Part 16
The keeper welcomes a generous supply of acorns--provided that the trees which yield them grow in his woods, and not exclusively near the boundary of his beat. Wood-pigeons, as soon as they have cleared the beech-mast, their specially favoured food, will stuff their crops with acorns to the bursting-point--and so grow fat. Acorns also form an important item in the winter fare of rabbits and deer. It is true that they draw rats to the coverts, and even when the last acorn has gone it is not easy to clear the rats away completely. Whether or not there are plentiful acorns, the keeper is much indebted to the oak for food for pheasants, because they are so fond of the spangle-galls, to be found in plenty on the backs of the leaves, that they prefer them even to the maize which is freely scattered. All the galls of the oak, whether oak-apples, or bullet, artichoke, spangle, or root galls, are the outcome of eggs laid by the various gall-wasps, and the pheasants know that within the spangle-galls are the grubs, feeding on the galls' flesh. Left to themselves, the grubs will in due time reach the chrysalis stage of existence, to be hatched in June as winged insects, and to lay in turn the eggs which cause the pretty vermilion-spotted galls. So the wheel of life turns again and would turn for ever if unspoked by the pheasant's beak.
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Plump Rabbits
In mid-November rabbits are at their fattest. Grass has been green, sweet, lush, and growing; under the autumn sun, winter oats and wheat have sprung inches high, and rabbits have been enjoying rare feasts. The stoats, in turn, have found benefit in the autumn. It is on full-grown rabbits that they now depend chiefly for food. No longer can they feed on young birds; nor are small rabbits often to be met. Rats show fight when attacked, and stoats prefer to tackle game without power of resistance. Full-grown hares have too much staying power to be hunted down, and they are too fond of making for the open fields to be worth hunting. There are mice and field-voles, but the fat rabbits of the woods are the most obvious of possible meals. No hunt is more determined, ferocious, or relentless than when a stoat hounds a big rabbit to its death.
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The Stoat's Hunting
By scent alone the stoat runs down the rabbit chosen for its dinner. No matter how devious the rabbit's course, or how many other rabbits cross the trail, the one line of scent is followed to the end, and sooner or later the death-scream of the rabbit is inevitable. We have often seen the last act of the tragedy. One hunted rabbit made for the shelter of young underwood, cleverly twisting amid the jungle of fern, grass, and bramble, so that the leaping stoat could have been guided only by scent; the rabbit seemed to understand that the hollowness of the bottom of old wood offered few chances of dodging. At last the rabbit grew exhausted; and, at a loss to know where to run to shake off its pursuer, but a few yards behind, took to turning and twisting with redoubled energy, now rounding a leafy stump, then dashing into a clump of brambles, doubling, again rounding the stump, again flashing through the brambles--then sitting up for a second, listening to hear if the stoat were still following. The stoat, thus baulked again and again, grew ever more furious. Coming up on the hot scent to the leafy stump, round which the rabbit had slipped in the nick of time, it would dash in so furiously as to make the brown leaves rattle off, as a terrier leaps at a rabbit's seat from which the owner has just fled. The burning scent throws the pursuer into a frenzy. But the stoat, with a chatter of rage, lost little time in following on into the bramble clump; and the sight of man near by was not enough to turn it from its object. At last, in the brambles, it came upon the rabbit dead-beat--charged in a blind fury, sank its teeth into the head, worrying home the grip. Then, having disabled the rabbit, it retired a yard or two and charged again, retiring and charging at intervals, as if to gain fresh power for driving in the needle-sharp teeth.... At such a moment the keeper feels more than ever justified in shooting a stoat.
Waiting for the end of such a rabbit hunt, for a moment we lost sight of the chase; then felt certain we could hear the hoarse breathing of the captured rabbit in a thick spot, on the opposite side of the 20-foot ride near where we were standing. Yet we felt certain that neither stoat nor rabbit had crossed from our side. We waited, and sure enough the stoat caught the rabbit almost at our feet, where we had thought them to be. The mystery of the heavy breathing remained--the sound was exactly that of a rabbit being mauled by a ferret within a burrow. We crossed the ride, made search, and discovered a large hedgehog curled up in its nest. While the bloodthirsty business had been going forward six or seven yards away, the hedgehog had lain snugly wrapped in winter sleep--actually snoring!
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Mysteries of Scent
A stoat, if accidentally deprived of its power of scent, would soon come to starvation. All animals depend on scent not only for their food but for their protection, their power of recognition, and for nearly all the interests of their lives. The scent given off varies with occasion. In a state of rest it is modified. Thus a game-bird who has been on its nest for some time is in less danger of discovery than one that has just come to the nest, leaving a fresh trail. So the scent given off by foxes varies with their own condition--as, of course, with the weather. The greatest scent is left behind by the fox when he is warm with running; the least is given off at the beginning of a run, or at the end, when he is exhausted. The hunted fox well knows that his life may depend on the strength or weakness of his scent--this is made clear when he runs purposely through a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep.
Deluges of rain, burning sun, or extreme cold obliterate fox-scent, but slight heat combined with moisture, as when the sun shines after a warm shower, is in favour of a strong and enduring trail. But there is little certainty in the matter; as Mr. Jorrocks truly said, "Nothing so queer as scent 'cept a woman." On a promising day hounds may be at fault when within a score of yards of a fox; but on a day so apparently hopeless that few sportsmen trouble to attend a meet, as when a thin crust of hard-frozen snow covers the ground, the scent may be red-hot. One day may yield a perfect scent; on the next, apparently with the same weather conditions, the scent is elusive, and the hounds no sooner give tongue than they fall silent. Much depends on the nature of the country, or of the substance on which the volatile scent particles fall. Crossing the meadows, the hounds speak the line with certain voice; but when they come to dry, crumbling fallow-fields, the chorus dies away into a few doubtful whimpers. The time of the day has its effect on scent; in midsummer the woods may have no perfume in particular at midday, but are filled with sweet smells in the evening. Every one knows how a warm autumnal shower brings out the savour of dead leaves and the smell of earth.
To the fox, as to the stoat, the sense of smelling is the most important of all. With his nose the fox discovers nearly all his food. If the sitting game-bird has flown to her nest, and herself gives off the least perceptible scent, the fox easily finds her by that strong scent given off by chipping eggs. By scent he picks up the young leverets, after quartering the ground to gather the greatest advantage of the wind. He scents young rabbits in the stop when a foot beneath the surface of the earth, and when he starts digging them out he goes directly to their nest. So a good ratting terrier will point through a couple of feet of soil to the exact spot where a rat is lying. We have sometimes thought that an invention to magnify scents would prove of great benefit to the gamekeeper. But there might be fatal effects if a keeper, scent-improver on nose, came suddenly on that mushroom of the fetid odour commonly known as the Stinkhorn.
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The Axe in the Coverts
One of the many thorns that pierce the keeper's side is driven home at the time of the cutting of the underwood. Once in every span of ten or twelve years this time must come. Now and again the felling of part of a covert before shooting improves matters from a sportsman's view--the beats are simplified, or are more easily commanded with the regulation number of from five to nine guns. But the keeper knows to his cost that more often than not cutting the underwood is ruination to sport. Birds and rabbits are alarmed by the sound of the woodman's chopping, and half the hares fly before the smoke of the greenwood fires. Many complications arise through wood-cutting, as when the shooting is in other than the landlord's hands. When he wishes to cut certain portions of his woods, and the cutting may interfere seriously with sport or the showing of game, unpleasantness must arise among all parties--landlord, gamekeepers, shooting men, and copse-workers. Those responsible for the shooting should find out as early as possible which parts are to be cut, and arrange in good time with the landlord to make it a condition of sale that no cutting takes place before a convenient date. When several acres of underwood are felled, and the wood is left lying in long rows called drifts, a good deal of inconvenience may arise, unless the underwood is worked up as cut down. On shooting days half the pheasants in the place may skulk in the drifts, whence it will be impossible to dislodge them by ordinary beating methods of the most energetic type. Besides, drifts provide a safe refuge for rabbits. They increase incredibly, and in the following year they will be by far too plentiful for the welfare of the young shoots that spring from the shorn stumps.
The Uses of Underwood
Thirty years ago the price of underwood as it stood growing, at twelve years old, was about twenty pounds an acre; but to-day five pounds an acre is considered a good price for first-class underwood, so hard has the industry been hit by substitutes for ash and hazel. Though we have known underwood to fetch only half a crown an acre, we have seldom seen it described by auctioneers as other than "prime and ripe." The most useful kind is hazel. All sorts of sticks and stakes for the garden are cut of hazel. Wattle-fences are made of it, neatly woven, and the "hethers" which bind the tops of live fences. Closely woven hazel hurdles form a splendid protection for sheep from wind and rain; they cost, to buy, about eight shillings a dozen, and the hurdler is paid about half that sum. Hazel is now largely used in making the crates in which the product of the Potteries is packed. The cleanest growths were formerly made into the hoops of barrels, and one might see thousands of bundles stacked in a clearing. But iron is killing the hoop-makers' industry. One use of hazel has been unaffected by time--the use to which the country blacksmith puts it, when he winds handles of the shoots for his chisels and wedges--being pliant, they allow his tools to adjust themselves to the blow of the hammer. And the hazel-wand remains the favourite divining-rod of the water-finders.
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The Tipping System
Gamekeepers are much associated with tipping. If tips are to be reckoned as part wages, the element of chance is great and unfair. There are cases when tipping amounts to bribery, as when a rich man buys the best place in a shoot. For the system, it may be said that a tip is the most convenient token of appreciation of skill in producing good sport. And we agree that if any servant of pleasure deserves a tip it is the gamekeeper. But among the fallacies of the system is the fact that the scale of tips is seldom in proportion to skill and energy. Thus, a tip of a certain amount is given for a day's covert shooting of, say, under a hundred head, half pheasants, calling for a certain amount of energy and skill on the keeper's part. But a tip of only half the amount will be given after a thirty-brace day at driven partridges, which has afforded five times the amount of shooting, and called for ten times more skill and energy from the keeper. There is a saying among keepers that tips may be looked upon to provide three useful things--beer, 'baccy, and boots. In old times a five-pound note was the order of the day--this is represented now by half a sovereign or five shillings. A few keepers are lucky enough to serve where wealthy sportsmen shoot regularly, who willingly give the keeper a ten-pound note. But most keepers praise heaven for £10 received in tips in a season. Where the scale of tips most fails is when a tip covers compensation for injuries. But the beater who received a note on account of a stray pellet in his person was more than satisfied. "Bless you, sir," he said, "you may give me the other barrel for another of 'em." But beaters always find contentment in a tip, whatever its size. We recall how three beaters were more or less bagged successively during a three days' covert shoot. One, at the time, appeared to have had his right eye destroyed, but saw his way to accept twenty-five shillings. Another buried a shot in his little finger, and on receiving seven shillings was eager to undergo the same treatment for six days a week. A third was peppered behind, and awarded eighteen-pence, which satisfied him, being, as he lamented, "only a boy, like." By the way, there seems no place in the sportsman's scale of tips for awards for narrow escapes. We have known a keeper mention the fact quite unavailingly that his cap had been shot from his head by a careless gunner, who had brought down an easy bird with his first barrel, then, swinging round, had blazed at a second bird just as it topped the keeper's head. "Aw," he drawled, by way of answer, when the keeper respectfully intimated that he had escaped death by a miracle, "I certainly ought to have killed both of those birds."
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Free Suppers for the Fox
How many foxes have owed their deaths indirectly to covert shooting? It is a nice question for hunting men. The fox is one of the craftiest creatures in the world. A very short experience is enough to make him associate the particular squeal of a rabbit when caught in a snare with a cheap supper. And he discovers quickly that luxurious banquets await him after a day's covert shooting. The discovery has a certain result; after covert shooting foxes gorge themselves, and become totally unfit to stand before hounds. To keepers this is well known, of course; and there are those who are not slow to take advantage of the fox's gluttony. Suppose a keeper thinks that a fox or two the less would not be amiss, and knows that on the morrow hounds are to be expected. There is, suppose also, no covert shooting at the moment in his immediate vicinity. Though unwilling to take more direct steps, he is fully prepared to handicap foxes before hounds so far as he may, and in the night before hounds come he provides free suppers for his foes. He is hardly to be blamed, and if blamed by the hunt one keeper at least has a ready answer. In view of a visit from so fine a pack, he says, he wished to show that he had forgiven the doomed foxes their sins, by spreading a final feast.
There are keepers who, not making the best of necessity, harbour in their breasts an undying grievance against foxes and take every chance to malign the foe. After a beat, during which the guns had stood in a hollow where pheasants had come at a good height, a sportsman was collecting birds that had fallen behind him, and to his surprise found a pheasant with its head apparently torn off. He suggested to the keeper that there must be foxes in the wood--foxes near at hand, and very bold. The keeper had reason to know better--but on picking up another headless pheasant, remarked sadly, "If they treats 'em like this 'ere when they be dead, it be cruel to think how they'd serve 'em when they ketched 'em alive." The sportsman was impressed by the keeper's melancholy tone, and began to share his fox-enmity. But the keeper's sharp eyes had seen what fate really had befallen the pheasants' heads--a fate strange enough, for as the birds fell their heads were torn off by the forks of ash-stems, in which they caught.
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Clues to the Thief
By many signs keepers read the story of the presence and work of foxes. A fox makes a half-hearted attempt to bury game that he has partly eaten, and wishes otherwise to dispose of--and the buried game is so impregnated with his scent that no other creature will touch it. He barks at night in mid-winter days--and spreads uneasiness among sheep, as betrayed by the bleating of ewes. He digs in a way all his own, throwing out the soil behind him in a slovenly heap; he noses about mole-heaps and ant-hills, and his visit is easily detected. On soft spots he leaves his footmarks--and he always leaves his scent behind him. Pheasants without tails tell a story of a young fox's spring that failed to bring him a supper. Heads of rabbits, and nothing else, in snares, rejected maws lying near by--the disinterment of poaching cats which the keeper has buried--these show where hungry foxes have passed. By day their presence is revealed if a cock pheasant cries a sudden, uneasy, short alarm-note, by the screaming of jays, and by a particular blackbird note, which, if it does not mean stoat or cat, certainly bespeaks a fox. A crow may be seen suddenly swooping angrily as he passes over a field--a fox lurks there. The hidden cause for the continuous uneasy springing of partridges is often a fox, or at least a cub amusing himself by partridge hunting.
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Muzzled by a Snare
A fox does not grow very old without learning how to take advantage of a snarer's catch. He learns to follow up runs and visit places where the snarer has set his snares. And he often pays the penalty, his feet falling foul of the noose. Hunting people commonly suppose that traps--steel gins--are the chief cause of fox-maiming, yet not once in a blue moon is a fox trapped. But if too clever to be caught in a trap, he is not clever enough to keep his feet out of the brass wire of the simple snare. We came across a curious instance showing how a fox may suffer from a snare. Hounds found a fox which ran to ground almost at once. Men were set to work to dig him out, and they found he was merely skin and bone, and round his muzzle they found part of a brass snare. The wire had fixed itself in such a way that he could scarcely open his mouth, so that he was handicapped both in catching food and eating it. From his appearance it was thought that he had been in this miserable plight for a month. It had been better for the fox if hounds had found him a month earlier.
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Cunning Rascals
A fox, in emergency, will sham death to perfection. A Master of Hounds once noosed a fox in a whip as he bolted before a terrier from an earth. The fox appeared to have been strangled--when held up by the scruff of the neck his eyes were seen to be closed, his jaws gaped, and the body hung limply down from the hand. He was placed tenderly on the ground--only to dash off into covert. To be over-cunning is a common fault. One fox entered a fowl-house, and amused himself by killing every bird. In departing through the hole by which he had entered, he stuck fast, and was found hanging dead the next morning. Another sought refuge from hounds by jumping on to the low roof of a thatched cottage, and crawling beneath the rafters until he could crawl no farther. It was years before his skeleton was discovered. Some of the foxes found dead on railway lines, by the way, have been put there after death by vulpicides. In olden days the punishment for the crime of fox-killing was a spell in the stocks. Vulpicides remain, but the stocks--some would say alas!--have gone from use for ever.
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A Hunting Argument
The hunting man has a hundred reasons why hunting is a blessing to the community. He argues that hunting circulates gold every year to the tune of seven and a half million pounds--and that this is good for the horse trade, the forage trade, for the blacksmith, the harness-maker, and for an army of grooms. Then hunting tends to keep at their homes in the country wealthy people, who might winter abroad if there were no foxes to follow. This means that many large establishments are kept open, servants are kept in food and wages, local tradesmen stand to benefit. Further, it is claimed that there is little to be said against hunting--we often hear how riders, horses, hounds, and foxes all enjoy the sport; on this point, however, we have no direct evidence from foxes. And it is claimed that the amount of damage done to agriculture is infinitesimal--though farmers who have had hounds over young corn, or seeds, or fine fields of turnips, might bring conflicting evidence to bear on the point. Perhaps the favourite argument in favour of hunting is that the sport is good for horse-breeding, and that the hunting-field is the finest training school for cavalry. Gamekeepers would be among the first to lament the abolition of fox-hunting, for if it were not for the existence of foxes and their preservation for the hounds, few keepers would be required to protect game. Nor would there be those useful little sums to the keeper's credit on account of litters, finds, and stopping.
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The Clever Terrier
Nobody can persuade a gamekeeper that dogs lack reasoning powers. We were watching a terrier at work, and she gave us a pretty example of something very like intelligence. A pheasant was winged, fell on a bare field, and ran for a thick dell--the terrier in pursuit. She made one or two ineffectual attempts to gather the bird, until within a score of yards of the dell--then she raced ahead. She seemed to realise that there was so much cover in the dell that direct attempts to take the bird were risky--and she proceeded to work the pheasant to a safe distance from the cover before tackling it again, this time effectively.
When this little terrier has marked a rabbit or a rat in a patch of grass or brambles, her common sense tells her that if she dives in after her quarry it may dash out unseen by her, by reason of the grass or brambles. So she stands by, and stamps, and otherwise tries to make her game bolt, in a way which will allow her to see the direction; and she is seldom baffled. It is difficult to decide whether this terrier is more or less reasonable than her kennel companion, a retriever, when feeding-time comes. If at feeding-time the retriever has a biscuit left over from the last meal, which she has lightly buried, on her master's approach she will promptly disinter the treasure, holding it out as much as to say: "Thank you, I need no biscuit." But experiments with the terrier show that she will ever refuse to give the slightest indication of a buried hoard. Whether she needs a biscuit or not, she always takes one when offered, as though she desired nothing better in the world.