Part 30

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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.

A good story in proof of a retriever's reasoning powers is told by an old-time sportsman. He was shooting beside a frozen stream, and winged a mallard, which fell in mid-stream. His dog crashed on to the ice, broke through it, and fought her way to the middle, where the ice only skimmed the water. She swam round for a moment, then broke her way to the opposite bank, paused to give a knowing look at the thin ice, and went down stream at full speed for about eighty yards. Running down the bank, she broke a hole in the ice with her fore-paws, then crouched back, watching the hole. In a few moments she made a spring and plunged in, reappearing in mid-stream with the mallard in her mouth. There was no doubt, at least in her master's mind, that she had broken the hole for the purpose of catching the bird when he came up to breathe.

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Born Retrieving

A keeper owned two retriever puppies who were given a curious start in life. Their mother was shut up at home, while her master went to shoot some rooks. She was the proud mother of five new-born puppies, but her litter was not complete. A few rooks had been shot, and the keeper was waiting for others to appear, when up ran the retriever carrying a rook in her mouth; somehow she had managed to get out, and had followed to see the sport. She was sent back to her puppies, and directly she reached home two new puppies were born. They were born, as one might say, retrieving.

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