is asserted that tame bred partridges “pack,” and that without old birds to lead them these packs are likely to travel for miles and be lost to those to whom they belong.

The first charge against hand rearing is not exactly true, because Lord Ducie’s keeper succeeded in rearing large quantities of partridges without the use of ants’ eggs. The author as a boy and in an amateurish way reared birds about the same period, but by the use of ants’ eggs, and consequently that experience does not go for much, because there is no difficulty in the task where plenty of these insects are to be found to feed the birds entirely for the first six weeks.

The trouble arises when there are some ants’ eggs but not enough to go round, for this food has the effect of setting the young birds against everything else. Lord Ducie’s partridges were mainly fed upon meal of some kind, although the writer forgets what it was. Another precaution that was taken was to distribute the coops very widely along the sides of corn-fields, and there is no doubt that this plan obliged the birds to hunt for insect food at a much earlier age than if they had been kept upon ants’ eggs. Unfortunately, the chicks will not eat the ants themselves; otherwise the getting of ant-hills to cart to the birds would go three times as far as it does, for there are generally twice as many wingless ants as there are eggs to every nest.

The second charge against these tame birds is that they grow too wild in packs and fly right away, and this is a fact beyond all dispute. However, it has been said that cock partridges will sometimes take to young birds reared by hens, if the bachelor partridges are themselves penned in the neighbourhood when the little chicks are first carried from the sitting boxes to the coops. There appears here to be a possible future for hand rearing without its old disadvantage of packing. Probably most people will think that the cock partridge is better occupied in assisting his own proper mate to raise the very big coveys that are now manufactured by the joint efforts of birds and keepers.

This partnership arrangement came about when the keeper at The Grange discovered how easy it was, with proper precautions, to make up the nests of sitting partridges to 20 or more eggs. The result of this was that, although eggs had for many years been changed during the laying period, to effect cross breeding, it now became possible to employ the partridges themselves to do the work of foster-mothers—a vocation that farmyard hens had only half performed hitherto, and done their part badly. All destroyed nests, as well as those that looked likely to be destroyed, could now have their eggs hatched without the intervention of those fowls that always want to start laying again just as they are most desired to keep their foster game chicks from “sowing wild oats.”

Obviously The Grange plan would not have been of much use had not a very careful record been kept of when each bird began to sit; for it was necessary that eggs added after the laying season should only be those in precisely the same advanced state of incubation as those already in the nest. Someone has said that the cock bird goes off with the first chicks hatched, and leaves the hen to manage the other eggs; but this is not so, and if added eggs are twenty-four hours behind the others they will generally be left unhatched in the nest.

Probably all the great partridge estates have advanced as far as this. It marks the time at Holkham in the north of Norfolk as well as Orwell Park in the south of Suffolk. But although these two estates are hard to beat in the matter of big days, the partridge yield is not the highest per acre on either of these celebrated estates, and never has been. At Holkham about 8000 birds on 12,000 acres is the most that has been done. At Orwell 6000 birds upon 18,000 acres is not regarded as bad. Both of these estates are considered the best possible land for partridges, and both of them have also the advantage that foxes are particularly scarce in the districts of Norfolk and Suffolk. No Hungarian birds have ever been used at Holkham, although eggs are exchanged for fresh blood. At Orwell this method is also practised, and as many as 1000 eggs in a season have been obtained from Cumberland and Hampshire, by exchange with Sir R. Graham and Lord Ashburton. Nests are made up to 20 eggs at Orwell, and occasionally eggs are placed under hens until hatched, when the young birds are given to old partridges on the point of hatching out. But here the appearance of the old sitting birds is relied upon to indicate when that time comes. Thus, when two partridges are seen sitting on the same nest, it is taken for granted that the egg-chipping stage has been reached.

Holkham has been the most famous partridge estate for a century, but much of this fame is owing to the fact that it is a very large estate, naturally well suited for game, and especially for partridges. Besides this, it was one of the first upon which partridge driving was practised, and this method seems to have raised the stock by double. At the same time, the system of only using the same beat once in the season limits the kill enormously.

This estate has beaten all previous records for a single day’s shooting by a bag of 1671 birds in 1905. Naturally the thought at once occurs that the Holkham must be the best system; but when we understand that this beat is made upon 2000 acres in 20 drives to 8 guns, and that this is the total season’s bag of the very best beat in the very best partridge land in England, and remember also that on 8000 acres of the best land only 4749 birds were bagged as the whole season’s work, but all in four days, the question arises, What would Holkham do in the season if it were subjected to the most modern methods of preservation?

Another splendid estate for game, and one similar to Holkham in size and dryness of land, is Euston. The Duke of Grafton has in a letter to the Times repudiated the idea that partridges are preserved at Euston by the plan adopted there for pheasants. On the contrary, the partridge preserving at Euston has been of the same character as elsewhere in Norfolk and Suffolk. The ill-named “Euston plan” was not wanted there for partridges, and was applied only to pheasants, and to them not as has been very often described. The great difference between the Euston pheasant system and the latest method with partridges, erroneously described and applied to Euston, is that in the case of pheasants at Euston the birds are not kept sitting on sham or bad eggs while their own are being incubated. They are, according to the Duke’s letter, allowed to sit on their own eggs, and when the latter are chipping they are given more eggs in the same forward condition—such eggs as have been picked up out of destroyed nests.

The system that is not employed at Euston, then, either for partridges or pheasants, is that in which the period of incubating is shortened for the wild bird by picking up all her eggs as laid and incubating them under barndoor poultry.

By this latter plan the period of incubation of any individual bird can be pretty nearly what the keeper wishes it to be, and its length will greatly depend upon the number of foxes, the nature of the soil, and the situation of the nests. The success of this system on Mr. Pearson Gregory’s property in the great fox-hunting county of Lincolnshire was perhaps the origin of ill-naming the plan after Euston, and came about because of Mr. Pearson Gregory’s tenancy of Euston.

That the minor assistance should have enabled 6000 wild pheasants to be killed at Euston per annum is sufficiently remarkable, and is a fact due to the objection of the Duke of Grafton to hand rearing, and to the initiative of the clever Euston keeper, who found a middle course that turned out even better than hand rearing. But in the absence of foxes, as Lord Granby has remarked, the soil breeds game at Euston, and it is not to be supposed that the same system would suffice either upon a clay soil where rain could drown out the nests or where foxes abound. For such districts the essence of the new plan is the shortening of the incubating period, or the “clear” egg system. The clear eggs used are necessarily, and unobjectionably, pheasants’ eggs, as those of partridges should not exist, and when they do exist are discovered too late to be of any use for that season.

It was probably in the Newmarket district of Cambridgeshire where the system of the short incubation period for partridges was first put into practice; for, as has been observed, there is no such great need of it in the sandy soils of Norfolk and Suffolk, which drain themselves, and besides have not to contend with foxes. Possibly Stetchworth was one of the first, if not the actual first, estate where it became a recognised practice to take eggs and keep the birds sitting upon clear pheasants’ eggs until a number of 25 partridges’ eggs were chipped and ready to place under the sitting bird, which might have been sitting but ten days instead of the usual twenty-four. On various occasions this plan has been described as if it were new, and an emergency plan, at Stetchworth in 1905; but that is by no means the case, as it is the plan by which the most hostile forces of nature in the shape of bad seasons have been rendered comparatively harmless. Any plan that permits bags of about 500 birds and upwards per day to be made for many days, and in spite of such seasons as the last five, three of which were wet and the fourth and fifth bad with thunderstorms, must be wonderful.

Not content with the short incubation system, Lord Ellesmere has tried every other at Stetchworth. Hungarian partridges in small quantities have been attempted, and also the French system of preservation by pairing birds in pens. When the author last heard about the latter system, the results were not to be compared for a moment with those of the real wild birds assisted by the short incubation plan.

Another place where all the systems have been tried (except the French, as far as is known to the writer) is Rushmore, in Wilts, where Mr. Glen Kidston has achieved a revolution in partridge preservation and vermin killing. He is a believer in making it the keeper’s business to keep down rats, and as a matter of fact that is another lesson that Norfolk and Suffolk might learn from less naturally favoured counties. Where this business is left to the farmers it is not properly done. As the keepers have killed nearly 5000 rats in a season at Rushmore, it goes without saying how the partridges’ eggs would have fared had these horrible creatures been left to raid upon them. Unquestionably the greatest service that keepers can ever do to farmers is to keep down rats. Hand rearing and Hungarian eggs have been largely employed at Rushmore, where there are plenty of ants’ eggs for all comers, and plenty of space in which to distribute the partridge coops in turnip-fields, and it is said not close enough together to make “packing” a thing to be feared.

The principle that numbers bring disease is not feared at Rushmore, for although as many as 1200 hand-reared birds were lost in a few days in 1904, the next season saw better results than ever.

The Duke of Portland has converted his Welbeck property of light limestone subsoil into a great partridge district, and has employed large quantities of Hungarian birds to effect the change, having turned out as many as 1200 birds at one time. Like Rushmore, the Duke’s property is not well watered, and there is no doubt whatever that running or stagnant water is not necessary to young partridges when at large. At any rate, there are a number of very fine partridge estates on which it would be quite impossible for the birds to drink, except the dew, until they were able to delight in flights of three-parts of a mile. At Moulton Paddocks, near Newmarket, Mr. F. E. R. Fryer, who is as admirable as a preserver as he is as a shot, supplies pans of water in his fields for the partridges. He adjoins those great shootings of Chippenham and Cheveley, and as he has scored nearly 1½ birds to the acre, or 700 birds on 500 acres in the year, his management must be beyond reproach. That is more than twice as many birds per acre as at Lord Leicester’s fine place, Holkham; but then with such neighbours as Mr. Fryer has, it is a less difficult task to keep a very high stock on a small than upon a large place.

In Oxfordshire, Mr. J. F. Mason, of Eynsham Hall, has reverted to the system that his neighbour Lord Ducie practised in the Chipping Norton district in the sixties of last century. That is, he breeds large quantities of partridges by hand; but the wet destroyed his chances in 1905.

In Scotland, Sir John Gladstone has had admirable success with Hungarian eggs, and Sir William Gordon Cumming has tried the French system on a larger scale than most people. At Stetchworth the partridge keepers have no pheasant rearing to do; and of course this is the case where there are no pheasants reared by hand, as at Euston in Suffolk and Honingham in Norfolk. At the latter place, Mr. Fellowes, lately Minister of Agriculture and a great farmer, makes his estate of 4500 acres yield nearly 3000 partridges, and also 1200 wild bred pheasants. In the New Forest, Lord Montague manages to kill about 4000 more pheasants than he rears by hand, and there is no doubt that the latest phase of preservation is directly opposite to that of ten and fifteen years ago, when the keepers did everything possible for the pheasants and practically nothing for the partridges.