SHOOTING SEASON

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 28, 2 August 1933, Page 9

SHOOTING SEASON

RESULTS MAINLY POOR

ARE PHEASANTS INCREASING?

There appear to be varying' opinions about the shooting available to sportsmen in the Wellington district during the season just closed. Nobody is enthusiastic j about the season's sport, which evidently j varied considerably according to the' districts shot in, and as shooters are notoriously silent as to the best spots to secure game, actuaKresults are not very easy to obtain. It is the opinion of some experienced sportsmen, however, that as far as pheasants are concerned, there is a marked improvement as compared with the possibilities of ten years ago. It is reported that one man shot twenty pheasants in the Wellington Acclimatisation Society's district during the season, a thing which has not been reported for, some years. Another shot seventeen pheasants, and. it is said that more individual men have shot occasional pheasants this season than for a long time. Q.uaiJ are said to have been faniy plentiful in certain districts also. l.Theip is a big difference between such guarded statements and the breezy references v a dozen or so brace of pheasants for s day's shoot which were never questioned in. the old days when cover in the shapp j of logs and bad patches of burn was more I plentiful on farms than it is today, and before the motor-car, drainage, and vermin had combined to thin out the birds almost to the vanishing point. Nevertheless, it all the reports that have come in may bo relied upon, .there is a distinct increase ip tho number of pheasants in the district as compared with a couple of years ago. Whether this is due, as is stated by some sportsmen, to a decrease in the numbers of stoats and weasels owing to the gradual dying out of the rabbits which supported them, or to slightly more effective liberations of ■birds bred in captivity, is in doubt. Probably both effects are to be U°As regards ducks, the season in the Wairarapa was disappointing as compared with former seasons, but m the Manawatu the results are said to have been better. Weather has a decided influence on the bags of duck secured, and there has been plenty of■ weather 'good for ducks," but not at the commencement of the season, when, before the birds get wild, the best bags are generally secured. A Ghristchurch exchange says that the 1933 season was the most barren for years, Lake Ellesmere proving especially unpro-