Part 14

A sporting old gentleman, who was very deaf, always took a small boy with him shooting, whose duty seemed to be to stand behind his master and do nothing. He never carried cartridges, and looked incapable of loading a gun. One day we asked the boy to explain his mission in life. "'Tis this way," said he. "In each hand I holds a pin, and I gives the master a prick behind to let him know when game be a-coming--if on this side or on t'other."

* * * * *

Accidents to Hares

More than once, descending the steep face of the Downs, we have set foot upon hares in their forms--crouching so closely as to be unseen until felt; and once we have witnessed a curious fatal accident which befell a half-grown hare through the habit of lying low. Partridge-shooting was going on in a field of sainfoin, and as the guns lined out from the fence we saw this hare dancing, as it were, on her head. It was a dance of death, and before we could reach her puss was lying still. One of the guns had actually trodden on her head, and had passed on unknowingly. Half-grown and undersized hares seen in autumn have small chance of enduring through the winter; with the setting in of cold weather their fate is sealed; they are unable to thrive on the rough frosted food, and are claimed by a lingering death. In the wet days of autumn, when showers of leaves and rain are falling, hares change their quarters in the woods for the open fields, preferring of all places a stubble-field free of grasses that hold the moisture. The fall of rain and moist leaves has an opposite effect upon the rabbits--driving them to the shelter of their newly renovated burrows, where they lie all day, snug, warm, and dry.

* * * * *

Hares no longer Speedy

We have heard of terriers who have chased hares and caught them after a burst of less than a field's-breadth; but we have never seen a terrier catch a sound hare in a fair run, though we have known a clever little dog to flash up a ditch and seize a loitering hare, and we have often known a hare to be caught napping in her seat. The hares that terriers catch after short runs have been in some trap or snare, or have been shot, or otherwise wounded, or probably they are diseased. The wonder is that hares can run so fast and long as they do in a state of advanced disease. Hares suffer each year in some places from a disease of a typhous nature, aggravated by feeding on frosted clover. Parting the white fur on the underside of such a hare the skin is found to be green. There is good cause to be suspicious of disease whenever a thin hare is seen in autumn or winter.

* * * * *

Starling Hosts

Too many starlings in a given place are likely to be a serious trouble--in fact they make a place almost impossible for other inhabitants. Starlings haunt many kinds of roosting-places--the high reeds, the woods, and the shrubs about a house. The keeper finds small pleasure in the thunderous noise of their wings in his coverts. Towards the end of October the sales of underwood take place; thereafter the underwood is cut, and this often drives the starlings from an old roosting-haunt to fresh woods, where their presence is far from desirable, in view of the approaching covert-shooting. Naturally, people hesitate to take preventive measures, such as shooting or lighting fires of green wood, for the shots or the smoke would drive away pheasants as well as starlings. Yet it is wiser thus to drive away one season's pheasants than to have the wood made impossible for many years--to all save starlings.

* * * * *

Trials of a Copser

While we have never met any one who actually hated honeysuckle, if there is a man who curses it occasionally it is the copse-worker chopping underwood. A honeysuckle trail will turn a well-aimed blow from its true direction, and so may cause the copser to cut himself very badly--even a slight blow from his sharp bill-hook is a serious matter. The copser's hand and arm have received the order to swing outwards to gather force for a quick stroke--honeysuckle arrests the bill-hook and turns its direction, while the hand and arm disastrously go on with the reflex part of the order. And though we do not suppose there is a copse-worker in the whole world who does not appreciate rabbits to eat, probably most of them speak at times as harshly of rabbits as of honeysuckle. For rabbits gnaw the underwood, and when the butt of a stem has been gnawed by rabbits' teeth, part of the wood dies, and is far harder to cut than a clean stem.

* * * * *

Wild Birds in Cages

We have heard from several people that owls are among the birds that cannot be tamed and kept as pets; but this idea is a fallacy. Barn-owls taken from the nest, and properly handled, grow into attractive pets, and we know a pair of them, about four months old, who sit on their master's shoulders, and seem to return his affection. We dislike the idea of rearing wild birds in captivity--especially such useful birds as barn-owls, who are better employed in catching mice than in doing tricks. But nearly all birds are susceptible to a taming treatment, even such shy creatures as the redshanks of the marshes, the wariest of birds in their wild state. There are people who seem to possess a natural instinct for understanding birds, as others for handling dogs, horses, or snakes.

* * * * *

Truffles

The truffle-hunter, roaming with his little dogs over park lands and other pleasant places, seems to lead a fine, independent life. And he confesses to making money on no mean scale. His professional fee is a pound a day, with all expenses to be paid. The truffles are sold at 3_s_. the pound; but each truffle may cost the consumer fully half a guinea, stewed, as it should be, in rich wine. The truffle-hunter may tell you that his dogs are of the original truffle-hunting breed. Yet we have no doubt that any dog with a good nose could be trained to find truffles as easily as a retriever can be broken to hedgehogs.

* * * * *

Retriever's Usefulness

The gamekeeper's retriever will learn to discover the whereabouts of every hedgehog in a ditch. A clever dog will find in a few hours as many hedgehogs as a week of trapping will secure--miles of hedges may be cleared in a day in the summer. The dog must be kept under absolute control, lest he disturb sitting birds, thereby, perhaps, doing as much damage as might the hedgehogs. Almost any dog may be trained to a particular work, such as playing the bloodhound's part, and following the trail of men, whether friends or strangers--even terriers may become useful trackers. The night-dogs used by gamekeepers--crosses between mastiffs and bulldogs--will follow poachers through the woods during the blackest hours of night.

A retriever is wonderfully useful for many purposes besides recovering game. A dog, which had never seen a cricket ball, was with us when we chanced to be crossing a field, at dusk, where a ball had been lost in thick cow-parsley in the shade of trees. The cricketers appealed for our help; we cleared the course, and set on the dog. She took the wind, trotted along, turned suddenly, ran straight for a score of yards, and came back, the lost ball in her mouth. Perhaps she worked it out in her own mind that as no shot had been fired there was no game to follow, and the ball-scent must therefore be the one she was required to track. No doubt she would have left the line of the ball if the scent of anything in the shape of dead game had reached her sensitive nose.

* * * * *

Nuts and Mice

The gamekeeper classes the nutters among "the reg'lar plagues" of his life. Not that he begrudges them their nuts, but that they stand for an old, old story of innocent pleasures and game disturbance. As primrose-pickers are to the nesting pheasants of April, so are nutters to the young birds of October, and the final result is always an angry keeper. His young birds at this season are ever ready to avail themselves of an excuse to stray to fresh woods. The nutter who would avoid the keeper should avoid paths, and lie very low and still when the keeper comes his way. This lesson in woodcraft had been mastered so thoroughly by one young nutter of our acquaintance that when a keeper chanced to pass along the ride near which he was picking, he still lay low when the keeper's words were almost in his ear: "Where be ye? Ah, I sees ye. Come out on it, then!" And he was duly rewarded by the knowledge that these remarks were merely an exhortation to pheasants to feed.

Dormice are the chief of all lovers of hazel-nuts. They are found very often at work by human nutters; and their nest is seen sheltered by hazel leaves--a neat round structure, built of dry grass, beautifully woven. One autumn we came upon a nest containing six young dormice, about half-grown and ready to run, and three of them, wonderful to relate, were wholly white. Autumnal litters are common, and, as though by a beautiful piece of foresight on the part of Nature, the favourite nut food is most abundant just when the little mice are ready to give up a milk diet. Though called "the mouse of the hazel," he seems as partial to acorns as to hazel-nuts, and he is insectivorous, and feeds heartily on nut-weevil grubs. With November he will be as fat as nuts can make him, and before the month is out he will have fallen into his long winter trance. The little reddish brown harvest-mouse seems to have almost disappeared in the north of Hampshire and other parts, and for years we have not seen a single specimen. The nest of the harvest-mouse--cunningly woven amid the corn-stalks--used to be one of the prettiest of things seen in the cornfields, especially when the mouse was seen also, nibbling in his dainty way at the grain. To go round an oat-stack and poke it with a stick was to disturb these gregarious little creatures by the score. The common mouse remains as plentiful as ever, and thousands are seen during the threshing of a single stack; but the harvest-mouse has gone. So much the better, no doubt, for the stacks. Their population of furred foes is always too large--as some idea may be gained from the fact that in one season, and from a group of three ricks, no fewer than 1300 rats were taken. It is a proof of the barn-owls' value to farmers that they are often caught in rat-traps set by holes at the base of stacks. The stack is a favourite if sometimes a fatal hunting-place.

* * * * *

The Hand of Time

The keeper looks his best in autumn. To many the sight of him then is most welcome, especially if the prospect of sport be fair, and the day of fine promise. People who go to shoot season after season on one estate are greeted year by year by the same friendly faces, nearly all of them a little the worse for time's passage. The host is seen to have aged between this October and last, with his butlers and his beaters and bailiffs. The foreheads of the familiar old horses seem to have sunk a little above the eyes. The dogs are remembered as playful puppies; the headstrong creatures now grow grey about the muzzles. Boys employed of old as "stops," when their height was less than the length of the hares they dangled proudly over their backs, have now qualified for the army of beaters; they have long since learnt the wisdom of not leaving their "stopping" places to forage for hazel-nuts. All these have grown older, and perhaps the visitor himself heaves a sigh as he looks down on his own once trim and slender figure.

* * * * *

The Keeper grows Old

To the keeper alone of the time-honoured gathering seen on the lawn before the house on an early October morning have the years been kind. Over his face the winds have swept lightly; hardly an impression has been made on his complexion by the sun, moon, and stars, and the hail, snow, frosts, and mists of the year. On his forehead half a century of life has ploughed no furrows. His cheeks are free of wrinkles; there are no crow's-feet about the outside corners of his eyes. He holds the secret of youth. His cheeks might be a girl's; there is a smoothness and suppleness about the skin of his face. Still the muscles of his arms stand out with proud fulness. And his eyes remain the keenest spy-glasses of the party. His limbs are supple and free; a gamekeeper hardly knows the meaning of stiffness. But you may notice now that he straddles mightily over the gate which of old he vaulted with the glide of the fallow bucks in the park. And if you were with him when, at the end of a long day, he goes home to his tea, by chance you might hear the remark made to his good-wife, "Well, mother, I bain't sorry to sit down."

He looks his best in autumn; and he feels his best. He is ready for the test of his labours. He has had worries enough; the rearing season has been a "shocking bad one," and he has had many late nights, watching his birds. Perhaps he has had toothache; that is not unknown to keepers. Often he has been soaked by rain, and more often by the dews of night and morning. But he has lived all the year in the open and in the country, and there is the secret of his youth.

* * * * *

Rabbit Ways in Autumn

In the cool autumn days rabbits grow in attraction to the poacher. They now have a habit of lying within their burrows by day, after the worryings, buffetings, and evictions of harvest-time, waiting for things to quieten down--until the sounds of binder and harvester are no more heard across the stubbles. Two people know this--the keeper and the poacher. Often it is a race as to who shall be first to take tribute from out-lying dells, with ferret and nets.

The ferreting season proper now sets in in earnest, and at first the rabbits bolt freely, rumbling and rushing along their subterranean passages, and with blind force launching themselves into the nets. A single ferret put into a burrow may send out a dozen rabbits in quick succession; or nothing may happen when the ferrets disappear, hours of digging follow, and then a bunch of ferrets and rabbits crowded together are at last revealed. In autumn days there is exciting sport with the gun at the expense of rabbits if open burrows can be found, or burrows in dells where the bare-stemmed elder is the only undergrowth.

* * * * *

The Rabbits' House-cleaning

In late autumn rabbits are very busy about their burrows, making them fit for winter habitation. Through the summer, while many of the rabbits have been lying out, the burrows have looked deserted and untidy. Warned by the chilly nights that a subterranean refuge will soon be useful, the rabbits do up their premises, enlarging them, clearing away the remains of old nests, and of relatives that have died underground, and making fresh chambers where they may lie snug and warm in place of those dug out during last season's ferreting operations. Judging by the amount of soil excavated in a single night, rabbits at this season seem to rival ants in energy--one might think there had been a wholesale invasion of new-comers. At work, they kick the soil sideways, forming a furrow perhaps six or ten feet in length. Few have watched them while engaged in this toil, usually undertaken at night-time; but we have seen them at work once or twice by day, and once caught a rabbit by the leg--so intent was he on his digging--while he was in the act of kicking the soil aside.

* * * * *

The Guileless Countryman

The countryman is not always the guileless simpleton that he sometimes looks; nor, as we can show, is the Cockney sportsman. A holiday-making Londoner was shooting one day in a field beyond the cottage of a labourer, who came out to watch the sport. Suddenly a cry broke from him: he leaped into the air; then bellowed to the sportsman, waving a red handkerchief in signal. Up to the cottage rushed the sportsman, thinking that at the least the countryman had been stung by a hornet or bitten by a mad dog. "Look what ye've bin an' done," said the countryman, advancing. "'Tis a wonder I be alive; look what ye've bin an' done; look at my door, and look at these here shots." Saying which, he pointed to his newly painted door (the sportsman saw it was pitted with such holes as a rusty nail might make). He held out his hand and showed a good two ounces of shot (the sportsman saw they had never been fired from a gun). "These here shots," said the countryman, "they buzzed about me like a swarm of bees: 'tis a wonder I be alive." The sportsman agreed in the marvel of the escape, adding to its wonder by pointing out that his shot had been fired at a distance of five hundred yards from the cottage--and in the opposite direction. "Allow me," he said, "to buy back these wonderful pellets at a fair market price"--and he handed the countryman twopence.

* * * * *

Sporting Policemen

In rural villages, keen sportsmen are often found beneath the uniforms of the policeman and the postman. No one knows better than the keeper how useful it is to be on friendly terms with the policeman--and no one knows better how to manage it. Often policeman and postman may be found doing duty as beaters, especially during September partridge shooting, when the harvest is late and out-of-work labourers are few. If you see through his disguise of plain clothes, the policeman will remark how he just thought he would have a walk for an hour or two, just to oblige Mr. Keeper. Upholding the law and delivering the post mean much walking: and country policemen and postmen, when passing along the roads early and late, find the haunt of many a fine covey. Being good sportsmen, they take note of the customary line of flight; and if you own some of the land of the covey's haunting they can tell you almost to a minute when the birds leave the turnips beyond the boundary for your stubble.

If a policeman is on duty during the early days of partridge shooting, he will manage to fall in with shooting parties; then he makes it known that he heard shots, and was impelled to take a look round, "to see that there weren't nothing wrong." The policeman's favourite time for making known his presence is soon after the bagging of a good, broad-backed hare. Even policemen become spoiled with favours. On a sportsman telling his keeper to give a hare to a polite and zealous officer of the law, "Excuse me, sir," said he, "but the party over the hedge have just given me a hare, so might I have a brace of birds? Thank ye kindly, I'm sure; a hare will do nicely next time, sir." The sporting policeman can do much to help the luckless sportsman.

* * * * *

The Woodcraft of Gipsies

Gipsies and gamekeepers have enough in common to make them deadly foes. They share an intimate knowledge of the ways of wild creatures. They are skilled trackers and crafty trappers. They are hedgerow men; born to the hedgerow, trained to know the meaning of every hole, and hollow, and run. Their eyes read the story of the hedge as the scholar's the printed page; hedge-lore is their second nature, and it is as though an instinct tells them where the partridge has built, where the hedgehog has buried himself, or where the rabbits are crouching. In their knowledge of the ways of rabbits and hares keepers and gipsies stand alone; and it often happens that all the knowledge and craft of the one class is pitted against the cunning and knowledge of the other. Between keepers and gipsies it is always war.

The keeper detests nothing more than a gipsies' camp. His eyes take no more pleasure in their red rags spread on the bushes than might the eyes of a bull. A gipsy camp means to the keeper so much dirt, so much thieving, so many lies, so much the more trouble, and so many the fewer rabbits in his preserves. The gipsies' cauldron, steaming at dusk over a fragrant fire of wood, brings only the bitter knowledge that some of the birds or beasts he is paid to preserve are stewing in the pot. Speak to him of gipsies, and scorn flashes in his eyes, anger flushes on his face. "They be always a-shirking about wi' a dog or two, perkin' into everything," an old keeper once said to us. "They can't let nothing bide."

A gipsy brought to trial for larceny made oath that his law allowed him to take as much from others every day as sufficed for his maintenance. That was more than three hundred years ago; and gipsies still faithfully believe in and take advantage of that law. In our experience, we have known one gipsy who was honest; he was famous for his honesty. His blameless character was so much appreciated that he was allowed to pitch his tent in an old ox-drove, where it ran past a sheltering wood. Within the wood the keeper had buried four-dozen traps; and it chanced that the leaves drifted over his traps, so that when he came to find them he hunted the ground in vain. One day the gipsy's boy came to the keeper's cottage. He said that while picking wood for his father's fire he had trodden on something hard, which turned out to be a heap of traps, and that his father, thinking they must belong to the keeper, had sent him to tell the story. Where is another gipsy in England who would throw away such a chance?

* * * * *

Gipsy Lies

Gipsies are certainly good sportsmen, after their own fashion. But one seldom hears of a gipsy shooting with a gun; the gun speaks too loudly. The gipsy makes sport with dogs, ferrets, and nets. He takes no open risks; he holds it to be a disgraceful thing to be caught red-handed. And if caught he never makes confession. No matter how red his hands, there is always an excuse. His horse is found feeding, perhaps, on the farmer's crops. Then the horse must have broken loose unbeknown. Or his dog crosses the road, leveret in mouth. Then, "He picked un up dead, killed by a stoat what I seed a-sniffin' about." His dog has snapped up a sitting partridge. "It must be one as they beggarin' foxes 'ave killed." Or the gipsy himself, hunting a rabbit in a hedge, is taken in the act of knocking over the rabbit with his stick. All was done in mistake for a rat. The keeper remarks that he has lost a fine clutch of eggs--olive-brown eggs: he hints that the gipsy knows something about it. Innocently comes the question: "They sart o' eggs be pison, bain't they?" If caught with nets and ferrets on a rabbit burrow, a fine tale he has to tell of poachers who ran away at his approach, leaving all their tackle.

A keeper, who had strict orders to allow no gipsies to stop on his ground, one day came across a strong swarm, and saw clearly that they intended to stay the night. But in reply to his marching orders, they pleaded that they wished to stay only long enough to make some tea; they promised they would be gone by the time the keeper returned, in a couple of hours. So he went away, but went no farther than behind the nearest hedge: whence he heard himself described in a picturesque and blood-curdling fashion, and heard the declaration also that the gipsies had no intention of budging an inch for such a blue-livered, red-nosed piece of pulp as he. Thereupon the keeper took a run and a jump, and landed his eighteen stone self and his leaded stick in the gipsies' midst, sending their pots and pans far-flying. The gipsies snatched burning sticks from the fire, and a desperate fight began, but they soon had enough of that eighteen stone of angry keeper.

* * * * *

Long-netters