Country Life
IRIS!' GAME.
That "blessed" word " conservation," first popularised as a label for a policy by Theodore Roosevelt, has recently been adopted in Ireland with, I hear, good results. Politics were not good for animals in Ireland. Just as, during the War, Many French streams lost the best of their fish through shells, bombs and other forms of high explosive, the rivers of Ireland were regarded as fair game by everyone, including here and there those who had control of bombs. The period of trouble left no little confusion in local ideas about the ownership of sporting rights, whether over moors, coverts, or streams ; and the head of game threatened to suffer eclipse. But a wisely conservative policy was adopted by the Government, and with certain exceptions West Ireland remains what it always was—the Paradise of the hardworking sportsman, whether he pursues fish, or duck from a punt, or snipe and woodcock. Doubtless, the old duels prevail and -will prevail. I used to stay on one reach of a West Ireland river where the whole community interested itself in the struggle of wits between the local netters of the river and the alien fly-fisher who owned the fishing rights. His experience was that all went well unless the law was invoked, when the temper of the struggle at once changed for the worse. On my last visit the owner had just devised a punt with a sliding panel in the floor. Through this hole he used to drop into the bed of the stream enormous stones encircled in barbed wire ; and he was greatly compli- mented on his ingenuity by some of the victims. Their nets, they confessed, had suffered horribly from what they called his new " whiskers," in contrast with the unadorned stones dropped previously to small effect.
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