Part 2

WINTER

Rustic Wit 233 The Oak City 233 Acorns 234 Plump Rabbits 236 The Stoat's Hunting 237 Mysteries of Scent 238 The Axe in the Coverts 241 The Uses of Underwood 242 The Tipping System 243 Free Suppers for the Fox 245 Clues to the Thief 246 Muzzled by a Snare 247 Cunning Rascals 248 A Hunting Argument 249 The Clever Terrier 251 Born Retrieving 252 Some Sporting Types 252 Victims of Wire 253 Stoat or Weasel? 253 "The Horrid Badger" 254 Chalk-Pit Haunts 255 When the Fox sleeps 255 When Ferret meets Fox 256 February Rabbits 257 The Moucher's Excuse 257 When Hounds come 258 When Hounds are gone 259 Poachers' Weapons 260 Moles' Skins for Furs 261 Covert-shooting Problems 262 "Cocks only"--to compromise 262 What a Cat may kill 263 A Cockney Story 264 Hares in Small Holdings 265 The Sins of the Father 266 The Pheasants' Roosting-Trees 267 The Fox in the Storm 268 Foxes at Pheasant Shoots 268 Pheasants that go to Ground 269 Pheasants' Doomsday 270 The Hungry Retriever 270 The Old Wood 271 Memories of Muzzle-loaders 272 Relics of the Great Days 273 Cleaning a Muzzle-loader 274 The Knowing Beater 275 Old Friends 276 What Shepherds enjoy 277 Lives of Labour 277 In the Folds 278 Shepherds' Care 279 Winter Partridge-driving 279 The Fear of Snow 281 Hard-Weather Prophets 282 Weather-wise Beasts and Birds 282 Green Winters 284 What Rainy Days bring 285 Cubs at Christmas 286 Work for Rainy Days 287 The Old Lumber 288 When Foxes mate 289 A Keeper's Dreams 290 A Death-bed Vision 291 Christmas Sport 292 Cunning Cock Pheasants 293 A Dish of Greens 293 Christmas Shoots 294 Woodcock Talk 295 Spare the Hens 296 A Free-and-Easy 297 A Keeper's Ghost-Story 298 Old Friends in Velveteen 300 The Converted Shepherd 302 A Final Story 302 Careful Wives 303 "What Her was Like" 304

Index 305

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

To face Page

A Pipe of Peace Frontispiece

Spring's Looking-glass 40

Hampshire Hurdles 78

The Long Day Closes 134

Starlings Roosting on Reeds 204 From a Drawing by Frank Southgate, R.B.A.

Peewits in Winter 280 From a Drawing by Frank Southgate, R.B.A.

SPRING

The Keepers' Lot

The position of a gamekeeper in England is a curious one. Admittedly he is among the most skilled and highly trained workers of the countryside. His intimate knowledge of wild life commands respect. Often he is much more than a careful and successful preserver of game--a thoroughly good sportsman, a fine shot. His work carries heavy responsibility; as whether a large expenditure on a shooting property brings good returns--and on him depends the pleasure of many a sporting party. On large estates he is an important personage--important to the estate owner, to the hunt, to the farm bailiff, and to a host of satellites. His value is proved by the many important side-issues of his work--dog-breeding and dog-breaking, or the breaking of young gentlemen to gun work. Yet, in spite of the honourable and onerous nature of his calling, he is paid in cash about the same wage as a ploughman.

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Perquisites

The actual wages of a first-class gamekeeper may be no more than a pound a week. A system has sprung up by which he receives, in addition to wages, many recompenses in kind, while his slender pay is fortified by the tips of the sportsman to whom he ministers. This system has bred in him a kind of obsequiousness--he is dependent to a great extent on charity. With a liberal employer he may be well off, and all manner of good things may come his way; but with a mean employer the perquisites of his position may be few and far between.

At the best, he may live in a comfortable cottage, rent free. His coal is supplied to him without cost, and wood from the estate. Milk is drawn freely from the farm--or he may have free pasturage for a cow of his own. A new suit of clothes is presented to him each year. He may keep pigs for his own use, usually at his own expense, but this is a small item, and even here he may be helped out by a surplus of pig-food from the kitchen of the house or from the farms. He has a fair chance to make money by dog-breeding and exhibiting. Then there is vermin and rabbit money which he earns as extra pay, and useful sums may flow into his pocket from the hunt funds. He may keep fowls at his employer's expense, and if not solely for his own use, he has the privilege of a proportion of the eggs, and a reasonable number of the chickens may be roasted or boiled for his own table. The estate gardeners aid him with his gardening operations, and many surplus plants and seeds find their way into his plot. To rabbits he may help himself freely, also to rooks and pigeons. After each shooting party his employer--if a generous master--invites him to take home a brace of pheasants and a hare; and there may be other ways in which game comes to his larder. Commissions and fees of various indeterminate sorts may swell his coffers. All kinds of supplies he secures, if not freely, at reduced prices. And always there is the harvest of tips. Clearly there is every chance for a gamekeeper to receive charity of some form or another, if it is not always offered; and this must tend to weaken that independence which is found by the man who is paid for his labour fairly and squarely in cash.

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Pets at the Cottage

One usually sees a pretty assortment of pets about the keeper's cottage, where there are children. The keeper himself is not above a pet animal, though he may not confess it--and, strange to say, the keeper's favourite is often a cat. But you may be sure it is a cat among cats, and without sin--an expert among rats, mice, and sparrows, yet able to sit for hours on the hole of a rabbit, or alone with a canary, and not yield to temptation. At one keeper's cottage a dormouse is to be seen--at this season he is broader than he is long. Here lives "Billy," a buff bantam cock, who will sit on your knee and take a mouthful of bread from your lips; here also is "Tommy," a game-cock, who takes lunch and tea on the inside of the kitchen window-ledge; and here is "Sally," a goose that will lay more than threescore eggs in the spring, lives on grass, likes to explore the cottage's interior, and puts all the dogs to shame as a guard, loudly proclaiming the arrival of strangers. In a coop on a lawn lives a white rabbit, whose mission in life is to keep the grass short; this rabbit will not look at a carrot, but rejoices in bread and milk, and above all in cold chicken. In the yard is a retriever, who is always careful to offer you her right paw in greeting, loves blackberries, and is the special friend of a little terrier. Once there was a pet lamb. On many a little rough grassy grave the keeper's child places wreaths of wild flowers.

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Wood-Pigeons

The shooting of pigeons is the keeper's special feather-sport--he is always on the spot to take advantage of favourable circumstances. It goes on in summer as in winter, and remembering the tremendous amount of damage done to pea-fields, corn crops and roots by pigeons, there is a justification for this shooting which cannot be urged in favour of pheasant-shooting. The keeper understands the sport. He knows the pigeons' habits and feeding times, and that concealment is the secret of success. Lying at ease on the ground, with his back to a tree-trunk, he waits in all patience for the pigeons to come to their favourite trees. Or, having noted the part of the feeding-field where the birds alight, he conceals himself in a hedge, or behind bushes arranged by himself, so that from his butt he can shoot comfortably at any bird within range. As birds are shot he sets them up as decoys. A stick about nine inches long is put in the ground, and one pointed end inserted in the pigeon's throat, the bird being set up in a life-like way. Knowing that they are thirsty birds, especially when feeding on the ripe, hard grain, he builds a hut near the pond where the pigeons drink, and if he cannot see them on the ground or in the trees, creeps out to stalk them, and the shots they give as they rise, diving and turning in all directions, are such that no one need despise.

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The Keeper's Larder

Wood-pigeons are among the gamekeeper's perquisites. Apart from a very occasional request from "the house" for the wherewithal for pigeon-pie, the pigeons shot are for the benefit of the keeper and his family, and when he shoots more than he requires there are always labourers and others glad of a pigeon or two "to make a pudden." Rabbits, also, are perquisites, but to be sold no more than pigeons. The popular idea is that keepers may help themselves to any game they please--true, they could if so minded. But no matter what a keeper's ethics in other directions, as a rule he deals honourably with the game in his charge. The keeper has no more right to take a brace of birds or a hare without permission than has an ironmonger's assistant to take a coal-scuttle. There is little to be said against the keeper making use of game killed, but not eaten, by foxes or vermin, or of chance-killed game unsuitable for his employer's table. One old keeper was so anxious to make every available pheasant figure in the game-book that he would never keep the brace given him at the end of a day's shooting. Instead, he would include the birds with the bag on the following day, and this he would do day after day.

Free though they are to kill and cook rabbits, few keepers care for them, or eat them often. Most keepers, indeed, would be as pleased to go to penal servitude, or to live in London, as to eat rabbits more often than once a month. This is not because they have eaten too many, but because the smell of rabbits has become distasteful. However, rabbits prove a great help to the keeper with children to feed. Usually his larder is well stocked, and his good-wife has a store of all kinds of dainties in her cupboards--from home-made pickles to home-brewed wine. Often your keeper is a clever gardener; he takes prizes for his vegetables, and he will grow fine cucumbers and even melons under fragments of glass. Something of a cook himself, well accustomed to preparing luxurious meals for his sacred birds, he is a judge of cooks and cooking, as many a keeper's wife has discovered. If she does not know, he can tell her how to prepare a savoury dish which shall have the special advantages of not spoiling through being kept warm or from being warmed up--for the keeper's dinner is a movable feast, and must be ready at any time between noon and night. The sheet-anchor of one such dish is proper home-cured bacon, in winter baked in a pie-dish with alternate layers of parboiled potatoes, for which in summer the contents of eggs beaten just enough to blend the yolks and whites are substituted. Served with new potatoes, it is the very dish to put heart in a man.