Part 23

There is little chance for the cub when, fat from long ease, he is pushed at last from the home-wood, with the pack in cry a few short chains behind his apology for a brush. A fox-hound, if often cowardly, is a foe of terribly unequal size and strength, one carefully fed, thoroughly schooled to hunting, and trained to great staying power. But a young hound is as indifferent to the business of hunting as is a cub when disturbed for the first time in its life. Lackadaisical is the word for the attitude of each. It is an unfortunate cub that slinks aside to avoid a too-inquisitive puppy and walks into the jaws of an old hound.

A cub is to be known from an old fox by its lankiness and legginess. Full growth is not attained until late November; from Christmas-time is the season when the amorous barking of the foxes of the year may be heard, as they run through the woods in the night, seeking their mates. In early autumn the cub's brush is lacking in bushiness, and is obviously pointed at the tip. By Christmas--if Christmas is to come for him--the brush will be in full-blown glory. A popular superstition among countrymen is that a white tip to a fox's brush denotes a dog-fox, while its absence is a sure sign of vixenhood. Another old fallacy that dies hard is that a fox will fascinate a roosting pheasant by gazing steadfastly into its eyes--hypnotising it so completely that the bird drops at last into the waiting jaws. But a fox's tricks need no bush. He will hoax rabbits by rolling as if in innocent frolic, rolling his way nearer and nearer until, with a perfectly calculated spring, he may make sure of his supper. And he will feign death so well as to deceive a wary old huntsman. Many a fox's body has been dug out of a hole and thrown aside as a carcass, only to come miraculously to life, and to fly at the first chance.

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Wines of the Country

Country folk brew wine from numberless things--and the marvel is how they survive the drinking. Yet some of the simple wines are excellent--as parsnip wine and sloe gin. Beside all care in the making, the secret of parsnip wine is to brew it at the right time, which is just after fresh top growth begins in roots left in the ground, when the spine of the parsnips themselves turns as tough as wood. A good recipe from a keeper's note-book is this: Take three pounds of parsnips, a quarter of an ounce of hops, three pounds of lump sugar, and one gallon of water. Wash, clean, slice and boil the parsnips until tender. Add the hops, boil for five minutes, strain on to the sugar, and stir until the sugar dissolves. When the liquor is lukewarm add yeast, and when the working is done, barrel, bung, bottle and drink in due season.

We would give a word of warning to the inexperienced: Do not sample home-brewed wines too freely, however freely offered. Country folk put quantity before quality, and seldom offer their wines in anything but tumblers--and if you manage to empty one tumbler, you will need will-power, if not willingness, to avoid taking another glassful. To leave a drop of home-brewed wine, when once you have tasted it, is an insult to the maker. We remember how the wife of a keeper was unjustly blamed for the power of her rhubarb wine, of which a caller had partaken freely. He went his way smacking his lips; lighting his pipe, he strolled happily along a path of rabbit-mown turf, through a fine old park. But in a little while he felt a desire to lie down, and soon his groans were spreading panic among the park deer. He cursed the gamekeeper's wife and her rhubarb wine; but it turned out that he had borrowed from the keeper a little flowers of sulphur, which, escaping from its packet, had found a way into his pipe: hence his pain and sickness.

AUTUMN

The Verdict of the Season

To find out how the wild birds have fared is always difficult: one never sees them properly until the days of shooting are at hand--and not always then, when a sight of them rather under than over forty yards distant might be welcome. We may pass by a wood outside which many pheasants may be feeding, as a flock of fowls, or sitting lazily about on the fences, some perhaps indolently stretching a wing in the pleasant wallow of a dust-bath; but this does not prove that pheasants have done well--merely that there are so many pheasants at a certain place; it does not even prove that they will be there the next day. Such a spot may be a place where large numbers of pheasants are reared. One may count a hundred birds in the corner of a field--perhaps there should have been a hundred and fifty. Or perhaps the hundred to be seen means better luck than usual in the breeding season in that particular part. A man who sees pheasants where he does not know how many were bred may think a dozen a large number, or he may view with scorn the sight of several hundreds if he has been accustomed to see thousands. We know places where so many pheasants may be seen at any time as to suggest that they swarm there regardless of the season. But the birds seen casually may have been bought from a game-farm and turned down, to make up a supply that failed. However, it always delights the sportsman's eye to see many pheasants about a wood--especially if he has the shooting.

From a just standpoint, it is the comparison of what might have been with what is that settles the verdict on the pheasant season. The season cannot be judged by the birds of one preserve. Allowance must be made for many points. The number of wild broods to wild hens left to manage their own affairs, and the number of eggs set under fowls and how they hatched must be considered. Then the quality of the rearing-ground makes one district much better than another--whether heavy or light, low-lying or high, and rich or poor in natural food. The question of foxes must be weighed, and one would like to know before judging a season from any one case how many birds were turned into covert at five to seven weeks old, and how many fell victims to foxes--to say nothing of gapes.

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Weather to pray for

The keeper may control the supply of hand-reared birds: he may make up for the spoiling of an egg, or the loss of a chick, which would otherwise mean a pheasant the less; but he has no control over the season as it affects wild birds. What he prays for is a showery April, with a sun to shine between the storms. And he wants fair weather after the middle of May, the longer the better. A bright warm summer is good for all pheasants, whether it be their fate to start life beneath a fowl in a stuffy, if cosy, coop, or to be gathered beneath the breast and wings of their real mother in the wood, or among the corn. A fine summer means more to birds than to man, for to them it is a matter of life or death.

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After the Opening

Walking home through the woods on the evening of an October First, we came to a standstill before a low tree-branch on which an old cock pheasant was going to roost. We were within a yard of him; yet he sat stock-still, and stared at us fearlessly with unblinking eyes. The minutes passed, and after we had stood there for some little time, staring back at the old pheasant, it really seemed that we had established a bond of communication. And this is what we understood the old cock to be saying:

"Here I am, you see, and not afraid of you; and none the worse for an opening day that has been, I must admit, a trifle lively. And I may inform you that before I went to roost I made careful inquiries among my very numerous progeny, and not one is a feather the worse for all the banging that has been going on. All are in good condition, in fine plumage, and strong on the wing as usual, and, I may add, on the leg. By the way, I myself, in the course of the day, from a secure retreat, watched more than one sportsman critically examining the bodies of several unfortunate birds--needless to say, there was no son or daughter of mine among them. Good night."

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An October Day

Here is the gamekeeper's idea of what constitutes a pleasantly flavoured October 1: The day should break with a misty dawn, grey dewy cobwebs everywhere betokening a visible if tardy sun. There should be a brace of spaniels whose occasional lapses after fur are atoned for by their untiring energy among the blind tangles of hedgerows and dells. There should be three guns whose object is to enjoy sport and to make a mixed bag, including incidentally the first pheasants--without the formality of the so-called battue. There should be a couple of experienced beaters, and a keeper whose soul is set on circumventing certain wary old cocks that are known to him as leaders astray of youthful birds. The killing of pheasants should not be the main thing; if the charm of the First of October lay only in this it would quickly fade. Next to the potting of young rooks with a shot-gun as they sit stoically near their nests, few phases of shooting call for less skill than pheasant-shooting in early October.

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Low Flight and High

Grouse, partridges, and pheasants are low-flying birds, unlike wood-pigeons and rooks; it is their habit to skim along near to earth. And pheasants might be truly described as ground birds. Only on occasions do they fly high, and then usually for one of three definite causes. Flushed on high ground they may maintain a high elevation as they cross a valley. Rising on low ground, the direction of their flight may necessitate an upward line, as when trees or hills lie before them. Forced to rise suddenly, having lain low while danger has approached, on finding men in full sight between themselves and the place they have determined to reach they then rocket instinctively. Rooks and wood-pigeons naturally fly at a height well out of gunshot; and the cynical critic of British shooting methods might observe with truth that the bagging of a dozen ordinary wood-pigeons involves a higher order of sportsmanship than the bagging of fifty ordinary pheasants.

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Wily Grouse Cocks

As with partridges, a great benefit has followed the fashion of driving grouse, instead of walking them up, with setters and pointers: for the familiar reason that the old birds come first to the guns and are the first to be shot. If not shot, these old birds would not allow the young ones to nest near them, and would drive them far afield: and another advantage is that the young birds which are spared are the most productive. Moorland keepers at the end of the season are at pains to kill off old cocks, which are such enemies to the peaceful nesting of the young birds; and many are their devices for stalking and calling them to their doom. Except when feeding, the wary old birds like to be able to look all about them, and perch on walls and hillocks, whence, holding their heads high, their eyes may sweep afar for foes. Unlike partridges, they are not content with the grain in the stubble, but will perch on the stooks at harvest-time, to attack the sheaves.

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Rewards for Cubs