Pheasants

: STORIES FOR CHILDREN
: Fables For Children, Stories For Children, Natural Science Stori

Wild fowls are called pheasants in the Caucasus. There are so many of

them that they are cheaper there than tame chickens. Pheasants are

hunted with the "hobby," by scaring up, and from under dogs. This is the

way they are hunted with the "hobby." They take a piece of canvas and

stretch it over a frame, and in the middle of the frame they make a

cross piece. They cut a hole in the canvas. This frame with the canvas

is
alled a hobby. With this hobby and with the gun they start out at

dawn to the forest. The hobby is carried in front, and through the hole

they look out for the pheasants. The pheasants feed at daybreak in the

clearings. At times it is a whole brood,--a hen with all her chicks, and

at others a cock with his hen, or several cocks together.



The pheasants do not see the man, and they are not afraid of the canvas

and let the hunter come close to them. Then the hunter puts down the

hobby, sticks his gun through the rent, and shoots at whichever bird he

pleases.



This is the way they hunt by scaring up. They let a watch-dog into the

forest and follow him. When the dog finds a pheasant, he rushes for it.

The pheasant flies on a tree, and then the dog begins to bark at it. The

hunter follows up the barking and shoots the pheasant in the tree. This

chase would be easy, if the pheasant alighted on a tree in an open

place, or if it sat still, so that it might be seen. But they always

alight on dense trees, in the thicket, and when they see the hunter they

hide themselves in the branches. And it is hard to make one's way

through the thicket to the tree on which a pheasant is sitting, and hard

to see it. So long as the dog alone barks at it, it is not afraid: it

sits on a branch and preens and flaps its wings at the dog. But the

moment it sees a man, it immediately stretches itself out along a bough,

so that only an experienced hunter can tell it, while an inexperienced

one will stand near by and see nothing.



When the Cossacks steal up to the pheasants, they pull their caps over

their faces and do not look up, because a pheasant is afraid of a man

with his gun, but more still of his eyes.



This is the way they hunt from under dogs. They take a setter and follow

him to the forest. The dog scents the place where the pheasants have

been feeding at daybreak, and begins to make out their tracks. No matter

how the pheasants may have mixed them up, a good dog will always find

the last track, that takes them out from the spot where they have been

feeding. The farther the dog follows the track, the stronger will the

scent be, and thus he will reach the place where the pheasant sits or

walks about in the grass in the daytime. When he comes near to where the

bird is, he thinks that it is right before him, and starts walking more

cautiously so as not to frighten it, and will stop now and then, ready

to jump and catch it. When the dog comes up very near to the pheasant,

it flies up, and the hunter shoots it.



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