Partridges, on the other hand, are easier in all respects--easier to find, easier to approach, easier to kill. The _modus operandi_ is exactly the same as for the larger game. If you can work with a pointer or setter, so much the better; the hawk will generally know after a while what the dog means and where the birds are likely to get up. An old game-hawk will often display marvellous intelligence in waiting on in the right position. When this is the case, and the country is good, the bag fills rapidly. No sooner is there a point than off goes the hood. After a short delay the hawk is at her pitch, and you can walk or ride in. Any partridge must be clever which avoids the first stoop of an old peregrine. Even if he does, except in a country where there are thick covers, the fatal blow is merely deferred. Putting in at a thin hedge is only a temporary escape, for you can mark the place. The hawk will mark it also, by making her point, _i.e._ throwing up into the air over the spot, and she will wait on while you beat. A spaniel or retriever will generally rout out the fugitive. The orthodox cry for encouraging the hawk when the game is so routed out is "Howit! howit!" Sometimes the partridge which has put in is, as an old author says, "so surcharged with fear" as to be caught by the dog or picked up by the hand. It should then generally be thrown out for the hawk to take, especially if she is a young one, and the dog admonished by the cry of "Ware, hawk! ware!" If you use no dogs, mark down a bird or a covey, and put your hawk on the wing to windward of the place, then, as she waits on, walk or ride down-wind towards the spot. If the hawk flies wide make a halt till she is coming up, and then go on at full speed again. As long as she is facing the birds, and not down-wind of them, you have a good chance of a kill. When you are quite sure that there are birds on a ground you need not wait to mark any down, but beat the ground down-wind, keeping the men in line, with the hawk in the air. When the birds are wild this is often the only way in which you can get a flight. The worst of it is that the first bird which gets up may get up a quarter of a mile ahead, though there are plenty of nearer ones on the ground. Of course the hawk will go at the first which gets up, and there will be a long stern chase, with small chance of a kill, and perhaps a long delay before the hawk is got back. If you have to go down-wind after her--which ought not to be the case, but often is--you must make a dead beat in coming back so as to get up-wind again, and begin afresh to drive to leeward.