Useful Work by Game-Birds
A dry summer is bad for swedes—among other things. Many grow disfigured by wart-like excrescences about the size of a pea. Therein lurk grubs, as partridges and pheasants know. They chip off the warts, and one may see the rusty-looking hole in the centre of each one whence the grub has been taken. All round the swedes these detached warts may be seen, lying face uppermost, and proving the usefulness of game-birds, particularly partridges.
Life of the Cornfield
All through the year the cornfield gives food and shelter to a host unnumbered—from seed-time to harvest, in the days of stubble and of fallow. To all manner of creatures in fur and feather, insects as the grain in number, grubs below ground, butterflies above, to rank weeds and flowers, the cornfield gives more freely than it yields bread to man. Seagulls come from the coast. Peewits make the field their home in the spring. There are congregations of sparrows and finches. Hosts of starlings that go to roost in the reeds. Wood-pigeons stuff their crops to bursting; turtle-doves come and go. Yellow-hammers sing in the hedges through the midsummer days. The corn-crake runs swiftly through the stems where the partridge has her young brood. Rooks follow the plough, with wagtails that run and dart over the furrows as if gliding on ice. Overhead are larks; and the corn-bunting flies heavily from field to field, his legs trailing as if broken. And birds of prey take their toll of the feeding multitudes. All through the year animal life finds sanctuary in the cornfield. Underground are the moles; the harvest mouse weaves its nest in the corn-stems; the rabbit makes a stop in the field near the hedge, and eats the green blades. To the ripening corn the fox brings her cubs to play. In the ditches are hedgehogs; everywhere are rats, mice, and shrew-mice. The hare follows secret paths, and there are stoats and weasels seeking prey, and finding it on every side. But nowadays there is little or no work for our mills, as wheat-field after wheat-field is turned into grass. The miller is only one among ten thousand sufferers.
The days spent in the cornfield must pass pleasantly for the little foxes in a fine summer. In cornfields, unlike hayfields, there is room between the stems for free movement, there is some chance to look about, there is air and light, cover and shade. Corn-stems are firm and dry, but grass-stems hold the soaking moisture of rain and dew, which saturates the skin even through fur and feather, and quite beyond the remedy of dog-like shakings. Wheat, as we have said, is the corn most favoured of all creatures—where not planted too thickly, and growing on ground not over clean, but dotted plentifully with bunches of knapweed, thistles, and bindweed, and intersected by furrows where the corn has grown poorly, and with open spaces bare to the wind and sun. Winged game, in case prompt flight is necessary, find it easier to start up into the air through the straight, stiff ears of wheat than through the ears of oats and barley. Barley that shares the ground with a rank plant of grass-seeds finds small favour among those many creatures that forsake the airless woods in summer.
The Keeper's Hopes
Numbers of hares live all the summer in the cornfields. But while many rabbits are born in the corn, when there is a wood at hand most of them retire by day, returning to the corn to feed at night. No rabbit, in sleekness of fur, is comparable to the rabbit that has lived for a few fine weeks among the corn-stems, for the constant brushing of the stems grooms his coat to a state of wonderful fineness. At any moment rabbits in the corn may meet death from the teeth of stoats or weasels; which in turn run a risk, if a slight one, from the fox's teeth; there are plenty of mole-runs into which they may dive in times of danger. In dry weather, the hedgehogs leave the ditches for the corn; and the cornfield, in real summer weather, when there are no foxes about, is a paradise for pheasants and partridges. The gamekeeper, whatever the weather, clings to the faith that the corn hides most of his birds from his sight. There is comfort in the thought that if the birds live he will see them, but if they are killed, nothing will ever tell him the story of his losses.
Man ploughs and sows, but for every man who eats the bread of the fields a million other mouths have been fed. There is no such perfect sanctuary to wild life as a field of corn. What the corn hides nobody knows; though many would gladly know, and seek eagerly to find. The gamekeeper guesses shrewdly what the corn may hide; later he will find what has been hidden, and it is as well for his peace of mind that he can only speculate, at this season, on the game in the field, for he is powerless to interfere. The community of the cornfield is almost safe from man, while the corn stands. If any creature moves in the corn, the stems, bowing to the breeze, cover its progress.
Finding the Fox
Many a fox family spends the entire summer in the cornfield, and no man is the wiser; but if any should discover the secret, it will be the gamekeeper. Only a giant could see, from the ground, the spot where, in a level cornfield, a family of cubs is taking shelter; the keeper's plan is to climb into a tree, so that his eyes may sweep over acre upon acre at a glance, and spy out the foxes. Even if the nearest tree be a mile or more distant from the playground and refectory of the cubs, his trusty "spy-glass" will reveal the secret—and while he keeps his place in the look-out tree he may signal to a companion, and point the way to the family's eviction. From the top of a tree on the edge of a wood we have found the secret place of a vixen in a field of rank rye; and when we came to the spot, where a large patch of the rye had been rolled flat, we could have filled a wheelbarrow with the remains of partridges, pheasants, rabbits, and hares.
Harvest Sport
With the harvest comes the great sporting festival of the countryman, in whom alone survives the instinct to hunt for food—though the days have gone when every man killed his own game. This sport of the harvest-field is the countryman's by custom, courtesy, tolerance, favour, and not by law. It is sport for the sake of food, and not for the sake of sport. The quarry is rabbit. Only two people have a real right to rabbits, and that a concurrent right—the farmer in occupation of the land, and the holder for the time being of the sporting rights. But during the cutting of the corn few farmers or sportsmen deny their local workers the privilege and pleasure of catching rabbits. Where permission is withheld it is usually by a small farmer, who looks to the rabbits to help with the rent. The keeper is the last to make objection to the catching of the rabbits, provided that the hares and the winged game are not only spared, but given a chance to escape. He even finds it a profitable policy to help catch the rabbits, and hand over what he catches to be shared out to those who have failed in the scurry and scramble of the sport. If there is any rule or custom about possession of the spoil it is that he who kills a rabbit keeps it. This may be a good rule for those who are lucky—those whose work brings them into each field as it is cut, who excel with stick and stone, or are better runners than their fellows. But it is a bad rule for those who are unlucky; while a carter who sits on a binder from daylight to dark for a month has perhaps the best chance, another who must spend his time drilling turnips, or ploughing a distant field, will never so much as see a rabbit.
The Luck of the Game
The self-binder has favoured the chance of escape for those rabbits that camp out in the corn. In these days of neatly tied sheaves the rabbit that makes a dash, with a little dodging and jumping, may find a fair course, and can see ahead; and it is almost impossible to run down a rabbit that sets its face from the corn to some other known shelter, unless the distance is very great. In olden days, when the corn was not tied as it was cut, but was thrown out loosely by the rakes of the reaper, then the chances of escape were all against the rabbit. He could not run through the corn, or jump over it, nor could he even see where he was going. All that the harvester had to do was to hurl himself on the corn where he suspected the rabbit to lurk, and pin it down. Sometimes, while he was feeling for the rabbit, it would bolt unseen through his legs, to fall an easy prey to another harvester, perhaps some fat old dame who had never been known to run. The sport is full of luck. A man may run until he and the rabbit are at the point of exhaustion; the man falls, but the rabbit struggles on for a yard or two farther, and another catches the prize. We have known a man, in falling exhausted, to actually fall on the rabbit he was chasing. Once let a rabbit get clear away from the standing corn, the speediest runner can do no more than keep an eye on its bobbing tail during the first hundred yards of its dash for freedom. But by ruthlessly following the tail, in a large field a man may walk it down; for a rabbit will soon run itself to a standstill, or in despair will creep to hide beneath the cut corn. The rabbit is faint-hearted; if he once loses his bearings, he loses his senses also; but it is surprising with what perseverance he will run when he can see a haven of safety ahead.
Rabbit-Catchers' Craft
The man of experience, who knows his rabbits, does not unduly exert himself. Taking things calmly, he may catch more rabbits than others who are better runners but more excitable. He knows that the great thing is to stand still, rather waiting for the rabbits to come to him than going after them. As a binder works round a field, he moves quietly in the opposite way; then, catching sight of a rabbit crouching beneath a piece of knapweed, some tangled bindweed, or a thistle, his upraised stick falls with certain aim, and instantly he puts into force the rustic law of possession. Or, moving quietly along, he will hold in his right hand a heavy stone, while several others are held in the other hand behind his back; when he sees a rabbit far within the corn, his stones fly with crushing force, and the rabbit's day is done. Sometimes towards the finish of the cutting he will take up his position far from the frenzied throng around the binder, at some quiet spot at the edge of the haven wood; here, watching the rabbits that have escaped the sticks and stones of the main body, he tries to turn them as they run the last few yards of their course. If he succeeds, the rabbit, already worn by a long run, makes a last desperate spurt, but can go no more than a few score yards. Should the rabbit run past him, its course unchecked by his frantic yells and flourishes, he troubles himself no further, and saves his breath.
Among the Corn
It is when the binder is going on its last few rounds and only a small patch of corn is left standing in the middle of the field that excitement reaches its height. Hitherto no one has been allowed to enter the standing corn; but now all sense of decency and restriction is thrown to the winds, and the end is simply a mad scramble for the rabbits that lurk to the last moment. Sharp eyes have followed the movements of the rabbits by the slight swaying to and fro of the ears of the corn; but now the corn is alive with rabbits, and among them are hurled the frenzied bodies of men, women, and children, who hit wildly and blindly with their sticks. Sticks and stones rain on rabbits, corn, and men. And on the edge of the fray stands the quiet figure of the man who will not exert himself, who watches for the few rabbits who come alive from the corn. One other quiet and calm figure is in the heart of the turmoil—the gamekeeper, who bestirs himself only in the interests of game. With ever-watchful eye and warning voice he sternly represses those who, overcome by the lust of killing, would recklessly slaughter, besides rabbits, the young pheasants or the crouching leverets. Great is the relief of the keeper when the last corn is cut and the harvest festival of the countryman is over for the year.
The Last to Leave
This free and easy sport which the cutting of the corn provides for a mixed and excited crowd makes a scene very familiar in any English countryside. The driver of the binder, as he is carried round and round the cornfield, in ever-narrowing circles, gains a good view of the rabbits and the game, stealing about in their fear; and now and again he may be observed to dismount to club a rabbit with his whip-handle. On farms where the rabbits are considered the natural rights of the harvesters, old hands grow very cunning at making the most of their chance when the last few yards of standing corn remain to be cut, and the rabbits, with which the little strip of cover is seething, at last bolt out, to be fallen upon by the men in waiting, and to be slain as fast as sticks can rain blows. Rabbits remain in their sanctuary of corn long after the fox has stolen away, and the pheasants, rats, stoats, and weasels have followed after.
In the Woods
It is a matter of importance that the woodland rides shall be trimmed before harvest-time, so that the woods may be sanctuaries to the corn's evicted creatures. On many shoots this trimming is left to a woodman; he may be responsible for all such work over a large estate let to various tenants. As a consequence, the rides of some of the woods are likely to remain untrimmed until just before the time of covert-shooting, when the work will seriously disturb game. Keepers prefer to trim the rides on their beats themselves, at such odd moments as between the feeding of hand-reared pheasants, and with the help of labourers who are glad enough to earn a few extra shillings during the long evenings of July. The work in this way is done betimes, and all the better for shooting purposes. The harvest migration of game to the woods tells many a story to the keeper. Foxes who have spent a happy summer entirely in the game-stocked cornfields do not come in unnoticed. Fresh-made runs in the fences leading to the coverts tell of the passage of stoats. Hedgehogs work their way in from the fields; they are more numerous than most people imagine, and the keeper holds them responsible for many a ruined game-nest.
Weasel Families
As the summer wanes, families of stoats and weasels break up, and parents cease to have any dealings with their offspring. This severance of the family ties throws a light upon wild creatures and their young. Having given their young ones a good start in life, many seem to dismiss them from their minds. One grove will not nurture two robins, and the day comes when Cock Robin will drive his young hopeful into the world, and will attack him fiercely if he dare again approach his presence. The wild rabbit that on one day, in defence of her young ones, faces and drives away a stoat, her deadliest foe, on the next day leaves them to the mercy of fate—a new family having arrived. The mother stoat stays with her young ones for a long while, sometimes until they are much larger than herself; but sooner or later comes the day of parting.
Mother Stoat
She is an admirable mother. Her litters are large ones—numbering as a rule from five to eight, though occasionally as many as twelve are found—and the feeding of these hungry mouths can only be a work of desperate energy in the weaning days. It is a fine sight to see the mother foraging at the head of her grown-up family. A long time passes before the young stoats can cater for themselves. The mother does not leave them until they are perfectly qualified to hunt on their own accord—which their innate blood-thirstiness at last prompts them to do in preference to eating food which their mother has captured. In the young stoat's natural love of hunting lies the cause of the final severance of family ties. With many animals it appears that motherly solicitude continues relatively to the relief obtained through the young taking their mother's milk. Yet in the stoat there appears to be a scrap of the human mother's reasoning love for her children. We have known a stoat whose young had been destroyed, when as large as herself, to seek them out, and with diligent care and labour remove their bodies to a distant resting-place, where she stayed by them for days, though she appeared no longer to bring them their former abundant supplies of food. When a stoat, the mother of a family, is killed, her young do not fail to come to her—but in this case there is no disinterested love. The apparent affection springs chiefly from desire of food. No food forthcoming, the young stoats quickly begin to devour their unfortunate mother. The gamekeeper knows that having once caught a mother stoat, he will have little difficulty in catching her family also; but having captured the family, it is by no means easy to secure the mother.
When June comes, litters of young stoats, each one as big as the mother, are strong enough to travel about, but for many weeks they remain together, and depend for food on what their mother catches. Like fox cubs, they spend their days eating, sleeping, and playing. Without the aid of a trained dog the keeper is unlikely to discover the lodging of a litter unless he chances to see the mother going to her young. He may see her entering a burrow, a bavin-pile, a pile of hurdle-rods, or of hurdles, or he may chance to see the young stoats out at play. Should he come upon their playground his sharp eyes instantly note the runs and the signs of rollings in the herbage—the playground is as the playground of fox cubs in miniature. The comings and goings of a mother stoat are cunning and silent. Once we found a place where a litter had been lodging for weeks within a few yards of a man who had been making hurdles day after day, and his report was that he had not seen "ne'er a sign of a stoo-at." The family had gone when we found their lodging, and it was evident that the old stoat had moved her young ones at night just before they were old enough to proclaim their presence by coming out from their wood-pile to play.
Lurking-places
The keeper's eyes are always open for stoats. They are fond of prying about the base of a gate-post, where a trap is often set to good purpose. Then they delight in frisking along the middle of a ride, especially after rain. There the keeper sets a tunnel trap, covering it with bundles of brushwood; and every stoat that comes along will explore so likely a lurking-place for a rabbit, and each naturally enters by the fatal passage. Those heaps of corn-rakings placed in the woods for pheasants form a favourite stoat-haunt. Here they find a warm, dry lair, and good hunting, for the corn attracts a crowd of small birds. Chancing once to right an overturned sheep-trough which had been lying inverted for some weeks, we disturbed the peace of a couple of stoats which had made the trough their home. They were gone like flashes of lightning, and though we overturned the trough again for their benefit, they had the good sense not to be caught napping a second time.
Not half the stoats that are caught are trapped by bait; for the only bait which is a certain charm is something which the stoat has caught itself, from the enjoyment of which it has been newly disturbed. Many stoats are shot. They pursue young blackbirds and thrushes which hover about the sides of country lanes; and when intent on dragging a blackbird up a bank they give the keeper the easiest of marks. Should his coming drive a feeding stoat to cover, he has only to wait within range for a few minutes for a chance to pull the avenging trigger. Stoats would soon be exterminated if they were attracted to baited traps for the sake of food. It would seem that they come chiefly from curiosity; for though they live on warm flesh and blood, when they fall victims to traps it is usually in those with the bait stale and strong in scent.
Studies in Stoat Ways
We heard a gamekeeper say that he would be better pleased to harbour a litter of cubs on his beat than a litter of stoats. But this was too flattering a compliment to the stealthiest of the keeper's foes: foxes would smile at a comparison between the havoc they play with game interests and all the robber-work of stoats and weasels combined. No doubt the gamekeeper's idea was that while foxes may be found and dealt with according to their deserts without difficulty, stoats may be on the ground and do endless damage before they are detected. With a litter of cubs on his ground the keeper, if minded, may promptly put an end to the nuisance. But he may never congratulate himself that there are no stoats. Where there is game, there stoats must be also. Just where they lurk the keeper may never know; and every art may fail to catch these sly thieves.
The keeper does not wait to see a stoat before he sets his traps; usually when a stoat is caught he sees it for the first time. During the mating season, in the early spring, stoats are trapped most easily. When one has been caught it serves as a lure to attract others. The body is suspended just out of the reach of curious relatives and friends, and a neatly hidden trap is set beneath it. Since rabbits supply the staple food of stoats, they serve as bait: anything that suggests newly done rabbit work is almost sure to attract the attention of any passing stoat. So after setting a trap just inside a hole in the track of stoats, the keeper with his stick scratches up a little fresh soil on each visit to the trap, to imitate what he calls the "ferricking" of a rabbit. A hollow underwood stump is always a likely place for a stoat. Rabbits love to sit in such stumps, and a stoat never misses a chance to investigate them, surprising the rabbit before he can scoot away, and then himself lodging in a recess of the stump, on a cosy couch made from the fur of his victim.
The First
Nowadays, the First on a large shoot passes much as other days, for October has usurped the prestige of September, and the big partridge drives are reserved until that month. But when the keeper goes home to his tea on the First, his wife, with ever-ready sympathy, is likely enough to notice "summat's up." There is a scowl on the tanned face, and a vindictive look in the keen eyes, and the way in which the thirsty throat is flushed with a pint or so of tea suggests a forlorn attempt to drown trouble. At last the murder is out: "They pot-hunters," growls the keeper, "they has bin and wiped out half my birds." Shots have been heard all day near his boundary; on the neighbouring small shoot the First has not been allowed to go by unhonoured.
Early Birds
With the First come poachers, anxious to win the big rewards paid for the earliest birds to reach the market. Netting is not so prevalent as of old, but more of it is done than most people imagine, since netting is practised in the dark, and in fields easily entered from public roads. The best preventive is to dress the fields in which the birds chiefly jug—stubbles, pastures, and fallows—with small pieces of tangled wire-netting, and small bushes, left lying on the ground, so that they may roll with the net, and entangle it the more hopelessly. A sneaking method of poaching is to set gins in the partridges' dusting-places, such as ash-heaps, the remains of burnt couch—the keeper forms a habit of probing such dust-baths with his stick. As dawn breaks on September 1, the poacher conceals himself in a ditch commanding a fallow where the coveys jug. Then he sends his dog or his son to stroll casually and slowly to and fro across the field at the far end. The birds, not hard-pressed enough to take wing, make for a furrow, and run in a solid bunch towards the ambush, to be greeted by a heavy charge of shot, calculated to account for several brace. One shot—a rush for the fallen birds—and the poacher has flown.
Walking-up
One hears a great deal of praise lavished on the old-fashioned style of walking-up partridges, to the detriment of driving. True, where birds and cover are not abundant, a bag of fifteen brace or so made by two or three guns will often represent much clever sportsmanship—besides a hard day's tramping and some shots not to be despised. Yet there is a way of walking-up birds which is nothing more nor less than butchery. In September, the partridges are mobbed and worn out by men whose duty it is to drive them from the barer fields into thick roots, there to be walked up—and snuffed out like so many candles at short range. This may be magnificent for the bag, but it is not sport. Again, partridges on occasion may even be walked up in standing corn. That is a moral crime, and ought to be a legal one.
Thoughts on Cubbing
With September, cubbing begins—and the young of the thief of the world must justify their existence by making sport. Many sudden and bewildering shocks the cubs receive. Hitherto their lives have been peaceful enough. No wolf has found them out in the cornfields where they have been learning to hunt their own game; no wild dog has dug a way into the nursery earth. To be hunted is quite a new experience. The cubs are spared at least the dread of anticipation as in the early hours of a September morning they settle to sleep in their soft warm kennel, canopied by bracken and brambles. Dreaming, it may be, of their own night's sport, the cheerful voice of the huntsman, as he urges on his newly entered puppies to draw with their elders, means no more than a general alarm to the cubs' drowsy ears. Again and again the hunt may come, yet a cub may have no thought of a game, with life or death as the stake. Not until the attentions of the hounds become pressing and particular can he awake fully to what cub-hunting means. Then perhaps it is too late. But an old fox is quick enough to hear the first sound of the hunt; he breaks away at an unguarded corner, and is allowed to go.
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.
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.