Part 32

When Hounds come

The opening of the hunting season proper brings a new anxiety to the keeper. While it opens in early November, no date is recognised. The keeper would like to see one fixed, and he would make it after his coverts had been shot at least once. Many shooting men would also like to see the idea established that hounds should not come to their woods until after the first shoots, especially where there are many hares. Often a landowner will refuse a master's request for permission to come his way until he has done with his coverts. The keeper does not so much object to the hounds merely passing through when in full cry, for then the hounds run in a compact body, and pay no attention to game. They only disturb a line about ten yards wide right through the woods. What disturbs every game-bird and hare in the place is drawing a covert, particularly when scent is bad and foxes are in evidence, but not to be forced away. Unhappy the keeper who must throw open his coverts at all seasons while other neighbouring coverts are closed. The prohibition of one wood often leads to the closing of many more; and hunt officials are well advised to break down, by every power of persuasion, all restrictions which favour one or two keepers at the expense of brother keepers. At any rate, we think it would be an excellent idea that the keeper whose coverts are always open to hounds should have double the reward paid for a find to the keeper whose coverts are open only after Christmas.

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When Hounds are gone

Those who shoot in the wake of hounds are no sportsmen. To state a case in illustration of this: A sportsman has the shooting of a wood bounded on one side by another's fields. In days gone by he was glad to keep a fox for hounds, and gladly he would throw open his wood to the hunt, in a reasonable way. In the cause of sport, he was content that his pheasants and hares should be driven out of his wood into his neighbour's fields and hedgerows. But when he found that his neighbour was the sort of man to shoot in the wake of hounds, so that the evicted creatures were given no fair chance to return to their home-wood, but instead were shot in the afternoon following a morning visit of hounds--he felt compelled to close his wood to the hunt, with the natural sequence that he was soon compelled to bar the covert to foxes also. No shooting days in the wake of hounds should be a golden rule for all neighbourly neighbours.

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Poachers' Weapons

Of poachers there are many types; and the worst are the organised bands that hail chiefly from colliery and manufacturing districts. These men are murderous ruffians, and the keeper who interferes with them carries his life in his hand. Wives look anxiously indeed for their husbands' return when such a band is about. The gangs chiefly practise night shooting, and pheasants are their object. But they are as ready to fire at a keeper as at pheasants. We were shown a single-barrelled muzzle-loading gun which a keeper had taken from such a poacher, who had shot a roosting pheasant under his very eyes. After the shot, the keeper went up to the man, who pointed the gun straight at his head, threatening to fire if he advanced another yard. But the keeper knew his man--and his gun. He knew there had been no time for the ruffian to reload. He knocked up the barrel, and caught his man, who in due time was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment. Had his gun been double-barrelled, it would have been another story, and a tragic one. A favourite weapon, and a deadly, in these poachers' hands is a heavy stone slung in a stocking.

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Moles' Skins for Furs

For moles' skins the keeper has no sentiment. He will not part with his skins of rare birds--but will willingly barter the prospect of wearing a moles' skin waistcoat for the price of an ounce of shag a skin. By catching moles he pleases the farmers, who know no more than he himself about any good work that moles do: he frees his rides from unsightly heaps and raised tunnellings; and now and then his mole-traps catch a weasel. Many keepers make a fair sum of money each year by selling moles' skins; furriers will as readily give twopence for a skin as others threepence or sixpence. The skins, cut close round the head, are drawn from the moles' bodies as a man draws stockings from his legs; they are pegged out, fur downwards, on a board, to be dried and powdered with alum, then are stuffed with meadow hay, and packed by scores or hundreds. Perhaps no fur is quite so soft and beautiful as the mole's; and the keeper is always well pleased to note how well the pelts of his enemies become women-folk's faces.

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Covert-shooting Problems

To shoot while there are still many leaves on the underwood and trees, and while there is a full muster of pheasants, or to wait until there are fewer leaves and fewer pheasants--that often is the question. For there are many coverts in which pheasants will not stay after the fall of the leaf. Then the shooting man who does not own the coverts to which his birds will betake themselves must make the best of things, and be content to bring down more leaves than pheasants, and often nothing but leaves. What with the showering of leaves and the crashing of shot-pruned boughs and dead wood, he may imagine that a pheasant must be an extra heavy bird--only to find that not a feather has been touched. To shoot pheasants among a crowd of leafy oaks is no simple matter--it is more difficult than to shoot a rocketer in the open valley. One thing may be said for this aggravating pastime; it teaches the slow shooter to be quick.

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"Cocks only"--to compromise

There are good reasons for shooting coverts for the first time before the end of November, apart from the fear of a leakage of pheasants. A sack of corn a day will quickly swell a bill to uncomfortable proportions. Unshot coverts also mean that the whole time of keepers and watchers is taken up, with a string of awkward consequences. Thus, little can be done to thin the rabbits, for fear of disturbing the other game in the coverts. Each night some of the hares go out, never to return. Hunting must be curtailed in self-defence. Then again, neighbours may be shooting, and it is very certain that what goes into your neighbour's bag cannot go into yours. The best compromise between shooting in woods still leafy and waiting for the sporting Christmas pheasant to soar far above the tops of the bare trees, is to shoot "cocks only" at the first covert shoots. This may be a perplexing plan to those not accustomed to it--either they include a good many hens, or they let off a good many cocks which they mistake for hens. It is a plan to make the nervous man shoot his worst. And the keeper, as a rule, will not be found to favour it, unless the guns are discriminating and good, and appreciate sport more than bag. But sooner or later the day of "cocks only" must come--why should it not come at the beginning and be done with?

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What a Cat may kill

A strange confession was made by a cat-lover concerning the cat of her fireside. The confession was made publicly; in fact, in the columns of an obscure local paper. It was to the effect that the cat had brought in to her kittens, in one week, twenty-six field-mice, nineteen rabbits, ten moles, seven young birds, and two squirrels--all of which passed through her mistress's hands; there may have been others not taken account of. It never seemed to enter the head of the cat's mistress that any hurt was being done to other people's interests by this poaching of rabbits, nor that any neighbouring gamekeeper might read her words. It would be unfair to argue that all cats, with or without kittens, are as bad as this one; we have heard of cats a great deal worse. Naturally a mother cat forages far and wide for food; but she hunts chiefly for small things, and knows that mice and birds are more suitable for her weaning kittens than sitting partridges and pheasants. It is that arch old villain, Sir Thomas, who commits the crimes for which mother cats are blamed. But the keeper has no hesitation in bringing home to all cats a reparation, sudden and effective, for Sir Thomas's sins.

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A Cockney Story

A gamekeeper friend told us, with infinite delight, this quaint little story. If we are to believe him, he was sitting one fine September day behind the hedge of a cornfield, thinking about the coveys hidden in the corn, when he became aware that a lover and his lass were sitting on the road side of the hedge, directly behind him. They were Cockneys, and this was the first of their days of country holiday-making. Presently the lover speaks. "Emma," says he, "just look at this pretty fly wot's settled on me 'and." "Lor'!" says Emma, "ain't he a daisy?" A pause follows; the lovers are silently contemplating the beauties of the fly. Emma suggests he is out for an airing in his racing colours--yellow and black. Then the lover calls out in a voice of mingled amusement and pain. "Crikey!" he cries, "ain't 'is feet 'ot?"

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Hares in Small Holdings

The hare that haunts a small holding has a slender chance of dying a natural death in ripe old age. But we have a little story of how a small-holder was converted from hare-shooting. He was a man who rented a meadow on the outskirts of a large village; and it chanced that hares were much attracted to this pleasant spot. The gamekeeper of the shooting tenant was deeply troubled by the drain on his stock of hares caused by the small-holder; but there was little he could do to stop the slaughter that went on at all times and seasons, and by all manner of means. He had the good sense to keep on friendly terms with the troublesome sportsman, and at last he thought that some improvement might be brought about by arranging a laugh at his expense. He stuffed a hare, and one night set up the skin in the meadow, at a fair range from a gap in the hedge. Early next morning the news reached the small-holder that there was a hare in his field. Off he started with gun and dog; saw from the gap that the hare was sitting up, "jest about a pretty little shot," took steady aim, and fired both barrels to make sure of a kill. How his dog retrieved a hare-skin stuffed with hay was a story that soon became public property in the village and the neighbourhood, and from that day forward there has been no safer place for a hare than this man's meadow.

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The Sins of the Father