Part 19
A mild open autumn and a green winter also mean much to the farmers and to the gamekeepers; a blessing on many accounts, a curse on others. The farmer groans because his land is so wet and heavy that he cannot sow his winter seeds; the keeper sees the ruination of many a promising day's sport. The keeper gains when there are no frost and snow by having the pleasure of showing bills for corn reduced to a minimum--in a mild winter he will not need half the amount of corn that must be distributed to his birds in hard weather, when they are actually in need of food. What little he gives them in open weather is to keep them together, as natural food is abundant. But a low bill for corn hardly compensates the keeper for rain-spoiled sport, or for day after day of outdoor work in the wet. The work cannot be done in a way to satisfy the keeper--or possibly others. And the rain means that he falls behind with that everlasting tax on his time entailed by keeping rabbits within bounds. After a mild, open winter, by the time the game-shooting season is ended, and coverts are available for rabbit-killing, young rabbits have already made their appearance. The keeper welcomes a short spell of really hard weather in February, so that he may the more easily catch up all the pheasants he needs for penning. Otherwise the kind of winter that best suits him is a dry one--without hard frost.
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Cubs at Christmas
We met a gamekeeper who had been blessed with a litter of fox cubs born about the middle of December--just before the usual mating-time of the foxes. When most of the season's cubs would be born these Christmas cubs would be three months old, and well grounded in the elements of a fox's education. And when the pheasants and partridges began to sit they could save their mother a deal of laborious work--as our friend the keeper found out. In cub-hunting days, there must have been some rude shocks for the puppies of the pack, and even the old stagers of hounds must have been taken aback when they came to close quarters with one of these forward cubs. The keeper caught one, and by a strange chance. He had been expecting a visit from hounds. He knew an earth where he thought that possibly a vixen later on might have a family; not willing to disturb the place by spade-work when stopping it, he stuffed the entrance with sacks. Hounds came and went--and afterwards the keeper visited the earth to recover his sacks. What was his surprise when he found that inside one of the sacks a cub had curled itself comfortably for sleep. Well knowing that if he were to say there was a litter of cubs on his ground at Christmas none would believe him, he put the cub into a capacious pocket. Then when he told the story of his early litter, and was laughed at for his pains, he confounded sceptics by drawing the little fox, alive and uninjured, from his coat-tails.
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Work for Rainy Days
The keeper always has a supply of odd jobs on hand to occupy his time on a soaking wet day, or when a snow-storm rages. He has always plenty to do--but much of his work cannot be done properly in bad weather, and to work out of doors on a wet day may be as much a waste of time as to work indoors on a fine day on matters of no moment. It would be foolish to go ferreting in heavy rain--nets become soaked, rabbits will not bolt, and digging for ferrets in soft mud is heart-breaking work; at the end of the day, while there may be a few rabbits that look as if they have been bathing in mud, there is all the tackle to be dried for the next day. Then again, it would be sheer waste of time to stop rabbit-burrows when snow has freshly fallen, for half the holes would be hidden, and the work would have to be done over again. It pays to wait until the next day, when rabbits have been out to feed and the holes are seen easily.
When he decides to stay under cover the keeper hardly knows where to begin, as he looks about his store-houses and sheds. Here are traps that should be cleaned and overhauled, broken chains to be mended, bent parts to be carefully straightened--a little judicious filing and a drop of oil are needed here and there to make all parts work together smoothly and swiftly. Snares must be overhauled and sorted, the sound ones to be neatly shaped so that the noose stays open ready for use, and each one must be fitted with its string, tealer, and plug. A supply of new snares may be made. Plugs and pegs may be shaped, for holding snares and traps, from a length of solid ash which the keeper knows to be well seasoned, so that it will not crack when he drives it into stony ground with his heavy, steel-shod heel. For months he has treasured that piece of ash--and terrible was the vengeance that he vowed on his wife when she dared to hint that it would serve nicely for her copper fire.
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The Old Lumber
The wet day brings the chance for doing various little carpentering jobs, long neglected. The keeper may have set himself the task of making a new hand-barrow before the coming of another pheasant-rearing time--a barrow for carrying the coops, two at a time, with the hen and precious chicks within, where a horse and cart cannot pass through the coverts. Perhaps he remembers a day when the crazy handle of the old barrow snapped off and upset two coops of his best birds. Then a wet day is a good day for sorting coops, and putting apart for professional treatment those beyond the keeper's makeshift craft. He can set about painting the whole ones. Now and again he must look to his ferret-hutches, and fit new wire-netting to the fronts if any meshes are rotten with rust--should the ferrets escape there is no telling what may happen. And guns are never the worse for an extra special examination, and a thorough cleaning and oiling. An all-round tidying-up of his varied assortment of tackle certainly makes for a temporary improvement in the look of his work-places--but, as it has been with every clearance, the same old lumber is once more reprieved. "You see," says the keeper, "it might come in useful some time."
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When Foxes mate
Soon after Christmas the gamekeeper hears the barking of foxes at night, and he well knows the reason. The foxes are searching for mates. And here is one of many reasons why hounds in these days fail to find foxes in woods never hitherto drawn blank. Hunting and shooting have disturbed the quiet of the coverts, the underwood harvest is going forward, the supply of fox-food is shorter than at any other time, and is most hard to catch; so foxes generally have forsaken their haunts, finding lodging in out-of-the-way places which offer some chance of peace and quietness. Followers of hounds have much to learn about the ways of the fox in January. They go from one blank covert to another, cheerfully riding an intervening couple of miles, while all the time the fox is lurking in a dell or a hedgerow only two hundred yards from the first covert drawn. Yet a suggestion that the dell or the hedgerow should be tried meets with silent scorn. This might be expected from people who hunt to ride, or people new to the hunting-field; but it does not become the experienced to pin all their faith to the well-known coverts. In a southern county hounds have disturbed no fewer than twelve foxes together--probably a collection of suitors for the pad of one or two eligible vixens.
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A Keeper's Dreams
On a Sunday after Christmas we paid a visit to an old keeper, who, on his own confession, had not dined wisely on the good fare provided by his wife on Christmas Day. Into our sympathetic ears he poured the strangest tale of the dreams that he had dreamed. The first began pleasantly enough, but ended in a nightmare. He was one of a party shooting in his best wood, and he was ever in the hottest part of the hottest corner, but each time he threw up his gun to shoot the crowds of pheasants, the gun fell all in pieces. Never, he said, had he known such a nightmare; though some of the other dreams that succeeded were bad enough.
One was to the effect that on an important occasion all the birds of his coverts utterly refused to rise and rocket, and when he pressed them with beaters he found that one and all had turned into foxes. This dream merged into one in which the foxes in his preserves were so numerous that they outnumbered and overpowered the hounds, and then attacked the Master, who was eaten. And there was a dream in which the old keeper found that he had changed places with his employer, whom he roundly abused for the mistakes he made in placing stops and managing the beaters. The climax of this was the unkindest cut of all. The gamekeeper dreamt that his employer, far from bearing him any ill-will for the abuse, sent to his cottage on Christmas Eve a large tin of tobacco, beneath the lid of which was a ten-pound note. This worthy old man has had many queer dreams in his time--if we are to believe him. He is ready to confess, for the sake of the story following the confession, that he has never really mastered the art of shooting driven partridges. But one night he dreamt that he had brought off the most masterly right and left, and from far and near congratulations on his brace poured upon him. Then he awoke to find himself in his own familiar chair by the fireside, in the chill dawn of a winter morning, and the local doctor, who was also a sportsman, was telling him how there had arrived safely in the room upstairs a brace of fine young keepers.
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A Death-bed Vision
We can vouch for the truth of this fox story: An old keeper--the keeper of a shoot where partridges were preferred to foxes--lay dying. It was late in May, when the partridges were beginning to sit. Suddenly he called for his two sons and told them of a dream. In a certain burrow in a certain wood adjoining his partridge fields he had dreamt of a litter of cubs. And he refused to be comforted until his sons had gone forth to verify his dream. In due time they came home with enough evidence that the dream was of true things to allow the old man to give up the ghost with an untroubled mind.
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Christmas Sport
The partridge at Christmas is at his best--as a test of reputations. In this respect there is a world of difference between the slow, simple yellow-legged bird of September and the partridge of December. To bag a brace from a September covey is satisfactory to a sportsman. To get a bird with each barrel at an October drive is no mean thing. But to bring off a double event at Christmas partridges is to make a reputation. And it is to experience a feeling of goodwill towards the whole world. For Christmas and cold hands excuse a multitude of misses.
The birds whirl over the line of guns like brown clusters of bullets. And if the sportsman is tested, the gamekeeper's reputation hangs also in the balance; his highest art is called for if he is to drive birds in the desired direction. Whether or not his birds have been much harassed by previous driving makes a difference to his chances. Success will be appreciated, for sportsmen keenly relish a selected partridge drive as a foretaste to a pheasant shoot. When the drive is over and the pheasants' turn has come, they feel in slightly faster but certainly smoother water.
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Cunning Cock Pheasants
No bird is more artful than an old cock pheasant, or better able to take care of himself. At this season a solitary cock may be observed night after night roosting in some isolated tree, out in the wind-swept fields, and far from the sheltered coverts. Yet you may hunt this bird all day, high and low, in vain. When, on the way home, you pass his dark form on a lonely perch, you feel he deserves to rest in peace. Sometimes the old cock is over-cunning, or too confident in the safety of his retreat. He may allow one to approach within a few feet, although he certainly heard footsteps in time to make his escape. A certain keeper can tell many tales of the inglorious ends of his cunning cock pheasants, but most of these episodes are better forgotten.
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A Dish of Greens
Winter flocks of pigeons are here to-day and gone to-morrow, travelling far in search of food. If they find little or no beech-mast or acorns, they are forced early in winter to a diet of salad. It must be a relief to the wandering hosts when they come to a place where acorns are in plenty. In hard winters, turnips supply a great part of wood-pigeons' food; and it used to be held that from this food their flesh acquired too pronounced a flavour, so that nice judges, who at other times thought them a delicate dish, would reject them. One old-time sportsman held that the green leaves of turnips gave a peculiar and very palatable flavour to the flesh of larks and partridges. In this connection we always think of the story told by Gilbert White of a neighbour who shot a ring-dove as it was returning from feed and going to roost. "When his wife had picked and drawn it, she found its craw stuffed with the most nice and tender tops of turnips. These she washed and boiled, and so sat down to a choice and delicate plate of greens, culled and provided in this extraordinary manner."
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Christmas Shoots
Shooting parties in the week following Christmas have a festive air. As at the hall, so in the keeper's cottage, the air is charged with the Christmas spirit. Ten o'clock on any morning soon after Christmas Day may find the keeper entertaining a crowd of beaters at the expense of his own private cellar, and the good things from the cellar are served hot and spiced. In hats and caps are seasonable tokens--sprigs of mistletoe and holly. The keeper himself does not wear button-holes, but should his children make a garland of holly for the collar of his old retriever, he will leave it for the brambles to pull away. The guns turn up late--they have been dancing through the night; when all are met, in the brief greetings, in the distribution of cartridge-bags, and in the inquiries about weather and the possible bag, there is a note of unusual cheeriness.
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Woodcock Talk
At a Boxing Day shooting-lunch the talk among the guns was upon the ways and wiles of woodcock. One spoke of his long bill, with its sensitive nerves, which tell the bird what he has found when the bill forages among the dead leaves; speculating as to whether he lived by his powers of suction only. Another wondered if the eating qualities of woodcock legs were really improved by pulling out the sinews. The question arose: Is the man who shoots a woodcock entitled to its pen-feathers, or is the man who first finds and secures those delicate trophies best entitled to stick them in the band of his hat? Woodcock provoked many controversies. Is there any secret in the proper roasting of them? Would the law absolve a man who shot his fellow when shooting 'cock?--and would the fact that he shot his bird as well as his man make any difference? How many people could swear to have seen the mother woodcock carrying her young; and exactly how does she carry them? How many of the home-bred birds leave us in autumn? What proportion of woodcock comes in from abroad, and what is the difference between the foreigners and the genuine Britishers? In answer to the last question, a suggestion was made that the foreign birds were large and light in colour, but the British birds small and dark. Around this point arose a discussion, and the keeper was called in to give his opinion. "It ain't nothin' at all to do with Englishmen and foreigners," he said. "It be whether they be cocks or hens, and 'tis the large light uns that be the hens."
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Spare the Hens
Most gamekeepers hold the killing of a hen pheasant after Christmas to be a moral crime. And perhaps most genuine sportsmen feel a twinge of the conscience when they pull a trigger at a hen in New Year days--irrespective of the host's permission. Of course, when the orders are to spare hens, the man who kills or even tries to kill one does something that the keeper will not forget--he loses caste for ever in the keeper's eyes; whereas the man who is not greedy to take advantage of an impromptu permission to shoot hens ensures for himself a niche in the keeper's good graces.
It is true, there are hens and hens. Only a churlish keeper would not admire the man who stops one of those skyscraping hens, of the sort bagged by ordinary gunners about once in a lifetime. But the order, "Shoot hens if they are real tall ones," alarms a keeper--unless he has full confidence in the guns of a party. When the word has been given, it is wonderful how many hens are "real tall ones." There are excuses which must be accepted: for in certain conditions of light, when the golden moment for pressing the trigger is within grasp, it is almost impossible to distinguish hens from cocks--length of tail is then the most reliable evidence.
We remember a knowing old keeper who laid a plot to ensure at least a merry start to a Christmas shoot, when "Cocks only" was the order of the day. This worthy, when catching up birds for his pens, had gathered together some twenty superfluous cocks. These, a dishevelled and more or less tailless crew, he carried just before starting-time to a dell thick with spruce, chosen doubtless for decency's sake: and on a plausible pretext lined out his guns between the dell and a wood. But he forgot there was no natural inducement to the birds to fly in the face of evident danger--and all the birds broke away out of gunshot, and so suddenly as to make their recent history all too evident.
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A Free-and-Easy
Boxing Day, in many parts, remains a regulation fixture for rabbit-shooting by tenants, local tradesmen, keepers, and their friends. Nobody could possibly appreciate the exciting nature of these shoots unless present in person. It is safer to be present only in spirit. Otherwise, shot-proof cover becomes the most desirable thing in the world: and it often seems a wonder how more than one man can survive the day to count the bag. Talking to a tenant-farmer on such an occasion, we noticed that his hands were covered with warts, and suggested remedies. "They b'aint woorts, bless ye--they be only shots," came a proud answer--the honourable wounds of many rabbit-shooting campaigns.
At another tenant-and-tradesman shoot we found the guns unduly plentiful--there were twenty to begin with, and the party grew as the day wore on. But all of a sudden there was a magic disappearance of a large proportion of sportsmen, corresponding with the appearance of an important-looking individual, who calmly went to the man next to us, and relieved him of his piece and cartridges, which he began to use in a liberal fashion. Gradually, the original gunners reappeared--mostly from fir-trees. And it transpired that they were gunners without licences--who had taken courage when they saw the local officer of the law stretching a point himself. One, bolder than the others, made an appeal to the law for a ruling on the licensing question--and was informed that notice must be given of the imminent use of the gun, in order that the law's representative might have time to look the other way.
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A Keeper's Ghost-Story
The gamekeeper, perhaps, believes less in ghosts than other countrymen. He is not afraid to keep vigil in the loneliest wood, though well known to be haunted by a headless spectre. He carries a gun and his dog is at heel, so it may be that the ghosts are afraid of the keeper. We know a house where great alarm was caused by the ghostly ringing of bells. Watches were set, and one watcher after another made report of a flitting figure, clad in white, that roamed the corridors. At last the keeper was called in to deal with the ghost. He took up his watch, his trusty gun, loaded with buckshot, in his hand. "There I bid," he relates, "till jest on twelve o'clock--when all of a sudden the old baize door at the end of the stone passage opens, of its own accord like, and in slips the ghost. I ups wi' m' gun, and I sez, 'Be you the ghost?' sez I. 'And if ye moves,' sez I, 'I shoots.' Three times I speaks, gruffer and gruffer each time. And then I makes a rush for the ghost--wot turns out arter all to be Mary the 'ouse-maid." "What did you do with Mary?" we asked the story-teller. "Lor' love ye, I took and married 'er out o' the way."
This same keeper let us into the secret of his shattered faith in ghosts. As a young man he and a fellow under-keeper had been told off to watch the carriage-drive for night poachers. In a jocular moment the head-keeper warned them not to be afraid if they should see the estate ghost--the headless body of an old coachman driving a pair of galloping horses harnessed to a hearse. Naturally, the two young keepers, as the night wore on, fell to talking about the headless apparition. Presently, sure enough, hoofs were heard, and a hearse came lumbering down the drive. The watchers crouched low in the heap of dead bracken in which they were hidden. Asked, an hour later, if they had seen the poachers, "No," they said bravely; "we only saw the old fellow without a head, driving his hearse." "Well," said the head-keeper, chuckling, "if you'd looked inside his hearse you would have found it full of corpses--rabbits' corpses! Me and Bill, we ketched the ghost, whiles he was drinking your 'ealth."
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Old Friends in Velveteen
Many gamekeepers we have known. Looking back down the years we can summon to view a serried regiment of the servants of sport; large men and small, rough and gentle, brown-clad men, some in velveteen, others in rough tweed, most of them in stout leggings, all with the keen eyes of watchmen, bronzed by the sun, beaten by the weather; good men and true, every man of them. The best of them are strong, upright, fearless, full of confidence; men who neither beg favours nor grant them; set their own standards; keep their own counsels; take no false oaths, whatever the provocation of the poacher; who, in preserving game, have no enmity against other living creatures; who are all-round sportsmen and lovers of fair play. At the end of the long line, farthest from view yet most distinct, stands an old man with silver hair, with light blue eyes, and a face kindly, yet sharp as a hawk's, the keeper who was first to show us how to hold a gun.
Many fine stories this old man would tell, leaning over a gate, gun in hand, of Master this and Master that, uncles and such-like, even then old men to a boy's eyes, yet still called, by the older keeper, by their familiar names. "I mind the time," he would begin, his eyes twinkling: and then he would ramble off into the history of some wild affray with gipsies or with poachers, enough to make a boy's hair stand on end.