The Woodcraft of Gipsies
Gipsies and gamekeepers have enough in common to make them deadly foes. They share an intimate knowledge of the ways of wild creatures. They are skilled trackers and crafty trappers. They are hedgerow men; born to the hedgerow, trained to know the meaning of every hole, and hollow, and run. Their eyes read the story of the hedge as the scholar's the printed page; hedge-lore is their second nature, and it is as though an instinct tells them where the partridge has built, where the hedgehog has buried himself, or where the rabbits are crouching. In their knowledge of the ways of rabbits and hares keepers and gipsies stand alone; and it often happens that all the knowledge and craft of the one class is pitted against the cunning and knowledge of the other. Between keepers and gipsies it is always war.
The keeper detests nothing more than a gipsies' camp. His eyes take no more pleasure in their red rags spread on the bushes than might the eyes of a bull. A gipsy camp means to the keeper so much dirt, so much thieving, so many lies, so much the more trouble, and so many the fewer rabbits in his preserves. The gipsies' cauldron, steaming at dusk over a fragrant fire of wood, brings only the bitter knowledge that some of the birds or beasts he is paid to preserve are stewing in the pot. Speak to him of gipsies, and scorn flashes in his eyes, anger flushes on his face. "They be always a-shirking about wi' a dog or two, perkin' into everything," an old keeper once said to us. "They can't let nothing bide."
A gipsy brought to trial for larceny made oath that his law allowed him to take as much from others every day as sufficed for his maintenance. That was more than three hundred years ago; and gipsies still faithfully believe in and take advantage of that law. In our experience, we have known one gipsy who was honest; he was famous for his honesty. His blameless character was so much appreciated that he was allowed to pitch his tent in an old ox-drove, where it ran past a sheltering wood. Within the wood the keeper had buried four-dozen traps; and it chanced that the leaves drifted over his traps, so that when he came to find them he hunted the ground in vain. One day the gipsy's boy came to the keeper's cottage. He said that while picking wood for his father's fire he had trodden on something hard, which turned out to be a heap of traps, and that his father, thinking they must belong to the keeper, had sent him to tell the story. Where is another gipsy in England who would throw away such a chance?
Gipsy Lies
Gipsies are certainly good sportsmen, after their own fashion. But one seldom hears of a gipsy shooting with a gun; the gun speaks too loudly. The gipsy makes sport with dogs, ferrets, and nets. He takes no open risks; he holds it to be a disgraceful thing to be caught red-handed. And if caught he never makes confession. No matter how red his hands, there is always an excuse. His horse is found feeding, perhaps, on the farmer's crops. Then the horse must have broken loose unbeknown. Or his dog crosses the road, leveret in mouth. Then, "He picked un up dead, killed by a stoat what I seed a-sniffin' about." His dog has snapped up a sitting partridge. "It must be one as they beggarin' foxes 'ave killed." Or the gipsy himself, hunting a rabbit in a hedge, is taken in the act of knocking over the rabbit with his stick. All was done in mistake for a rat. The keeper remarks that he has lost a fine clutch of eggs—olive-brown eggs: he hints that the gipsy knows something about it. Innocently comes the question: "They sart o' eggs be pison, bain't they?" If caught with nets and ferrets on a rabbit burrow, a fine tale he has to tell of poachers who ran away at his approach, leaving all their tackle.
A keeper, who had strict orders to allow no gipsies to stop on his ground, one day came across a strong swarm, and saw clearly that they intended to stay the night. But in reply to his marching orders, they pleaded that they wished to stay only long enough to make some tea; they promised they would be gone by the time the keeper returned, in a couple of hours. So he went away, but went no farther than behind the nearest hedge: whence he heard himself described in a picturesque and blood-curdling fashion, and heard the declaration also that the gipsies had no intention of budging an inch for such a blue-livered, red-nosed piece of pulp as he. Thereupon the keeper took a run and a jump, and landed his eighteen stone self and his leaded stick in the gipsies' midst, sending their pots and pans far-flying. The gipsies snatched burning sticks from the fire, and a desperate fight began, but they soon had enough of that eighteen stone of angry keeper.
Long-netters
In autumn, rabbits receive special attention from the long-net poachers. On a night not too dark or windy, yet windy and dark enough, the long-netters find all omens propitious. To begin with, the rabbits are now in prime condition. Then there is no fear of a hard frost to make the fixing of net-pegs a difficulty, or to allow the sound of footfalls to be carried far through the silence of night. And rabbits are plentiful; as yet their ranks have been thinned by no serious covert shooting. To crown all, the market is ready and expectant, for the chance of a sale of stolen rabbits has not been spoilt by the large surplus bags of genuine sportsmen. A warm night best suits the poachers' object, with the wind blowing towards the side of the selected wood—enough wind to prevent a panic among the rabbits through sound or scent of danger while the gear is fixed, yet not enough to deter them from turning out in goodly numbers, and journeying some distance from the wood to feed. The nets are set up all along the side of the wood, then poachers with dogs or drag-lines make a circuit and drive the feeding rabbits home, and to their doom.
Training Rabbits
Keepers have found it more or less possible to train rabbits to a mode of life which shall baffle the long-net poachers. By giving them regular courses of driving-in at night they will take to feeding chiefly by day, and will grow very suspicious of the sound of a footfall after dark. Where there are not enough rabbits to justify special precautions and continual watching, long-netting may be made difficult by turning cattle at night into the grass fields bordering the woods. Not only will the cattle be sure to take an inquisitive interest in the long-netting, but they will have something to say to the dogs used for driving in, and will quite upset their work. In one place some poachers were baffled after a curious fashion. A local gang had set up some seven hundred yards of new netting, worth about ten guineas, and had gone off to round up the rabbits, when another gang from a distant part of the county arrived on the scene. The curses they heaped on their luck soon gave way to blessings—at any rate, they were quick to see the chance of poaching something more valuable than rabbits. They rolled up the new nets and fled. Then the men of the first gang returned in the wake of the rabbits, which had found nothing to impede their rush to cover. Curses were deeper and stronger than those breathed before. The men decided in the end to put their case and themselves unreservedly into the hands of the police, who telephoned to the nearest railway station, and captured the poachers with their poaching brethren's gear and their own rolled up in blankets.
Why Birds Flock
Why birds and beasts flock, no doubt, is for mutual protection from natural foes. One has heard of swallows nesting on a cliff beneath an eagle's eyrie, yet having nothing to fear from the eagle's attack because of their combination; and every one knows how a party of small birds will defy a hawk, or will mob and rout a cuckoo or a day-flying owl. Possibly the reason for the great congregation of sparrows in one chosen tree in a London square is mutual protection from cats. Food is a most important factor in flocking; the keeper knows that the scarcer the food of partridges the greater is their tendency to pack. Birds may pack at night for mutual warmth—as when titmice snuggle on branches, and wrens, to the number of ten or twenty, crowd a hole in the thatch. Partridges gain something in warmth in snowy weather by their habit of jugging at night—a good covey on a yard of ground. But examination of the spot where they have passed the night shows that the main pack has been divided into comparatively small parties, in the same way as there were small parties among the great herds of buffalo that travelled as one column across the plains of America. Sheltered hollows are naturally chosen for jugging, where the keen edge of the wind passes over the birds' heads. There is not always safety or benefit in numbers; a flock may attract foes where individuals would pass unnoticed, or may make short work of food which would keep an individual for many days. With insects, great congregations may be harmful, if an advantage to their bird enemies. Presumably, flocking is a matter of general convenience.
During the first fortnight of October little parties of fieldfares from Scandinavia drift over the fields, chuckling in their throaty way, redwings are seen, our wood-pigeons are reinforced by countless thousands from overseas, snipe come in, woodcock will soon be here, parties of goldcrests, newly arrived, cry their sharp notes among the larches, and the winter flocks of tits, with goldcrests, tree-creepers, and nuthatches busily move in the woods. Everywhere birds are in flocks. Chaffinches, greenfinches, and sparrows move in vast congregations, plovers circle in clouds above the fallows, flocks of rooks unite in the evening and thousands upon thousands of starlings rise, fall, and circle in perfect unison, filling the air with the rushing noise of wings.
The Companies of Rats
Many animals snuggle together for warmth in bitter weather—as the squirrels and the rats. Those who go ratting in hedges and dells in the winter know they may try a dozen freshly used burrows without finding a rat—when suddenly from a single hole the rats will come pouring out in a stream of fur. Twenty or more rats will lie together in one hole. They are clever enough to block up a hole on the windward side to keep out the draught—so that a rat-hole newly stopped with soil, turnip leaves, or grass, is almost certain indication that rats are within. They store food for winter, and the keeper may find it more difficult to secure his potatoes from frost than from the attack of the most numerous of his furred foes.
The Fall
With the fall of the leaf we find the things we sought diligently in the summer in vain. Within a foot of the path we trod almost daily, we see, for the first time, where a pheasant brought off her brood; in the fork of a slender birch-pole is that jay's nest for which we long hunted—appearing now as a thick, deep wood-pigeon's nest; and where the bracken has died down are the whitening bones of a rabbit which, though his death-place was marked by the keeper's eyes, was not to be found. A single leaf of June may hide a bird's secret from prying eyes. By noting the things seen in the fall of the leaf we learn best how to find summer's treasuries.
Late and Early Autumns
A man of grumbles, equal to the farmers, yet the gamekeeper is prepared to admit that a late autumn brings him one blessing. The leaves so screen his roosting pheasants that there is little fear of night-shooting in his coverts. Accordingly, he sleeps peacefully during many hours which he would have to devote to watching in a wet early season. Deep in his heart, all the same, he has a certain liking for the hours passed in watching over his birds at night. They bring him rheumatism; but also an excitement that adds much to the savour of existence. Not to know from moment to moment when his head may be smashed in is a stimulating change from dealing with small game whose worst powers of resistance are limited to a dig from the spurs of a winged cock, or a scratch from the claws of a netted rabbit.
Hares in the Garden
As winter sets in, hares and rabbits are tempted to pay casual nocturnal visits to the garden. To fence the garden securely may be inconvenient—and unless the work is done thoroughly, not forgetting the bottoms of gates, it is almost useless. And possibly only a few plants are in danger, such as carnations or parsley, the special garden favourites of hares and rabbits. So the simplest plan may be to wire in the few plants or flower-beds that are threatened. Or a string may be fixed at about eight inches off the ground, after being saturated with one of the fluids used for tainting rabbits from their burrows. This is useful when isolated carnations are dotted about in herbaceous borders, or when there are several rows of Brussels sprouts in different parts of the garden; hares are very fond of Brussels sprouts.
A mysterious affair occurred in a garden, which a gamekeeper was called in to investigate. It appeared that the inhabitants of the house had been awakened in the night by a din as if the roof of a tin church had fallen off, a din proved to be associated with a piece of corrugated iron in the garden, used as a stand for pots and pans. The mystery to be explained was what had upset the stand and the pots. A tuft of the fur of a hare on the tin gave the clue, with a nibbled patch of parsley a few yards away. It was determined that a cat had come suddenly round a corner on a hare enjoying an unlawful feast, and that the hare in her fear had dashed headlong into the corrugated iron, thus raising pandemonium; one effect was the hare came no more to that garden.
Food for Pheasants
The cost of feeding pheasants is a question of some interest at this season—to those who must foot the bill. The keeper is commonly blamed for running up too big a bill; a happy medium between his maximum and his employer's minimum is probably the correct amount of money required for food. The object of supplying corn to pheasants is not always understood. It is less to feed the pheasants—for they can usually exist on natural food, if not very thick on the ground—than to keep them from straying, by giving them a pleasing and profitable employment. That keeper makes a mistake and is extravagant who strews maize on a clean-swept ride. His pheasants in a few minutes will swallow a cropful and will be free during the rest of the day to seek and find mischief. They explore foreign woods, and if they like them, stay away from home. But they may be kept where they should be if pleasantly engaged in feeding. Straw-corn—such as rough rakings and damaged sheaves from the tops of ricks which are being threshed—not only serves to feed pheasants, but forces them to spend the greater part of their time, which otherwise would be spare time, in searching for each mouthful. One plan is to tie bundles of straw-corn round the trunks of trees so that the pheasants must jump to peck the ears. The empty straw is piled up again and again for the birds to scratch down; it is only necessary to throw in a little loose grain. Such a miniature stack will amuse the birds for hours at a time, and helps to keep them at home.
The Lingering Leaves
Leaves may still cling to the newest growths of underwood long after the older underwood is gaunt and bare. The sap, perhaps, is fresher and more vigorous in the younger wood—prolonging the period of ripening—and the new buds have not pushed out far enough to dislodge the leaves. In coppices that have been thinned one sees how unusually big, and how strong and enduring, are the leaves on the shoots of tree-stumps—as though the whole energy of what was once a tree is concentrated in the few shoots and leaves. Where hedges are clipped, dead leaves remain in place far into the winter, possibly because, owing to injury, the growth is retarded of those layers of cork which form to assist the buds in dislodging the worn-out leaves. On the sides of rides trimmed annually the leaves form quite a screen in late autumn—to which one sportsman put down his many misses at rabbits, and ordered his keepers to walk along every ride and pick off all the leaves that remained. The shoots of underwood that has been cut always grow more luxuriantly in a hot, dry summer than in a rainy one; every copse-worker will tell you this is the case, though we have not come across one who could solve the riddle.
Planning Big Shoots
In early November many keepers are putting the perfecting-touches to plans that have been maturing all through the year. From the second day of February the keeper whose work is not merely work, but the most absorbing interest the world has to offer, has been weighing continuously a thousand details—studying each in its relation to others—scheming to arrange all so that in combination they shall bring the best possible results when the big days of the shooting season come to pass. Few shooting men realise the immense importance of apparently trivial details. Let a single one—such as the exact placing of a "stop"—be forgotten or disregarded, and the whole of a day's sport by modern methods may be ruined. Many good beats, many good days, have been brought to naught by a sportsman coolly and without permission despatching an important "stop" on an errand. And afterwards he will protest in all good faith that he commandeered the "stop" only because he seemed to be standing idly at a corner, as if waiting for something to do.
Plots and Counter-Plots
On the shoulders of the head keeper falls the responsibility of all the mistakes that mar a day's sport. His position is unfortunate, for though he may perfect every arrangement, the success of the day must depend on good shooting and the perfect carrying out of orders. His plans must be set in motion amid every kind of distraction—a general in command on a battlefield is not more harassed by questions, plots, and counter-plots than the commander of a shoot. Guns are no sooner told where to go than they inquire the way—one is asking querulously where he will find his cartridges, another is sure his position is hopeless, while the beaters require constant attention, for if they are left alone to move on to the next beat they will lose themselves as a matter of course. In partridge-driving the keeper's nerves are stretched to breaking-point. Half a drive is finished, and not a bird has shown itself; the suspense grows almost unendurable before the swirling clouds of birds at last suddenly rise, and go on beautifully in twos and tens and twenties—in a stream that no man can count. The great art is to give even shooting through the day, and to distribute sport evenly among the guns, without favouritism—unless, indeed, orders are that the cream of the sport must pass the way of an important personage. If a keeper, for reasons of his own, should wish the bulk of the game to go to one quarter, he can manage this by retarding one end of the line of beaters, or by ordering certain beaters to tap with their staves more vigorously than the others—and by this stratagem his partiality is hidden completely from the sportsmen.
Indian Summer
A late spell of midsummer heat makes it seem as though summer indeed has lingered in the woods. With the oak-trees still heavily canopied with green leaves, the season of pheasant-shooting seems an anomaly. A varied bunch of wild flowers may be picked, many belonging to June rather than to the months of nuts and berries. Primroses bloom freely. Flowers are to be found everywhere, and cottage gardens are ablaze with Michaelmas and tall yellow daisies and dahlias; the coming of the first keen frost will mean a floral massacre. On hedges laden with blackberries and the red bryony berries there are sprays of honeysuckle, and there are many bright blooms of scabious, knapweed, corn-poppy, daisy, harebell, violet, and scarlet pimpernel. Even some of the old cock pheasants seem to imagine that April has come, judging by their spring-like crowing, and some of the hens nest who should have done with nests by the end of July. One very late nest we saw with eleven eggs, on which the hen was only beginning to sit, as shown by a broken egg. She had been cut out by the mowing of seed-clover heads, but returned to her mistaken duties, and was sitting on the evening of September 30.
Winter Sleep
On a perfect summer-like day of autumn, it is strange to think that hedgehogs are going to their winter quarters, and that sleep is overtaking so many creatures—bats that hang amid the dark rafters of the barn roofs; toads in the mud of the ponds; field-mice, water-voles, lizards, badgers, squirrels, hedgehogs curled in the ditches, snugly rolled up in a great ball of dry grass and leaves; and the dormouse, "seven sleeper," as it is called locally, or "dorymouse," "sleeper," or "sleeping-mouse." Much country weather-lore, in all parts of the world, is based on the storing of nuts by squirrels, the building of winter houses by musk-rats, the early or late cutting of winter supplies of wood by beavers, the working of moles, who are supposed before winter comes to prepare basins for the storage of worms, and the laying up of food on the part of bears. "The hedgehog," said the writer of "Husbandman's Practice," "commonly hath two holes or vents in his den or cave, the one toward the south and the other toward the north, and look which of them he stops; thence will come great storms and winds follow." The badger in his winter retreat certainly will block up holes from which draughts blow.
A Dish of Hedgehog
Though hibernating hedgehogs will remain above ground all the winter, in the hollows where leaves to cover them have accumulated, most retire to the rabbit-burrows. They are seldom found when ferreting operations are going forward, because the ferrets do not care to have dealings with them—though when hedgehogs are skinned or opened, ferrets relish their flesh as food. Keepers do not care to carry hedgehogs home, on account of the many unpleasant things that they distribute between himself and his ferrets. It is true that gipsies and others eat hedgehogs, and this is the time when they are in season for those who appreciate them, being at their fattest, as are all creatures about to retire for the winter. Gipsies caught trespassing at this time of year are always ready with the excuse that they are searching merely for hedgehogs—even if dogs and nets and ferrets happen to be in their possession. That they prefer hedgehog to rabbit is a tale for a grandmother. Yet they know well how to make a tasty dish of hedgehog. They burn off the bristles, split the prickly beast down his back, and broil him on a forked stick over a fire of wood. That is the quickest and cleanest way of cooking out of doors; and, for those who appreciate things grilled, the best. But for those whose taste is toward cooking with all the natural juices conserved, the elephant's-foot process is recommended. Take not merely your hedgehog's feet, but his whole body, "prickliwigs" and all, and encase in a jacket of clay, and bury in hot ashes. Before serving, peel off the clay and the prickles at the same time. Of hedgehog also may be made a stew of savoury brown. So that the stew's beginning may be in keeping with the traditions of the immortal cooks, take an onion stuck with cloves, then, having browned your neatly jointed hedgehog in a frying-pan, by means of a few ounces of butter (together with the clove-stuck onion), immerse it in good stock, to which add a few chopped truffles, and any other such appetising things you can lay hands on—a glass or so of champagne or other good white wine will not be amiss, while a squeeze of lemon-juice is held to effect a decided improvement. By simmering, reduce the liquid contents of the cooking-pan by one-half: and serve hot, garnished with little sippets of toast. Should you tire of hedgehog cooked in these ways, any of the numerous rabbit recipes may be applied. It is to be presumed that most people would soon have enough of the hedgehog dishes.