Chapter VI: Part 6

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

AUTUMN

The Verdict of the Season

To find out how the wild birds have fared is always difficult: one never sees them properly until the days of shooting are at hand--and not always then, when a sight of them rather under than over forty yards distant might be welcome. We may pass by a wood outside which many pheasants may be feeding, as a flock of fowls, or sitting lazily about on the fences, some perhaps indolently stretching a wing in the pleasant wallow of a dust-bath; but this does not prove that pheasants have done well--merely that there are so many pheasants at a certain place; it does not even prove that they will be there the next day. Such a spot may be a place where large numbers of pheasants are reared. One may count a hundred birds in the corner of a field--perhaps there should have been a hundred and fifty. Or perhaps the hundred to be seen means better luck than usual in the breeding season in that particular part. A man who sees pheasants where he does not know how many were bred may think a dozen a large number, or he may view with scorn the sight of several hundreds if he has been accustomed to see thousands. We know places where so many pheasants may be seen at any time as to suggest that they swarm there regardless of the season. But the birds seen casually may have been bought from a game-farm and turned down, to make up a supply that failed. However, it always delights the sportsman's eye to see many pheasants about a wood--especially if he has the shooting.

From a just standpoint, it is the comparison of what might have been with what is that settles the verdict on the pheasant season. The season cannot be judged by the birds of one preserve. Allowance must be made for many points. The number of wild broods to wild hens left to manage their own affairs, and the number of eggs set under fowls and how they hatched must be considered. Then the quality of the rearing-ground makes one district much better than another--whether heavy or light, low-lying or high, and rich or poor in natural food. The question of foxes must be weighed, and one would like to know before judging a season from any one case how many birds were turned into covert at five to seven weeks old, and how many fell victims to foxes--to say nothing of gapes.

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Weather to pray for

The keeper may control the supply of hand-reared birds: he may make up for the spoiling of an egg, or the loss of a chick, which would otherwise mean a pheasant the less; but he has no control over the season as it affects wild birds. What he prays for is a showery April, with a sun to shine between the storms. And he wants fair weather after the middle of May, the longer the better. A bright warm summer is good for all pheasants, whether it be their fate to start life beneath a fowl in a stuffy, if cosy, coop, or to be gathered beneath the breast and wings of their real mother in the wood, or among the corn. A fine summer means more to birds than to man, for to them it is a matter of life or death.

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After the Opening

Walking home through the woods on the evening of an October First, we came to a standstill before a low tree-branch on which an old cock pheasant was going to roost. We were within a yard of him; yet he sat stock-still, and stared at us fearlessly with unblinking eyes. The minutes passed, and after we had stood there for some little time, staring back at the old pheasant, it really seemed that we had established a bond of communication. And this is what we understood the old cock to be saying:

"Here I am, you see, and not afraid of you; and none the worse for an opening day that has been, I must admit, a trifle lively. And I may inform you that before I went to roost I made careful inquiries among my very numerous progeny, and not one is a feather the worse for all the banging that has been going on. All are in good condition, in fine plumage, and strong on the wing as usual, and, I may add, on the leg. By the way, I myself, in the course of the day, from a secure retreat, watched more than one sportsman critically examining the bodies of several unfortunate birds--needless to say, there was no son or daughter of mine among them. _Good_ night."

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An October Day

Here is the gamekeeper's idea of what constitutes a pleasantly flavoured October 1: The day should break with a misty dawn, grey dewy cobwebs everywhere betokening a visible if tardy sun. There should be a brace of spaniels whose occasional lapses after fur are atoned for by their untiring energy among the blind tangles of hedgerows and dells. There should be three guns whose object is to enjoy sport and to make a mixed bag, including incidentally the first pheasants--without the formality of the so-called battue. There should be a couple of experienced beaters, and a keeper whose soul is set on circumventing certain wary old cocks that are known to him as leaders astray of youthful birds. The killing of pheasants should not be the main thing; if the charm of the First of October lay only in this it would quickly fade. Next to the potting of young rooks with a shot-gun as they sit stoically near their nests, few phases of shooting call for less skill than pheasant-shooting in early October.

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Low Flight and High

Grouse, partridges, and pheasants are low-flying birds, unlike wood-pigeons and rooks; it is their habit to skim along near to earth. And pheasants might be truly described as ground birds. Only on occasions do they fly high, and then usually for one of three definite causes. Flushed on high ground they may maintain a high elevation as they cross a valley. Rising on low ground, the direction of their flight may necessitate an upward line, as when trees or hills lie before them. Forced to rise suddenly, having lain low while danger has approached, on finding men in full sight between themselves and the place they have determined to reach they then rocket instinctively. Rooks and wood-pigeons naturally fly at a height well out of gunshot; and the cynical critic of British shooting methods might observe with truth that the bagging of a dozen ordinary wood-pigeons involves a higher order of sportsmanship than the bagging of fifty ordinary pheasants.

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Wily Grouse Cocks

As with partridges, a great benefit has followed the fashion of driving grouse, instead of walking them up, with setters and pointers: for the familiar reason that the old birds come first to the guns and are the first to be shot. If not shot, these old birds would not allow the young ones to nest near them, and would drive them far afield: and another advantage is that the young birds which are spared are the most productive. Moorland keepers at the end of the season are at pains to kill off old cocks, which are such enemies to the peaceful nesting of the young birds; and many are their devices for stalking and calling them to their doom. Except when feeding, the wary old birds like to be able to look all about them, and perch on walls and hillocks, whence, holding their heads high, their eyes may sweep afar for foes. Unlike partridges, they are not content with the grain in the stubble, but will perch on the stooks at harvest-time, to attack the sheaves.

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Rewards for Cubs

Until the last field of corn is cut, cubs are spared their introduction to the joys and sorrows of hunting; but at the end of harvest their time is at hand. Few keepers look forward to the coming of hounds for cubbing. When hounds do come there is nothing more disappointing to the keeper than that they should not find the cubs, of whose dark deeds he has been complaining all the summer. Not only does he lose the prospect of a sovereign reward, but the cubs are still at large to carry on their havoc, while he may appear to have been crying wolf where there were no wolves; the loss of the sovereign is much less to him than the loss of his credit and the prospective loss of his birds. Different hunts have different methods of rewarding keepers whose cubs are found by hounds. One hunt works on the irrational plan of giving a keeper a sovereign for each litter found, and ten shillings extra if a cub is killed. This is almost as much as to ask the keeper to take steps towards handicapping the cubs when the pack presses. The keeper knows how important it is that the young entry shall taste blood at this time, and he knows that if scent fails, the best way to ensure a kill is to allow the cub to run to ground. Instead of completely stopping an earth, he arranges a slight barricade of twigs; and then he may know, by whether the cub has broken the barricade or not, if it has run to ground. He takes care to have a spade and a pick-axe close at hand. The well-intentioned reward really ends in spoiling sport.

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"Various"--the Landrail

In the bag of September partridge-shooting, the landrail is often the only bird booked under the heading "Various," save for an occasional wood-pigeon; at any rate, many look to the landrail to fill the "Various" column, if they often look in vain. On a calm day, the landrail is a weird mark, with its heavy, laboured flight, and its dangling legs; the bird hardly suggests a sporting shot. But few who have shot landrails have not also missed them. Landrails will even put to shame the sportsman who has been bagging his brace of partridges with wearisome monotony. So slow, as a rule, is the landrail in heading away, after its silent rising from sainfoin or clover, that we have seen one bagged by a thrown stick, another knocked down by a keeper's partridge-carrier, as he held it in his hand, and another caught on the wing by a dog; of course this is nothing uncommon. We have even seen a terrier point and pounce on a landrail that was crouching beneath its nose. But when a fair wind is blowing, the slow landrail becomes as difficult a mark to hit as a snipe or a woodcock. And a landrail has a disappointing habit of dropping when it comes to a hedge, for all the world like a dead bird, though very much alive.

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Sport amid the Shocks

Sportsmen may find partridge-shooting among shocks of uncarried corn more interesting than shooting over a bare expanse of barren stubble. The shocks or stooks help to mark the birds, alive or dead; and they cause them to rise to a convenient height, so that they show sharp and clear against the sky, instead of skimming away low against the baffling tints of the autumn fields. And birds seem to lie better among stooks than on bare stubble. They cannot see well or far among the stooks, and they like to linger in the dusting-places that they make in sheltered, sunny spots. Another point worth mentioning is less obvious but none the less true--the stooks help the eye in aiming. It always seems easier to hit a pheasant flying high between the tops of trees, as down an avenue open to the sky, than in the open. So in the cornfields before the harvest is garnered. And there is still another point which adds to the charm found in shooting among the corn-sheaves: when a covey bustles up, the birds spread out and scatter, for they cannot see all the party at the same time; and so they may give each gunner a mild taste of what the days of driving will bring.

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"Mark"

Some men have a special gift for marking a bird that is down, while others never know where the bird fell within half an acre. But marking is only a matter of training the eyes, and anybody may learn the trick: in time the eyes accurately note what they see almost unconsciously. The sportsman cannot be too accurate in marking the fall of a bird. The great thing is to take a good line--an imaginary line drawn from the eye to the place where the bird fell: if at a far distance, the actual spot will be nearer in reality than it seems. The accustomed eye finds points which mark the line, if not the very spot, where the bird has fallen--a spray of charlock flower, a thistle-stem, or a tinted leaf. When a bird falls at a distance it is helpful to take some prominent object in front and behind to mark the line--such as a gap and a sapling in opposite hedges.

A sportsman who is a master of the art of marking knows where to come upon each bird he shoots singly; and when he scores a brace he knows all about the second bird. Often he knows much more about the first bird than those who have nothing else to do but to mark. The usual rule is for the attendant to mark the first bird that falls and the shooter the second. With two men to mark one bird it should be quite easy to find the place. The bird will be within a yard of where the two imaginary lines intersect. A common mistake made by sportsmen is to suppose that because they have fired at a bird coming towards them it must have fallen in front of them: more probably it has fallen several yards behind, especially if it be a bird brought down by the second barrel. It is not easy to mark the place where a covey pitches. On seeing the birds suddenly lower their line of flight, a sportsman may suppose they have alighted, unless he still keeps a watchful eye on them, for birds often lower their flight when they have crossed a hollow or a valley, and then skim on low over the crest of the hill. However, when birds lower their line of flight, after flying some distance, it is a sign that they contemplate settling.

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The Keeper's Dogs

Among the many clever things that a gamekeeper's retriever learns is how to mark a partridge which flies a long way and then towers. When once he has grasped what is meant by the rising of a covey, the firing of a shot, and the sight of a bird soaring away from the rest and falling like a stone, he soon begins to watch for the bird that towers, even without the exhortation, "Mark that bird!" A clever retriever will mark the distant fall of a bird seen by no one but himself, and either will dash off for the spot or show strong symptoms of wanting to go. The well-trained dog finds the bird that he has not seen fall. On being ordered to "go on" he gallops in the direction indicated by a wave of his master's hand, and when he hears the word "Halt," or sees a hand-signal, then he begins to cast, and seldom in vain. A retriever will retrace his steps for a couple of miles or more to bring home a dead rabbit or bird which his master has left behind in mistake. One fine retriever had been trained never to give up game except to her master; and it happened that as she was picking up a dead hare another was wounded and ran away before her. She set off in pursuit, carrying the dead hare, and though every man in a long line of beaters, keepers, and guns attempted to relieve her of her burden, she refused to give it up. On catching the wounded hare, she calmly held it down with one paw and waited until her master came to her assistance. Keepers, of all men, have least doubt about the reasoning powers of their dogs.

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Woodcock Owls

Autumn brings with woodcock the woodcock owls--as the short-eared owls are called, because their flight is like a woodcock's, or because they come at the same time. We would make the strongest plea for the preservation of these most useful owls. When an unusual number appeared in parts of the South of England, they made themselves very busy among the rats that had taken lodgings in the root-fields. Yet a party of town shooters, out after partridges, gloated more over the bagging of one of these owls than over all the rest of their spoil. The owl was wounded only enough to be caught--and his wound had cost the party eleven cartridges. Perhaps if the short-eared owl bred here he might be tempted to prey on young game; but very few remain to breed in the north, and the young game is grown when the autumn migration begins. Rats and mice with occasional small birds and some beetles form the staple diet.

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Dogs that Despise Woodcock

The difference in the tastes of dogs is curious, and often strongly marked. Two terriers, boon companions at home, were taken to the Hebrides; in their home haunts they hunted the same game together--rats, rabbits, hares, partridges, and pheasants--but in the north the chief sport was among woodcock, though there were thousands of rabbits. Yet neither dog flushed a single woodcock, save by accident, nor would take the slightest interest in any but rabbit sport. They showed that marked aversion to woodcock common to many dogs not used to them. Sometimes dogs will acquire a taste for hunting and retrieving woodcock, and then make this a speciality. A curious point in the case of the two terriers was that one suddenly became very fond of the remains of cooked woodcock, whether hungry or not, while the other refused ever to look at them, even when purposely kept on short commons by way of experiment. It was a strange sight to see the appreciative dog crunch up the frame of a woodcock, winding up the performance by stowing away the head, bill and all.

The best retrievers usually refuse to pick up and carry a woodcock, unless specially schooled to carry anything from puppyhood. To train puppies to fetch and carry things objectionable alike to their sense of smell and touch, perhaps the best plan is to teach them to retrieve well-filled tobacco-pouches. They may be thrown long distances, and a dog will never bite them--at least, twice--and so acquires a perfect mouth. A retriever not trained in this way will probably refuse to touch a woodcock, in spite of every coaxing--one, induced at last to pick up a woodcock, has been known to spit it out, turning up his lip in contempt, and otherwise showing his intense scorn. Now and again a young and obedient retriever may bring in woodcock at the first trial--but with a look of anything but relish.

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Pets of Pigs

One hardly thinks of pigs as possible pets; yet those who have brought them up and acted the part of foster-mother, agree that they make charming pets, energetic and entertaining. They soon know the step of their master, and rush furiously to greet him with every sign of delight. If properly kept no pet could be more cleanly in habit.

We know a village pig-butcher who, by the irony of fate, made a pet of two little pigs, and was very proud of his black and white twins, as he called them. He reared them by hand, and nothing could be more entertaining than their way of taking their meals of milk and water; they had been trained to rest their front trotters on a box, with the idea of saving their foster-parent's garments, and would greet the sight of their bottle with joyous grunts. These piglets, at weaning-time, had cost their master in food the sum of 7_s._ 9_d._ Had he cared to sell them they would have brought him in about £4 each; or supposing he were to kill them himself and convert them into bacon, his bacon would cost him about 3-1/2_d._ a pound. That this was his intention we gathered from his remark: "I'll see as I don't pay no more 'levenpences a pound for bacon." The pigs in the first place had cost him nothing; they were the "darls" or last-born pigs of their litters, which are generally inferior to their numerous brothers and sisters, and are often given away. Clearly a darl may make a profitable pet.

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Some Deals in Dogs

The gamekeeper, as a rule, is an old hand at dog-dealing. All keepers have an eye for a dog, and are tempted to buy for a song any sort of sporting dog, in the hope of making a few shillings or pounds by a quick sale. We knew a keeper who would buy almost anything that could be described as a dog, but his stock price was "A bob and a pot"--a shilling, that is to say, with a quart of beer. When a shoot is let, and the keeper's services go with it, he often has a good chance to make money over dog-deals. Outgoing tenants commonly make him a present of a useful, general-purpose retriever, or spaniel--a dog that has done a good deal of all-round work on the shoot. A dog may be a good dog only on one shoot, or he may obey only one keeper; so when the tenant goes away he leaves his dog where it can do the most good in the world, kennel, chain, collar and all. Then a new tenant comes in, to whom the keeper offers the dog with its outfit--the whole being, as he declares, "honestly worth five pounds to the shoot." But he will take three pounds, and it is clear profit. And the new tenant makes a good bargain.

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Marked Birds

A white or a pied bird, whether rook, blackbird, starling, finch, or sparrow, never fails to hold the eye, and may become a character of public interest in a neighbourhood. Its usual fate is to be shot--the fate of any rare wild creature. The sportsman sees no special reason for sparing a pied pheasant that has come to his coverts--he shoots it at the first chance for the sake of the few seconds' pleasure given by the curious plumage before it is tossed with the rest on the game-cart. But the keeper silently mourns for the death of the pied bird. If he voices his lament, he receives a stock answer: "Well, it is too late now." Happy the keeper who succeeds in catching up a bird that he treasures, so that he may give it safe shelter until the rattle of guns is silenced.

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Colour-Changes in Feathers

"Once a pied bird always a pied bird" is the expression of a common fallacy. A pheasant may be almost white for months, then change colour, and become hardly different from other birds. A pied bird tends to become more pied as the time of moulting approaches. A homely illustration of this increasing lightness of colour is seen when a black cat is about to change its coat; then the fur turns a rusty brown. When this is shed the new growth seems blacker than ever. A black cat or dog with white marks nearly always has young with similar markings. And if you have a white or pied hen pheasant, in spite of the fact that after a moult her new feathers may come of the ordinary brown shade, you may expect, perhaps, half the chicks from her eggs to wear their mother's pretty white or pied dress. Birds that have been pied in their youth, then have put on sober apparel, again put on the showy shade of feathers in their old age, though it is a lucky pheasant that reaches anything like old age, whether pied or not.

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Nature's Healing

Nature is a kindly doctor--and though any accident to the flying or running powers of a wild creature probably means death, miraculous recoveries are to noted. Rabbits commonly suffer from broken legs, whether from gunshot, trap, or other cause; but limbs often heal and become serviceable members again. Nor is a broken wing always enough to cause the death of a game-bird. Should the bird escape its foes while the broken bone is setting, it may live to fly, if not quite as well as ever. We noticed once that one bird in a covey of partridges flew more slowly than the others; it was shot, and when picked up we found that there had been an old wing fracture, and that the broken ends had crossed and overlapped in setting. A curious case was that of a partridge which was shot in the wing, and ran when followed through the turnips by a retriever. Several times the bird sprang above the turnips, attempting, but in vain, to fly; then, when the dog seemed about to catch it, the bird gave a final spring, and this time flew straight away. But after fifty yards or so it dropped to earth, falling almost perpendicularly. The explanation seemed to be that the fractured bone-ends had joined, and kept their place accidentally, for the few moments of the flight.

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A Little Story

A sporting old gentleman, who was very deaf, always took a small boy with him shooting, whose duty seemed to be to stand behind his master and do nothing. He never carried cartridges, and looked incapable of loading a gun. One day we asked the boy to explain his mission in life. "'Tis this way," said he. "In each hand I holds a pin, and I gives the master a prick behind to let him know when game be a-coming--if on this side or on t'other."

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Accidents to Hares