SPRING
The Keepers' Lot
The position of a gamekeeper in England is a curious one. Admittedly he is among the most skilled and highly trained workers of the countryside. His intimate knowledge of wild life commands respect. Often he is much more than a careful and successful preserver of game—a thoroughly good sportsman, a fine shot. His work carries heavy responsibility; as whether a large expenditure on a shooting property brings good returns—and on him depends the pleasure of many a sporting party. On large estates he is an important personage—important to the estate owner, to the hunt, to the farm bailiff, and to a host of satellites. His value is proved by the many important side-issues of his work—dog-breeding and dog-breaking, or the breaking of young gentlemen to gun work. Yet, in spite of the honourable and onerous nature of his calling, he is paid in cash about the same wage as a ploughman.
Perquisites
The actual wages of a first-class gamekeeper may be no more than a pound a week. A system has sprung up by which he receives, in addition to wages, many recompenses in kind, while his slender pay is fortified by the tips of the sportsman to whom he ministers. This system has bred in him a kind of obsequiousness—he is dependent to a great extent on charity. With a liberal employer he may be well off, and all manner of good things may come his way; but with a mean employer the perquisites of his position may be few and far between.
At the best, he may live in a comfortable cottage, rent free. His coal is supplied to him without cost, and wood from the estate. Milk is drawn freely from the farm—or he may have free pasturage for a cow of his own. A new suit of clothes is presented to him each year. He may keep pigs for his own use, usually at his own expense, but this is a small item, and even here he may be helped out by a surplus of pig-food from the kitchen of the house or from the farms. He has a fair chance to make money by dog-breeding and exhibiting. Then there is vermin and rabbit money which he earns as extra pay, and useful sums may flow into his pocket from the hunt funds. He may keep fowls at his employer's expense, and if not solely for his own use, he has the privilege of a proportion of the eggs, and a reasonable number of the chickens may be roasted or boiled for his own table. The estate gardeners aid him with his gardening operations, and many surplus plants and seeds find their way into his plot. To rabbits he may help himself freely, also to rooks and pigeons. After each shooting party his employer—if a generous master—invites him to take home a brace of pheasants and a hare; and there may be other ways in which game comes to his larder. Commissions and fees of various indeterminate sorts may swell his coffers. All kinds of supplies he secures, if not freely, at reduced prices. And always there is the harvest of tips. Clearly there is every chance for a gamekeeper to receive charity of some form or another, if it is not always offered; and this must tend to weaken that independence which is found by the man who is paid for his labour fairly and squarely in cash.
Pets at the Cottage
One usually sees a pretty assortment of pets about the keeper's cottage, where there are children. The keeper himself is not above a pet animal, though he may not confess it—and, strange to say, the keeper's favourite is often a cat. But you may be sure it is a cat among cats, and without sin—an expert among rats, mice, and sparrows, yet able to sit for hours on the hole of a rabbit, or alone with a canary, and not yield to temptation. At one keeper's cottage a dormouse is to be seen—at this season he is broader than he is long. Here lives "Billy," a buff bantam cock, who will sit on your knee and take a mouthful of bread from your lips; here also is "Tommy," a game-cock, who takes lunch and tea on the inside of the kitchen window-ledge; and here is "Sally," a goose that will lay more than threescore eggs in the spring, lives on grass, likes to explore the cottage's interior, and puts all the dogs to shame as a guard, loudly proclaiming the arrival of strangers. In a coop on a lawn lives a white rabbit, whose mission in life is to keep the grass short; this rabbit will not look at a carrot, but rejoices in bread and milk, and above all in cold chicken. In the yard is a retriever, who is always careful to offer you her right paw in greeting, loves blackberries, and is the special friend of a little terrier. Once there was a pet lamb. On many a little rough grassy grave the keeper's child places wreaths of wild flowers.
Wood-Pigeons
The shooting of pigeons is the keeper's special feather-sport—he is always on the spot to take advantage of favourable circumstances. It goes on in summer as in winter, and remembering the tremendous amount of damage done to pea-fields, corn crops and roots by pigeons, there is a justification for this shooting which cannot be urged in favour of pheasant-shooting. The keeper understands the sport. He knows the pigeons' habits and feeding times, and that concealment is the secret of success. Lying at ease on the ground, with his back to a tree-trunk, he waits in all patience for the pigeons to come to their favourite trees. Or, having noted the part of the feeding-field where the birds alight, he conceals himself in a hedge, or behind bushes arranged by himself, so that from his butt he can shoot comfortably at any bird within range. As birds are shot he sets them up as decoys. A stick about nine inches long is put in the ground, and one pointed end inserted in the pigeon's throat, the bird being set up in a life-like way. Knowing that they are thirsty birds, especially when feeding on the ripe, hard grain, he builds a hut near the pond where the pigeons drink, and if he cannot see them on the ground or in the trees, creeps out to stalk them, and the shots they give as they rise, diving and turning in all directions, are such that no one need despise.
The Keeper's Larder
Wood-pigeons are among the gamekeeper's perquisites. Apart from a very occasional request from "the house" for the wherewithal for pigeon-pie, the pigeons shot are for the benefit of the keeper and his family, and when he shoots more than he requires there are always labourers and others glad of a pigeon or two "to make a pudden." Rabbits, also, are perquisites, but to be sold no more than pigeons. The popular idea is that keepers may help themselves to any game they please—true, they could if so minded. But no matter what a keeper's ethics in other directions, as a rule he deals honourably with the game in his charge. The keeper has no more right to take a brace of birds or a hare without permission than has an ironmonger's assistant to take a coal-scuttle. There is little to be said against the keeper making use of game killed, but not eaten, by foxes or vermin, or of chance-killed game unsuitable for his employer's table. One old keeper was so anxious to make every available pheasant figure in the game-book that he would never keep the brace given him at the end of a day's shooting. Instead, he would include the birds with the bag on the following day, and this he would do day after day.
Free though they are to kill and cook rabbits, few keepers care for them, or eat them often. Most keepers, indeed, would be as pleased to go to penal servitude, or to live in London, as to eat rabbits more often than once a month. This is not because they have eaten too many, but because the smell of rabbits has become distasteful. However, rabbits prove a great help to the keeper with children to feed. Usually his larder is well stocked, and his good-wife has a store of all kinds of dainties in her cupboards—from home-made pickles to home-brewed wine. Often your keeper is a clever gardener; he takes prizes for his vegetables, and he will grow fine cucumbers and even melons under fragments of glass. Something of a cook himself, well accustomed to preparing luxurious meals for his sacred birds, he is a judge of cooks and cooking, as many a keeper's wife has discovered. If she does not know, he can tell her how to prepare a savoury dish which shall have the special advantages of not spoiling through being kept warm or from being warmed up—for the keeper's dinner is a movable feast, and must be ready at any time between noon and night. The sheet-anchor of one such dish is proper home-cured bacon, in winter baked in a pie-dish with alternate layers of parboiled potatoes, for which in summer the contents of eggs beaten just enough to blend the yolks and whites are substituted. Served with new potatoes, it is the very dish to put heart in a man.
Homely Medicines
The gamekeeper is among the few people left in the country who have any knowledge of herb-lore, and faith in home-brewed herbal remedies. His medicine-chest contains a varied assortment. From rose-pink centaury he boils an appetising tonic for his pheasants, which he is not above drinking himself. The roots of couch-grass provide him with a powerful emetic for dogs in the first stages of distemper. He bakes acorns, grinds them to powder, and with its aid quells a rebellious stomach. His good-wife has the secret of cowslip and nettle tea. From the pounded leaves of dock blended with lard, he prepares a salve for cuts. Rheumatism, from which all keepers suffer in their old age, is treated with the fat of hedgehogs, well rubbed in—not that this is a herbal remedy. Cramp in pheasants calls for cayenne pepper boiled in their food; chopped onions are for gape-worms; a little saffron with drinking water—as much as will lie on a threepenny-bit in the water for a thousand birds—assists young birds through the troubles of feather-growing; while the first moult is aided by a few crystals of sulphate of iron in water. But oil is the sovereign remedy: castor-oil for dogs out of sorts, oil of almonds for the glued eyelids of blind birds, linseed-oil and laudanum for gapes—oil of every kind for every purpose. With corn scented with oil of rhodium-wood the keeper lays a trail which every pheasant must follow.
The Earth-Stoppers' Feast
The reward paid to keepers from the funds of fox-hunts is a sovereign for a litter of cubs when hounds come cub-hunting. Ten shillings is paid for each fox found by hounds. And a florin is the keeper's usual reward for stopping earths when the meet is within a distance of four miles. These moneys are paid in round sums on a great occasion in the keeper's year—the earth-stoppers' dinner. In olden days keepers were full of resources for benefiting themselves from the hunt funds, while saving their pheasants' skins from foxes at the same time. The cunning keeper would induce a huntsman to pay a stealthy unofficial visit to the home of a litter, and after his departure, when a reward had been made sure, would quietly take steps to rid himself of fox troubles. Visiting the earth with a supply of sulphur matches and bags of grass, he would light the matches within, block the holes with the bags, and leave the deadly fumes to do their work. Or two keepers would combine to defraud the hunt. One would show a litter and pocket his sovereign, then shift the litter to the preserves of his friend, who in turn would call in the huntsman and pocket his reward, then return the cubs whence they came; and so the game would go on. Luck plays a great part in this matter of fox-rewards. It often happens that foxes which have been harboured honestly by one keeper are found in the preserves of another who is a vulpicide, yet is not above accepting the reward which really is the due of his scrupulous friend in the next parish. How to show foxes to the hunt and pheasants to a shooting party is the prickliest of all the manifold problems of the gamekeeper's life.
The Keeper's Garden
The gamekeeper, like many a countryman, would be at a loss without his garden. His little plot of land means much to him: green food for his table, tonic foods for his pheasants, and a place where, by digging, he may bury some of his cares. He knows no such exercise as digging for keeping away ill-humours. He believes that the more a man sows the more he will reap—it is a lesson daily brought home to him. So he puts his best work into his garden, which is often the model plot of a rural community. In March he divides his time between spade work and his never-ending war on vermin. If he has a pen of stock pheasants he spends a good many minutes a day in admiration of the birds, besides tending to their wants; and he will defy you to prove that you ever saw a finer lot of birds. "Look at that old cock up agen yon corner—ain't 'e got some 'orns? Bless ye, them birds is worth a pound apiece."
So many a March afternoon finds the keeper hard at work at home with spade, fork, trowel or dibbler. His great object is to finish the more laborious work before the time of pheasants' eggs. A feature of the garden is the neat and spacious onion-bed, smoothed with the polished back of a favourite spade, which has dug out countless rabbits. There must be plenty of onions for the young pheasants to come. In time of need a keeper may sacrifice the whole of his onion-bed to his birds, gladly buying such onions as his wife demands for the table. Then there are two or three long rows of peas. Before sowing, the seed is sprinkled with red lead against the ravages of long-tailed field-mice, and after sowing strands of black thread are carried up and down the surface against the attacks of sparrows, while above, as a terrible warning, swings the body of a sparrow-hawk. The site of an old pheasant pen is devoted to Brussels sprouts. A dilapidated dog-kennel will serve to coax rhubarb to be ready for Easter Sunday's dinner.
Flower seeds are not forgotten: in shallow cartridge-boxes, protected by a small home-made frame, seeds are sown for making the little patch of flower-garden gay with stocks and asters, sweet peas, sun-flowers, tobacco-plants, and zinnias. The keeper puzzles over zinnia seed, which is like the fragment of a dead leaf, yet will come up and grow with the speed of mustard and cress, producing a wealth of bloom.
But the planting of the potato patch is the chief work. The neat little furrows which mark each row of potatoes, allowing the hoe to be plied fearlessly before the potatoes show above ground, give a neatness to the cottage garden all the time while the soil is brown and bare.
Gamekeepers, though their work for wages is never done, yet have a few legitimate ways of adding to their incomes. Of course they have the opportunity of making a good deal of money if they trespass on their employers' time; but your keeper is an honest man, and his work is the object of his life. Most keepers are skilled vegetable gardeners, and may make a few shillings from peas and beans. Often enough they have a cunning way with flowers, though envious amateurs are free with their hints about the advantages to be gained from burying foxes to enrich the soil. We know one who will put in a fair day's work with spade and wheelbarrow before even the waggoners have stirred to give their horses breakfast. Going his rounds, the keeper marks good briers for budding; if he does not sell them, he will beg choice buds from rose-growers, and a year or two later the passer-by may be tempted to offer half-a-crown for the fine roses of his little plot. Possibly by this time his roses mean so much to him that he will make some such excuse as, "The missus, she thinks a mortal sight of they."
Keepers' Holidays
In February a few lucky gamekeepers may take a voluntary holiday, many must take an involuntary one—restful, perhaps, but not beneficial to pocket, health, and spirits. Keepers come and keepers go in these days when so many shoots are let for short terms. Resting between berths has one advantage—there can be no haunting worry as to the welfare of game. It would be interesting to collect cases of keepers and other country workers who have held the same berth for long periods, and have never been for a holiday right away from the scenes of their labours. Many and many old keepers would be found to have lived their whole lives on the estates where they were born. The best holiday for keepers would be a change to a bustling town; or they should be sent to a country where game is different to the game at home, the partridge man going to the home of grouse, the moorland keeper to the South.
Most keepers would be the first to say it is impossible that they should take holiday. Their work is peculiarly personal; and even when it is essential to arrange for somebody else to "give an eye to things," they can never feel happy and confident that all is going on in the accustomed way. The work, too, is cumulative—each item must be considered in its relation to several others. Even where there are several keepers, each on his own beat of a shoot, there is a jealous rivalry between them; and any one who went for a holiday would suspect advantage to be taken of his stock of breeding game in his absence. If there is one thing a keeper can endure less than being scored off by a poacher, it is to be scored off by a brother keeper.
An Advantage of Marriage
For the first time in many a long year a gamekeeper may find himself taking a holiday in the early days of February—either because he has left his place of his own free will, or has been dismissed. "Left owing to shoot being given up"—that is the usual reason for a keeper's enforced holiday. Married keepers seldom leave berths of their own accord except to better themselves; but a young bachelor keeper with a light heart may be fond of change, and scores of places are open to him from which married men are barred. Often he can afford to take a holiday while he looks about for a new berth; he can find lodgings anywhere, and what with odd jobs and the money he has saved he can exist comfortably until he finds an employer to suit him. The married keeper is not so light-hearted, and perhaps on this account the best permanent berths go to the married men. The chance of such a berth gives the country maiden her best chance of bagging an elusive bachelor. Sometimes she captures the heart of a bachelor before he has found a berth that will support a wife; then he will advertise for a place, making the ambiguous statement: "Married when suited." No doubt some keepers who have issued this form of advertisement could tell strange stories of the applications received.
The Keeper seeks a New Berth
When going out to look at a place where the chance of a berth has offered itself, the keeper always takes good stock of the game in the country through which he passes. You may meet him, at the end of the season, setting out by road or by rail; he is clad in his best, you will see; bright new gaiters encase his legs, his boots glitter with polish. However great his hurry, as he goes along through park-lands or woods, he is looking out for everything to be seen; not a sign of game escapes him. And there lives a keeper who, passing through an estate on his way to a personal interview with the owner, chanced to be led out of the direct path by certain suspicious sounds which he heard, and caught a poacher red-handed. It is hardly necessary to add that he stepped forthwith into the vacant berth.
In North and South
Many long leagues separate the moor-keeper of the North from the keeper of South-country preserves; their eyes look out upon different worlds; the two men are as different in type, in ideas, and in methods as the North is different to the South, the open, rolling moor to the jungle-like covert. There are certain matters on which they agree—as in their mutual hatred of foxes; the moor-keeper, when the season is out, has no hesitation in killing all foxes and vermin within his power. He has an advantage over his brother in some things; as in nesting-sites. The heather affords an unlimited number of well-concealed places for grouse nests, whereas in Hampshire or Sussex a nesting hedgerow after the heart of pheasant or partridge is likely to be overcrowded, and to attract every sort of egg-thief. Again, he has an advantage in his natural and abundant food-supplies; though much of his success in raising a stock of healthy birds will depend on his judgment in burning old heather, and insuring a plentiful growth of young shoots. When heather is late in starting to grow, and birds are forced to feed on old, dry shoots, digestive troubles may prove fatal to many.
Poachers—
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
The Time to Catch a Weasel
February is the month when it is fashionable for stoats and weasels to begin courting. The keeper finds the trapping of stoats or weasels less difficult work than usual in consequence. He maintains that all is fair in love, war, and gamekeeping. He relies chiefly on tunnel-traps. The old way was to fix a long, low, narrow box in a likely run—a box open at each end, but with shutters which dropped when a pan in the middle of the floor was touched by a weasel's feet; so the weasel would be caught alive, without injury—only, however, to be executed. Another old-time trap was the figure 4 trap, set with a heavy stone or slate, which fell upon and instantly killed its victim. These cumbersome and not always reliable traps have passed from the woodlands, and now the keeper merely slips a gin into the entrance of a tunnel. This is made sometimes of earth and sticks, or is a drain-pipe, or is made of three lengths of plank, about a yard long and six inches wide. A hole in a hedge-bank is a favourite place for the gin. These tunnel traps are commonly set a few yards from the end of a hedge, because stoats and weasels have a weakness for cutting corners.
Changes of Coats
We have heard the suggestion many times that there are two varieties of the common weasel, but think this is not the case. The mistake no doubt arises from the marked difference in size between the males and females; the dog weasel is twice or sometimes three times the size of its sister, and is nearly as big as a small female stoat, while the dog weasel's sister may be hardly larger than a big mouse. Then the changes in the weasel's coat are deceptive. In spring a rusty red fur takes the place of the soft winter brown of the upper parts, while the white under-parts turn to a yellow tone. The ordinary brown of rats also changes to a striking rusty red shade in spring. This is most obvious in the case of rats living in burrows in soil, and often going short of food, and the rusty fur is specially marked on rats that have been feeding on carrion sheep and lambs. Shortness of food has the effect of prolonging the business of coat-changing, as is well seen in the case of a ferret kept on short commons. A white ferret is deep yellow in the spring before it has changed its coat. Stoats, too, show yellow on parts which will be white in the new coat.
The Vermin Bag
We met, by chance, an old keeper who, on first acquaintance, seemed a remarkable specimen—for he informed us that his orders were to set not a single trap anywhere on his ten thousand acres. Thinking that we saw a movement of his eyelid, we put the blunt question to him: How many traps did he usually set? And he replied unblushingly, "Forty dozen." He kept no record of his bag of vermin; but as he trapped on such a wholesale scale (remembering that the estate is supposed to be trapless), no doubt his employer would be startled if he knew the numbers of vermin killed; his vermin bag must be exceptional. The old-fashioned keeper is stubborn; the kestrel, as we have said before, is seen too often on his gibbet, and he has no respect for the useful wood-owl, which he ruthlessly exterminates. A record of a year's bag of vermin on one big estate reads thus: Jays, 350; magpies, 160; crows, 150; squirrels, 140; weasels, 80; cats, 70; stoats, 60; hedgehogs, 40; hawks, 30; total, 1080. This record says nothing of rats, rooks or owls, though no doubt numbers of rats and rooks were sacrificed.
The Ways of Squirrels
The gamekeeper whose bag of vermin in a year included 140 squirrels is, we may hope, exceptional. Squirrels are not always treated by keepers as vermin. Now and again a squirrel has been proved guilty of meddling with the eggs and young of pheasants—but so rarely that even keepers speak of these misdeeds as "not worth mentioning." The traditional crime of squirrels is that they damage various sorts of coniferous trees by nipping their shoots when young. Even if they gave this work all their time and attention, their numbers in the woods to-day are so small that the whole damage done would not amount to a very great injury to the country.
Squirrels are the most innocent creatures in the woods, so far as any harm to game preserving goes. It is their misfortune that many keepers look upon them as a convenient form of ferret-food. We have found a freshly killed squirrel, apparently the victim of a bird of prey, beneath a spruce fir, from which a barn owl flew as we examined the body; no doubt owls would take a chance to attack a squirrel. As to what squirrels kill there is little evidence. We have known a squirrel to do away with part of a brood of tits in an apple-tree, and one which visited a pheasant's nest, carrying away an egg, and once we saw a young pheasant in a squirrel's mouth; but we have no doubt that the bird was picked up dead. The squirrel's alarm-cry reminds us of the sound produced from the hole in the body of a rubber doll; it is amusing to see how he stamps his fore-feet while uttering this cry, as if doing his best to frighten away his human intruder by a show of force and fury.
Squirrels always seem to be among the happiest of wild animals. They have few foes, and none to equal their agility and speed in the tree branches. The stoat is a good climber, and if he were to attack the squirrel's nest there would be small chance for the young ones; but stoats rarely climb so high. In the bitterest weather the squirrel is secure in his drey; he dreams away the hard days, while around him birds and animals die of cold and hunger. His only trouble seems to be that hazel-nuts are sometimes blighted.
The Squirrel's Appetite
We know an old keeper who believes that squirrels eat everything eatable in a wood, and that nothing does more damage to his interests. He reviles squirrels bitterly, saying that they steal as many of his precious eggs as rats; the eggs of small birds too, and, on occasion, nestlings. There seems no end to his accusations. He declares squirrels will take strawberries and apricots if they have the chance, and that they eat mushrooms and dig up truffles. A favourite food is supplied by the Scotch pine; though in hot weather larch, silver fir, and spruce are added in liberal quantities to the dietary. While he rejoices in hazel-nuts, beech-mast, acorns, and spruce-seeds, he is sometimes tempted by berries, walnuts, and apples. He eats freely off buds and young shoots, and peels the bark off trees—digging a spiral course with his teeth near the top of the tree, so that the first strong gale blows over the tree-top. It is the sweet stuff between bark and tree, rather than the bark itself, that attracts his fancy. In the spring he plays havoc with the tender shoots of the horse-chestnut, showering them on the ground; while he is so fond of acorns that he is accused even of pulling up young oak plants to devour the remains of the acorns below. But we doubt that one squirrel in ten inflicts serious injury on anybody.
The Departure of Cats
We suppose that more cats disappear from the domestic hearth in February than in any other month. The gamekeeper may or may not know more about this than he will admit—it is certain that the cats go, and it is true that many of them turn up again. Whatever the February fate of the cat, the nearest keeper to its home bears the blame of having spirited it away. He may deny all—that he knows anything about the cat or its colour or its fate—but the more he denies the more strongly will he be suspected, the more furiously accused. One old keeper met all inquiries about the departure of cats with this sound piece of wisdom: "If ye makes 'em bide at 'ome, there won't be no need for wantin' 'em to come back."
Skeletons and Cobwebs
New times give the keeper new excuses. Taxed with
a cat's disappearance, he blames the motor-car; some
day he will blame the flying-ship; where a
railway is at hand he always has a ready
excuse. We would be the last to suggest
that when the mortal remains of a cat are
found on a road frequented by motor-cars the presumption
is always justified that the cat was slain by a
keeper who endeavoured to put the blame on an innocent
driver. We are confident that many cats in
game-preserved places live to die from old age. Ten
years is a ripe age for a cat, but some die from accidents
more natural than execution or murder. Like the
birds, when they know their hours to be numbered,
cats creep away to some quiet hiding-place to await
death—perhaps beneath the floor of an old barn, or
among the rafters of a familiar roof, where they
hunted rats and mice in youthful days.
Now and again, in old buildings, death-chambers are discovered where the skeletons of cats have been hidden among cobwebs and dust, perhaps for hundreds of years.