Part 4

Poachers on the moor differ in many habits and tricks from South-country poachers. They know how to trap grouse with gins, setting up little piles of gravel, which the birds eagerly seek for digestive reasons, and besetting the gravel with traps. They know how to trap grouse in winter without causing them injury; this they do by pressing a bottle into hard snow, thus shaping a hole-trap (to be baited with oats) from which the grouse cannot escape, having fallen into it head first. But on the whole the sneaking type of poacher has fewer chances on the moor than in the pheasant coverts.

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And their Dogs

A poacher owns to a dog, so marvellously trained that his master can send it for anything--but at the least sign of anybody watching its movements, or the approach of a gamekeeper or a policeman, the dog drops whatever it may be carrying, makes off for cover, and hides itself. The dog has many rivals to fame of this sort. We knew a poacher whose plan it was to dawdle along the road in his pony-cart while his lurcher foraged in the fields. But at a certain signal the dog would come instantly to heel; on suspecting danger, all the master did was to lift his cap, and scratch his head in the most unconcerned manner in the world. When once a dog grasps the meaning of a signal, he will obey it faithfully in all circumstances if he is kept in practice. In the olden days, in the Netherlands, dogs were trained to smuggle, and without attendants. They were sent off on a journey at night, loaded with goods, the keenest-nosed dog leading, and at the moment when he sighted or scented a custom-house official, he would turn back as a signal to the whole pack to rush off to cover, and hide until the danger passed. This is vouched for in an old work, "Brown on Dogs."

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Perfect Obedience

Probably there would be no great difficulty training a dog to drop a hare, or anything else, at the approach of somebody other than its master. Dogs are sometimes trained to lie down, without receiving any signal or order, when their owners meet friends and stop to talk. One old gamekeeper would consider his dogs to be very ill-mannered if they did not lie down of their own accord when he stopped walking. Another keeper has trained his dog to quite an out-of-the-way trick, which is to the keeper's personal advantage, if highly detrimental to his duties. The trick is for the dog, on command, to spit from his mouth any food he may be eating. The keeper will take his dog to a public-house, and set the example of throwing him biscuits, which he will eat greedily. He will then make a boast about the dog's obedience (in the shooting field, by the way, we have never known a more disobedient animal, though he is exceedingly clever). Eventually the keeper wagers a pint of beer to a quart that the dog not only will cease eating biscuits on command, but will eject any crumbs from his mouth, and not touch them again until so ordered. Many a pot of beer has the dog won for his master by this trick. When the two go home, it is the dog that finds the way.

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The Black List

In February the gamekeeper's thoughts and energies are turned mostly in the way of vermin and trapping. And where vermin is really plentiful it is a wonderful wild sport that he enjoys in tracking and trapping the creatures of his black list. In the North the vermin bag is more mixed than in the South, and in the olden days contained such a great variety of creatures as to suggest that the keepers enjoyed better sport than their masters. They were ruthless in their war on all that they held to be enemies to game; how ruthless may be judged from the following list of vermin, bagged in three years by a famous keeper on Glengarry, Inverness-shire. It indicates the proportion of the different sorts of animals classed as vermin found in the Highlands in the middle days of the last century: 11 foxes, 198 wild cats, 246 martens, 106 polecats, 301 stoats and weasels, 67 badgers, 48 otters, 78 house cats going wild, 27 white-tailed sea eagles, 15 golden eagles, 18 ospreys, 98 blue hawks or peregrine falcons, 7 orange-legged falcons, 211 hobby hawks, 75 kites, 5 marsh harriers, 63 goshawks, 285 common buzzards, 371 rough-legged buzzards, 3 honey buzzards, 462 kestrels, 78 merlin hawks, 83 hen harriers, 6 gerfalcons, 9 ash-coloured or long blue-tailed hawks, 1431 carrion crows, 475 ravens, 35 horned owls, 71 common fern owls (nightjars), 3 golden owls, 8 magpies. A total of nearly 5000 head, giving an average of more than 1500 head a year, or about five head a day. The list, strangely enough, does not contain a single jay, rat, or hedgehog.

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A South-Country Record

A Southern keeper's list of about the same period--from 1869 to 1878--shows a total of just over 8000 head. In the year that saw the greatest destruction of hawks--nearly all sparrow-hawks and kestrels--46 were killed. The greatest number of magpies killed in a year was 205. Probably cats were not very carefully counted--their numbers in different years rise from 47 to 122. Usually more than 100 squirrels were killed each year. And over 100 carrion crows were killed yearly. But jays headed all lists in numbers sacrificed; the largest bag of 346 was made in '78, evidently when the influence of the breach-loader was beginning to make itself felt. Hedgehogs suffered least persecution among the keeper's supposed enemies, only 6 going into the bag in one year--45 was the highest hedgehog loss. Exclusive of rats, this keeper, a Hampshire man, waged war on nine species only, whereas the Inverness-shire keeper destroyed as vermin thirty-one different kinds of birds and beasts. The lists make no mention of rooks. To-day, on the Southern estate to which the list of thirty years ago refers, not a crow or a magpie is left, and the persecution has told heavily on the sparrow-hawks, and many another kind. The present keeper's sport with vermin is as different to his predecessors' as the sport of his master to his master's ancestors--to-day about 300 pheasants are bagged on this estate in the course of a big day's shooting, instead of the 30 birds that would have been a good bag in the olden times.

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Woodland Gallows

In olden days the gamekeeper set up his vermin gallows in each of his big woods. It was to his credit to show that he had killed a large amount of vermin; on his gallows he wrote his own testimonial. Nearly all the vermin he killed was duly displayed. But now the day of the gallows is passing. Keepers have little time to give to the display; nor do employers always encourage it. The gallows foster a growing feeling against the destruction of wild life involved by the preservation of game, and lead to bitter, if often misjudged attacks. Keepers are contenting themselves with modified forms of gallows, as the trunk of a tree, to which the heads, tails or claws of the malefactors are nailed. These small gallows do not speak of the keeper's successful war-waging in the bold manner of the old-fashioned, full-measure pattern. But there is much in their favour. As one old keeper remarked of his tree-trunk gallows, the faint odour was only enough to set-off the scent of the flowers.

To the gallows comes a varied bag of robbers. The vermin list of a typical North-country estate included in a recent season 133 stoats, 36 weasels, 62 cats, 98 rats, 115 hedgehogs, 10 hawks, 381 jackdaws, 82 rooks, 23 carrion crows, and 52 magpies--a total of nearly a thousand head. The rats included would probably only be those caught incidentally in the vermin traps, not the far greater number killed during special campaigns by ferret, gun and dog. Hedgehogs are usually spared the indignity of the gallows. Though a keeper cheerfully carries a stoat in the pockets of his Sunday coat--and we have known him in an emergency to put a fox into his pocket--he knows that to pocket hedgehogs means the entertainment of their numerous and active dependants. Of cats only the tails are exhibited, and they are discreetly chosen, the keeper avoiding very striking tails that might be recognised. It would be bad policy on his part to advertise dead cats too freely. He has no desire to make enemies.

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The Gallows Martyrs

Though kestrels, unhappily, are still brought to the gallows, with the barn-owl and other creatures innocent of injury to game, keepers grow more discriminating in the matter of vermin. Education has had its effect--it has taught the men to think, and to act according to reason rather than convention. The old men remain obstinate, and we remember how vainly we wasted an hour's good argument on one old fellow who seemed to hold badgers chiefly responsible for his ruined game-nests. It was at a keepers' dinner, an annual entertainment given by the Hunt. Only one badger remained out of a colony that formerly had inhabited our friend's preserves; and he expressed a firm intention of "fetching her hout on it." In a rash moment he went so far as to declare that he would prefer three litters of fox cubs to one of badgers. Overhearing this, the Hunt secretary made a good point by saying: "Very well, my friend; if you kill this badger, next time hounds come your way we shall expect to find at least three litters of cubs." It was notorious that every fox seen on this keeper's ground was, according to him, a mangy one and therefore "best put out of the way."

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Once Trapped, Twice Shy

Some creatures, after they have been trapped and have escaped, learn the lesson of their lives, and are never trapped again, while others find no moral at the end of their adventure, and live to adorn the gallows. It is very seldom that a rat is trapped twice. Scores escape from traps at the expense of a leg; this is a common matter, but a man may trap vermin for a lifetime and yet never catch a three-legged rat. Stoats, on the other hand, far less cunning than rats, are often trapped again after escaping with the loss of a foot. We have known a stoat trapped by its last remaining leg, after having been about for a long time on one leg and three stumps. A keeper who was at special pains to preserve the foxes on his ground was much upset by the way in which his neighbours killed them. One year his anxiety for his cubs was so great that he caught them all in weak gins--and released them. He knew that after this experience the cubs would never allow themselves to be again caught in a gin. On the same principle, keepers sometimes net and release their own partridges, hares and rabbits, to save them from falling into the meshes of poachers. In the ordinary way, the fox is never caught in a trap set for other vermin--or foxes would have been extinct years ago. If they could be trapped as easily as the ordinary cat, twenty-four hours would be enough for catching every fox in the country.

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Cunning Trappers

The skilled trapper, setting a baited trap for vermin, places it at such a distance from the bait that the creature he wishes to catch cannot reach the food without treading on the pan. Just when it can reach the prize is the moment when it is most likely to overstep the safety-line: desire overcomes suspicion. A fox, if so minded, can reach over the pan, and take the bait of a trap properly set for vermin, without risking a pad. Yet he seldom takes a bait: he detects the scent of man for a longer time than a trap is likely to remain unvisited. A keeper with an experience of more than twelve years vouches for it that though he used a hundred traps for vermin he never lost a bait through a fox, nor the Hunt a fox through a bait. But one keeper surpassed the cunning of the fox. A certain fox had troubled him greatly by too frequent visits to his poultry-run. He decided to attempt to trap it at the bottom of a chalk-pit near by, where the fox went to eat his suppers. Before setting his trap he sacrificed some half-dozen chickens on different days, with a two-fold object: in order to practise throwing a chicken from the top of the chalk-pit so that it should fall exactly where he desired, and in order to cause the fox to expect to find a meal in the pit. One fine day he set his trap. Then he bided his time until his scent should have passed away: and after four or five days he killed another chicken. Making his way to the top of the chalk-pit, he threw the chicken into a bush at the bottom, where the fox could reach it only by treading on the pan of the trap, which it did that night, at the cost of its life.

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The Time to Catch a Weasel