THE POACHER.THE POACHER.
Therefore, although a wood is much more beautiful from an artistic point of view, with its lovely greens in spring and yellow and browns in autumn, its shades and recesses and fern-strewn glades, yet if a gentleman desires to imitate the monarch who laid out the New Forest andplant wood, and his object be simply game, the keeper is of opinion that the somewhat stiff and trim plantations are preferable. They are generally of fir; and fir is the most difficult of trees to slip past, being decidedly of an obstructive turn. The boughs grow so close to the ground that unless you crawl you cannot go under them. The trunks—unlike those of many other trees—will flourish so near together that the extremities of the branches touch and almost interweave, and they are rough and unpleasant to push through. To shoot or trap, or use a net or other poacher’s implement, is very difficult in a young fir plantation, because of this thickness of growth; so that in a measure the tree itself protects the game. Then the cover afforded is warm and liked by the birds; and so for many reasons the fir has become a great favourite, notwithstanding that it is of very little value when finally cut down.
For fox preserving firs are hardly so suitable, because the needles, or small sharp leaves, quite destroy all under-growth—not only by the turpentine they contain, but by forming a thick mat, as it were, upon the earth. This mass of needles takes years, to all appearance, to decay, and no young green blade or shoot can get through it; besides which the fir-boughs above make a roof almost impenetrable to air and light, the chief necessities of a plant’s existence. Foxes like a close warm under-growth, such as furze, sedges when the ground is dry, the underwoodthat springs up between the ash stoles. Although constantly out of doors—if such a phrase be allowable—foxes seem to dislike cold and draught, as do weasels and all their kind, notably ferrets. But for pure game preserving, and for convenience of watching, the keeper thinks the detached plantations of fir preferable. Doubtless he is professionally right; and yet somehow a great wood seems infinitely more English and appeals to the heart far more powerfully, with its noble oaks and beeches and ash trees, its bramble-thickets and brake, and endless beauties, which a life of study will not exhaust.
But the semi-Bohemians detested by the keeper do not prowl about the confines of a wood with artistic views; their objects are extremely prosaic, and though not always precisely injurious, yet they annoy him beyond endurance. He is like a spider in the centre of a vast spreading web, and the instant the most outlying threads—in this case represented by fences—are broken he is all agitation till he has expelled the intruder. Men and boys in the winter come stealing into the wood where the blackthorn thickets are for sloes, which are reputed to be improved by the first frosts, and are used for making sloe gin, etc. Those they gather they sell, of course; and although the pursuit may be perfectly harmless in itself, how is the keeper to be certain that, if opportunity offered, these gentry would not pounce upon a rabbit or anything else? Others come for the dead wood; and it does on the faceof it seem hard to deny an old woman who has worked all her days in the field a bundle of fallen branches rotting under the trees. The accumulations of such dead sticks in some places are astonishing: the soil under the ashpoles must slowly rise from the mass of decaying wood and ultimately become greatly enriched by this natural manure.
When a hard clay soil is revealed by the operations for draining a meadow, and the crust of black or reddish mould on which the sweet green grass flourishes is seen to be but spade-deep, the idea naturally occurs that that thin crust must have been originated by some similar process to what is now going on in the ash wood. Those six or nine inches of mould perhaps represent several centuries of forest. But if the keeper admits the old woman shivering over her embers in the cottage to pick up these dead boughs, how can he tell what further tricks others may be up to? The privilege has often been offered and as often abused, until at last it has been finally withdrawn—not only because of the poaching carried on under the cloak of picking up dead wood, but because the intruders tore down fine living branches from the trees and spoiled and disfigured them without mercy. Sometimes gentlemen go to the expense of having wood periodically gathered and distributed among the poor, which is a considerate system and worthy of imitation where possible.
Occasionally men come to search for walking-sticks,for which there is now a regular trade. Just at present ‘natural’ sticks—that is, those cut from the stem with the bark on—are rather popular, both for walking and for umbrella handles, which causes this kind of search to be actively prosecuted. The best ‘natural’ sticks are those which when growing were themselves young trees, sprung up direct from seed or shoots—saplings, which are stronger and more pliant than those cut from a stole or pollard. To cut such a stick as this is equivalent to destroying a future tree, and of course a good deal of mischief may be easily done in a short time.
Another kind of ash stick which is in demand is one round which there runs a spiral groove. This spiral is caused by the bine of honeysuckle or woodbine, and in some cases by wild hops. These climbing plants grow in great profusion when they once get fixed in the soil, and twist their tendrils or ‘leaders’ round and round the tall, straight, young ash poles with so tight a grasp as to partly strangle the stick and form a deep screw-like groove in it. When well polished, or sometimes in its rough state, such a stick attracts customers; and so popular is this ‘style’ of thing that the spiral groove is frequently cut by the lathe in more expensive woods than ash. Wild hops are common in many places, and will almost destroy a hedge or a little copse by the power with which they twine their coils about stem and branch. Young oak saplings, in the same way, are frequently cut; and the potential treewhich might have grown large enough to form part of a ship’s timbers is sold for a shilling.
Holly is another favourite wood for sticks, and fetches more money than oak or ash, on account of its ivory-like whiteness when peeled. To get a good stick with a knob to it frequently necessitates a considerable amount of cutting and chopping, and does far more damage than the loss of the stick itself represents. Neither blackthorn nor crabtree seem so popular as they once were for this purpose.
In the autumn scores of men, women, and children scour the hedges and woods for acorns, which bring a regular price per bushel or sack, affording a valuable food for pigs. Others seek elderberries to sell for making wine, and for a few weeks a trade is done in blackberries. Chair-menders and basket-makers frequent the shore of the little mere or lake looking for bulrushes or flags: the old rush-bottomed chairs are still to be found in country houses, and require mending; and flag-baskets are much used.
Hazel-nuts and filberts perhaps cause more trouble than all the rest; this fruit is now worth money, and in some counties the yield of nuts is looked forward to in the same way as any other crop—as in Kent, where cob-nuts are cultivated, and where the disorderly hop-pickers are great thieves. I have heard of owners of copses losing ten or fifteen pounds’ worth of nuts by a single raid.Here, in this wood, no attempt is made to obtain profit from the fruit, yet it gives rise to much trouble. The nut-stealers take no care in pulling down the boughs, but break them shamefully, destroying entire bushes; and for this reason in many places, where nutting was once freely permitted, it is now rigidly repressed. Just before the nuts become ripe they are gathered by men employed on the place, and thrown down in sackfuls, making great heaps by the public footpaths—ocular evidence that it is useless to enter the wood a-nutting.
The keeper thinks that these trespassers grow more coarsely mischievous year by year. He can recollect when the wood in a measure was free and open, and, provided a man had not got a gun or was not suspected of poaching, he might roam pretty much at large; while the resident labouring people went to and fro by the nearest short cut they could find. But whether the railways bring rude strangers with no respect for the local authorities, or whether ‘tramps’ have become more numerous, it is certain that only by constant watchfulness can downright destruction be prevented. It is not only the game preserved within that closes these beautiful woodlands to the public, but the wanton damage to tree and shrub, the useless, objectless mischief so frequently practised. For instance, a column of smoke, curling like a huge snake round the limbs of a great tree and then floating away from the top-most branches, is a singular spectacle, so opposed to theordinary current of ideas as to be certain of attracting the passer-by. It is the work, of course, of some mischievous lout who has set fire to the hollow interior of the tree.
Such a tree, as previously pointed out, is the favourite resort of bird and insect life. The heedless mischief of the bird-keeping boys, or the ploughlads rambling about on Sunday, destroys this Hôtel de Ville of the forest or hedgerow, the central house of assembly of the birds. To light a fire seems one of the special delights of these lads, and sometimes of men who should have learned better; and to light it in a hollow tree is the highest flight of genius. A few handfuls of withered grass and dead fern, half a dozen dry sticks, a lucifer-match, and the thing is done. The hollow within the tree is shaped like an inverted funnel, large at the bottom and decreasing upwards, where at the pointed roof one thin streak of daylight penetrates. This formation is admirably adapted to ‘draw’ a fire at the bottom, and so, once lit, it is not easily put out. The ‘touchwood’ smoulders and smokes immensely, and a great black column rises in the air. So it will go on smouldering and smoking for days till nothing but a charred stump be left. Now and then there is sufficient sap yet remaining in the bark and outer ring of wood to check the fire when it reaches it; and finally it dies out, being unable to burn the green casing of the trunk. Even then, so strong is the vital force, the oak may stand for years and put forth leaves on its branches—leaves which, when dead, will linger, loth to fall, almost through the winter, rustling in the wind, till the buds of spring push them off.
AN ENGLISH PRAIRIE-FIRE.AN ENGLISH PRAIRIE-FIRE.
Graver mischief is sometimes committed with the lucifer-match, and with more of the set purpose of destruction. In the vast expanse of furze outside the wood on the high ground the huntsmen are almost certain of a find, and, if they can get between the fox and the wood, of a rattling burst along the edge of the downs; no wonder, therefore, that both they and the keeper set store by this breadth of ‘bush.’ To this great covert more than once some skulking scoundrel has set fire, taking good care to strike his match well to windward, so that the flames might drive across the whole, and to choose a wind which would also endanger the wood. Now nothing flares up withsuch a sudden fierceness as furze, and there is no possibility of stopping it. With a loud crackling, and swaying of pointed tongues of flame visible miles away even at noontide, and a cloud of smoke, the rift rolls on, licking up grass and fern and heath; and its hot breath goes before it, and the blast rises behind it. As on the beach the wave seems to break at the foot, and then in an instant the surf runs away along the sand, so from its first start the flame widens out right and left with a greedy eagerness, and what five minutes ago was but a rolling bonfire is now a wall of fire a quarter of a mile broad, and swelling as it goes.
Then happens on a lesser scale exactly the same thing that travellers describe of the burning prairies of the Far West—a stampede of the thousands of living creatures, bird and beast: rabbits, hares, foxes, weasels, stoats, badgers, wild cats, all rushing in a maddened frenzy of fear they know not whither. Often, with a strange reversal of instinct, so to say, they will crowd together right in the way of the flames, huddling in hundreds where the fire must pass, and no effort of voice or presence of man will drive them away. The hissing, crackling fire sweeps over, and in an instant all have perished. No more miserable spectacle can be witnessed than the terror of these wretched creatures. Birds seem to fly into the smoke and are suffocated—they fall and are burned. Hares, utterly beside themselves, will rush almost into thearms of the crowd that assembles, and, of course, picks up what it can seize. The flames blacken and scorch the firs and trees on the edge of the wood, and the marks of their passage are not obliterated for years.
Apart from the torture of animals, the damage to sport—both hunting and shooting—is immense, and takes long to remedy; for although furze and fern soon shoot again, yet animal life is not so quickly repaired. Sometimes a few sheep wandering from the downs are roasted alive in this manner; and one or more dogs from the crowd watching are sure to run into the flames, which seem to exercise a fascination over some canine minds. The keeper’s wrath bubbles up years afterwards as he recalls the scene, and it would not be well for the incendiary if he fell into his hands. But the mischief can be so easily done that it is rarely these rascals are captured.
Professional Poachers.—The art of Wiring Game.
Professional Poachers.—The art of Wiring Game.
THEREare three kinds of poachers, the local men, the raiders coming in gangs from a distance, and the ‘mouchers’—fellows who do not make precisely a profession of it, but who occasionally loiter along the roads and hedges picking up whatever they can lay hands on. Philologists may trace a resemblance between the present provincial word ‘mouching’ and Shakspeare’s ‘mitcher,’ who ate blackberries. Of the three probably the largest amount of business is done by the local men, on the principle that the sitting gamester sweeps the board. They therefore deserve first consideration.
It is a popular belief that the village poacher is an idle, hang-dog ne’er-do-well, with a spice of sneaking romance in his disposition—the Bohemian of the hamlet, whose grain of genius has sprouted under difficulties, and produced weeds instead of wheat. This is a complete fallacy, in our day at least. Poaching is no longer an amusement, a thing to be indulged in because
It’s my delight of a shiny nightIn the season of the year;
It’s my delight of a shiny nightIn the season of the year;
It’s my delight of a shiny nightIn the season of the year;
but a hard, prosaic business, a matter of £s.d., requiring a long-headed, shrewd fellow, with a power of silence, capable of a delicacy of touch which almost raises poaching into a fine art. The real man is often a sober and to all appearance industrious individual, working steadily during the day at some handicraft in the village, as blacksmithing, hedge-carpentering—i.e.making posts and rails, etc.—cobbling, tinkering, or perhaps in the mill; a somewhat reserved, solitary workman of superior intelligence and frequently advanced views as to the ‘rights of labour.’ He has no appetite for thrilling adventure; his idea is simply money, and he looks upon his night-work precisely as he does upon his day-labour.
His great object is to avoid suspicion, knowing that success will be proportionate to his skill in cloaking his operations; for in a small community, when a man is ‘suspect,’ it is comparatively easy to watch him, and a poacher knows that if he is watched he must sooner or later be caught. Secrecy is not so very difficult; for it is only with certain classes that he need practise concealment: his own class will hold their peace. If a man is seen at his work in the day, if he is moderate in his public-house attendance, shows himself at church, and makes friends with the resident policemen (not as a confederate, but to know his beat and movements), he may go on for years without detection.
Perhaps the most promising position for a man whomakes a science of it is a village at the edge of a range of downs, generally fringed with large woods on the lower slopes. He has then ground to work alternately, according to the character of the weather and the changes of the moon. If the weather be wet, windy, or dark from the absence of the moon, then the wide open hills are safe; while, on the other hand, the woods are practically inaccessible, for a man must have the eyes of a cat to see to do his work in the impenetrable blackness of the plantations. So that upon a bright night the judicious poacher prefers the woods, because he can see his way, and avoids the hills, because, having no fences to speak of, a watcher may detect him a mile off.
Meadows with double mounds and thick hedges may be worked almost at any time, as one side of the hedge is sure to cast a shadow, and instant cover is afforded by the bushes and ditches. Such meadows are the happy hunting-grounds of the poacher for that reason, especially if not far distant from woods, and consequently overrun with rabbits. For, since the price of rabbits has risen so high, they are very profitable as game, considering that a dozen or two may be captured without noise and without having to traverse much space—perhaps in a single hedge.
The weather most unsuitable is that kind of frost which comes on in the early morning, and is accompanied with some rime on the grass—a duck’s frost, just sufficient to check fox-hunting. Every footstep on grass in this conditionwhen the sun comes out burns up as black as if the sole of the boot were of red-hot iron, and the poacher leaves an indelible trail behind him. But as three duck’s frosts usually bring rain, a little patience is alone necessary. A real, downright six weeks’ frost is, on the contrary, very useful—game lie close. But a deep snow is not welcome; for, although many starved animals may be picked up, yet it quite suspends the operations of the regular hand: he can neither use wire, net, nor ferret.
Windy nights are disliked, particularly by rabbit-catchers, who have to depend a great deal upon their sense of hearing to know when a rabbit is moving in the ‘buries,’ and where he is likely to ‘bolt,’ so as to lay hands on him the instant he is in the net. But with the ‘oak’s mysterious roar’ overhead, the snapping of dead branches, and the moan of the gale as it rushes through the hawthorn, it is difficult to distinguish the low, peculiar thumping sound of a rabbit in his catacomb. The rabbit is not easily dislodged in rain; for this animal avoids getting wet as much as possible: he ‘bolts’ best when it is dry and still.
A judicious man rarely uses a gun, for the reason that noise is inconvenient, and a gun is an awkward tool to carry concealed about the person even when taken to pieces. There is a certain prejudice in rural places against a labouring man possessing a gun; it is sure to draw suspicion upon him. A professional poacher is pre-eminently a trapper, relying chiefly upon the dexterousemployment of the snare. If he does shoot, by preference he chooses a misty day, knowing that the sound of the report travels scarcely half the usual distance through fog; and he beats the meadows rather than the preserves, where the discharge would instantly attract attention, while in the meadows or ploughed fields it may pass unnoticed as fired by a farmer with leave to kill rabbits.
PARTRIDGES AT EVENING.PARTRIDGES AT EVENING.
When the acorns are ripe and the pheasants wander great distances from the plantations along the hedgerows ishis best time for shooting; no keepers at that period can protect them. He also observes where the partridges which roost on the ground assemble nightly as it grows dark, easily ascertaining the spot by their repeated calls to each other, and sometimes knocks over three or four at a shot.
Occasionally, also, early in the season, before the legitimate sportsman perhaps has stepped into the stubble, and while the coveys are large, he sees a good chance, and with two or even three ounces of shot makes havoc among them. He invariably fires at his game sitting, first, because he cannot lose an opportunity, and, next, because he can kill several at once. He creeps up behind a hedge, much as the sportsman in Rubens’ picture in the National Gallery is represented, stooping to get a view, himself unseen, at the brown birds on the ground. With the antique firelock such a practice was necessary; but nothing in our day so stamps a man a poacher as this total denial of ‘law’ to the game.
When the pheasant is shot his next difficulty is with the feathers. The fluffy, downy under-feathers fly in all directions, scattering over the grass, and if left behind would tell an unmistakable tale. They must therefore be collected as far as possible, and hidden in the ditch. The best pockets for carrying game are those made in the tails of the coat, underneath: many poachers’ coats are one vast pocket behind the lining.
When there is special danger of being personally overhauledand searched, or when the ‘bag’ is large, the game is frequently hidden in a rabbit-hole, taking care to fence the hole some distance inside with a stout stick across it, the object of which is that if the keeper or a sportsman should pass that way his dogs, scenting the game, will endeavour to scratch out the earth and get in after it. This the cross stick will prevent, and the keeper will probably thrash his dog for refusing to obey when called off.
RUBENS’ SPORTSMAN.RUBENS’ SPORTSMAN.
A great deal of poaching used to be accomplished bynets, into which both partridges and pheasants were driven. If skilfully alarmed—that is, not too much hurried—these birds will run a long way before rising, and, if their tracks are known, may be netted in considerable numbers. But of recent years, since pheasants especially have become so costly a luxury to keep, the preserves and roosting-places have been more effectually watched, and this plan has become more difficult to put in practice. In fact, the local man thinks twice before he puts his foot inside a preserve, and, if possible, prefers to pick up outside. If a preserve is broken into the birds are at once missed, and there is a hue and cry; but the loss of outsiders is not immediately noticed.
The wire is, perhaps, the regular poacher’s best implement, and ground game his most profitable source of income. Hares exist in numbers upon the downs, especially near the localities where the great coursing meetings are held, where a dozen may be kicked out of the grass in five minutes. In these districts of course the downs are watched; but hares cannot be kept within bounds, and wander miles and miles at night, limping daintily with their odd gait (when undisturbed) along the lanes leading into the ploughed fields on the lower slopes and plains. The hills—wide and almost pathless, and practically destitute of fences—where the foot leaves no trail on the short grass and elastic turf, are peculiarly favourable to illicit sport.
Though apparently roaming aimlessly, hares have their regular highways or ‘runs;’ and it is the poacher’s business to discover which of these narrow paths are most beaten by continuous use. He then sets his wire, as early in the evening as compatible with safety to himself, for hares are abroad with the twilight.
Long practice and delicate skill are essential to successful snaring. First, the loop itself into which the hare is to run his head must be of the exact size. If it be too small he will simply thrust it aside; if too large his body will slip through, and his hind leg will be captured: being crooked, it draws the noose probably. Then if caught by the hind leg, the wretched creature, mad with terror, will shriek his loudest; and a hare shrieks precisely like a human being in distress. The sound, well understood by the watchers, will at once reveal what is going forward. But there may be no watchers about; and in that case the miserable animal will tug and tug during the night till the wire completely bares the lower bone of the leg, and in the morning, should any one pass, his leaps and bounds and rolls will of course be seen. Sometimes he twists the wire till it snaps, and so escapes—but probably to die a lingering death, since the copper or brass is pretty sure to mortify the flesh. No greater cruelty can be imagined. The poacher, however, is very anxious to avoid it, as it may lead to detection; and if his wire is properly set the animal simply hangs himself, brought up with asudden jerk which kills him in two seconds, and with less pain than is caused by the sting of the sportsman’s cartridge.
SETTING A HARE SNARE.SETTING A HARE SNARE.
Experience is required to set the loop at the right height above the ground. It is measured by placing theclenched fist on the earth, and then putting the extended thumb of the other open hand upon it, stretching it out as in the action of spanning, when the tip of the little finger gives the right height for the lower bend of the loop—that is, as a rule; but clever poachers vary it slightly to suit the conformation of the ground. A hare carries his head much higher than might be thought; and he is very strong, so that the plug which holds the wire must be driven in firmly to withstand his first convulsive struggle. The small upright stick whose cleft suspends the wire across the ‘run’ must not be put too near the hare’s path, or he will see it, and it must be tolerably stiff, or his head will push the wire aside. Just behind a ‘tussocky’ bunch of grass is a favourite spot to set a noose; the grass partially conceals it.
The poacher revisits his snares very early in the morning, and if he is judicious, invariably pulls them up, whether successful or not, because they may be seen in the day. Half the men who are fined by the magistrates have been caught by keepers who, having observed wires, let them remain, but keep a watch and take the offenders red-handed. The professional poacher never leaves his wires set up all day, unless a sudden change of weather and the duck’s frost previously mentioned prevent him from approaching them, and then he abandons those particular snares for ever. For this reason he does not set up more than he can easily manage. If he gets threehares a night (wholesale price 2s. 6d. each) he is well repaid. Rabbits are also wired in great numbers. The loop is a trifle smaller, and should be just a span from the ground.
But the ferret is the poacher’s chief assistant in rabbiting: it takes two men, one on each side of the ‘bury,’ and a ferret which will not ‘lie in’—i.e.stay in the hole and feast till overcome with sleep. Ferrets differ remarkably in disposition, and the poacher chooses his with care; otherwise, if the ferret will not come out, the keepers are certain to find him the next day hunting on his own account. Part of the secret is to feed him properly, so that he may have sufficient appetite to hunt well and yet be quickly satisfied with a taste of blood. Skill is essential in setting up the nets at the mouth of the holes; but beyond the mere knack, easily acquired, there is little to learn in ferreting.
The greatest difficulty with any kind of game is to get home unobserved with the bag. Keepers are quite aware of this; and in the case of large estates, leaving one or two assistants near the preserves, they patrol the byways and footpaths, while the police watch the crossroads and lanes which lead to the villages. If a man comes along at an exceptionally early hour with coat pockets violently bulging, there is aprima faciecase for searching him. One advantage of wiring or netting over the gun is here very noticeable: anything shot bleeds andstains the pocket—a suspicious sign even when empty; strangulation leaves no traces.
Without a knowledge of the policeman’s beat and the keeper’s post the poacher can do nothing on a large scale. He has, however, no great trouble in ascertaining these things; the labourers who do not themselves poach sympathise warmly and whisper information. There is reason to think that men sometimes get drunk, or sufficiently so to simulate intoxication very successfully, with the express purpose of being out all night with a good excuse, and so discovering the policeman’s ambuscade. Finding a man, whom he knows to be usually sober, overtaken with drink in a lonely road, where he injures none but himself, the policeman goodnaturedly leads him home with a caution only.
The receivers of game are many and various. The low beer-shop keepers are known to purchase large quantities. Sometimes a local pork-butcher in a small way buys and transmits it, having facilities for sending hampers, etc., unsuspected. Sometimes the carriers are the channel of communication; and there is no doubt the lower class of game dealers in the provincial towns get a good deal in this way. The London dealer, who receives large consignments at once, has of course no means of distinguishing poached from other game. The men who purchase the rabbits ferreted by the keepers during the winter in the woods and preserves, and who often buy£100 worth or more in the season, have peculiar opportunities for conveying poached animals, carefully stowed for them in a ditch on their route. This fact having crept out has induced gentlemen to remove these rabbit contracts from local men, and to prefer purchasers from a distance, who must take some time to get acquainted with the district poachers.
The raiders, who come in gangs armed with guns and shoot in the preserves, are usually the scum of manufacturing towns, led or guided by a man expelled through his own bad conduct from the village, and who has a knowledge of the ground. These gangs display no skill; relying on their numbers, arms, and known desperation of character to protect them from arrest, as it does in nine cases out of ten. Keepers and policemen cannot be expected to face such brutes as these fellows; they do sometimes, however, and get shattered with shot.
The ‘mouchers’ sneak about the hedgerows on Sundays with lurcher dogs, and snap up a rabbit or a hare; they do not do much damage except near great towns, where they are very numerous. Shepherds, also, occasionally mouch—their dogs being sometimes very expert; and ploughmen set wires in the gateways or gaps where they have noticed the track of a hare, but it is only for their own eating, and is not of much consequence in comparison with the work of the real local professional. These regular hands form a class which are probably morenumerous now than ever; the reasons are—first, the high value of game and the immense demand for it since poultry has become so dear, and, secondly, the ease of transmission now that railways spread into the most outlying districts and carry baskets or parcels swiftly out of reach. Poaching, in fact, well followed is a lucrative business.
Some occasional poaching is done with no aid but the hand, especially in severe weather, which makes all wild animals ‘dummel,’ in provincial phrase—i.e.stupid, slow to move. Even the hare is sometimes caught by hand as he crouches in his form. It requires a practised eye, that knows precisely where to look among the grass, to detect him hidden in the bunch under the dead, dry bennets. An inexperienced person chancing to see a hare sitting like this would naturally stop short in walking to get a better view; whereupon the animal, feeling that he was observed, would instantly make a rush. You must persuade the hare that he is unseen; and so long as he notices no start or sign of recognition—his eye is on you from first entering the field—he will remain still, believing that you will pass.
The poacher, having marked his game, looks steadily in front of him, never turning his head, but insensibly changes his course and quietly approaches sidelong. Then, in the moment of passing, he falls quick as lightning on his knee, and seizes the hare just behind the poll. It is
POACHING IN THE WINTER.POACHING IN THE WINTER.
the only place where the sudden grasp would hold him in his convulsive terror—he is surprisingly powerful—and almost ere he can shriek (as he will do) the left hand has tightened round the hind legs. Stretching him to his full length across the knee, the right thumb, with a peculiar twist, dislocates his neck, and he is dead in an instant. There is something of the hangman’s knack in this, which is the invariable way of killing rabbits when ferreted or caught alive; and yet it is the most merciful, for deathis instantaneous. It is very easy to sprain the thumb while learning the trick.
A poacher will sometimes place his hat gently on the ground, when first catching sight of a sitting hare, and then stealthily approach on the opposite side. The hare watches the hat, while the real enemy comes up unawares, or, if both are seen, he is in doubt which way to dash. On a dull, cold day hares will sit till the sportsman’s dogs are nearly on them, almost till he has to kick them out. At other times in the same locality they are, on the contrary, too wild. Occasionally a labourer, perhaps a ‘fogger,’ crossing the meadows with slow steps, finds a rabbit sitting in like manner among the grass or in a dry furrow. Instantly he throws himself all a-sprawl upon the ground, with the hope of pinning the animal to the earth. The manœuvre, however, frequently fails, and the rabbit slips away out of his very hands.
The poacher is never at rest; there is no season when his marauding expeditions cease for awhile: he acknowledges no ‘close time’ whatever. Almost every month has its appropriate game for him, and he can always turn his hand to something. In the very heat of the summer there are the young rabbits, for which there is always a sale in the towns, and the leverets, which are easily picked up by a lurcher dog.
I have known a couple of men take a pony and trap for this special purpose, and make a pleasant excursionover hill and dale, through the deep country lanes, and across the open down land, carrying with them two or three such dogs to let loose as opportunity offers. Their appearance as they rattle along is certainly not prepossessing; the expression of their canine friends trotting under the trap, or peering over the side, stamps them at the first glance as ‘snappers up of unconsidered trifles;’ but you cannot arrest these gentlemen peacefully driving on the ‘king’s highway’ simply because they have an ugly look about them. From the trap they get a better view than on foot; standing up they can see over a moderately high hedge, and they can beat a rapid retreat if necessary, with the aid of a wiry pony. Passing by some meadows, they note a goodly number of rabbits feeding in the short aftermath. They draw up by a gateway, and one of them dismounts. With the dogs he creeps along behind the hedge (the object being to get between the bunnies and their holes), and presently sends the dogs on their mission. The lurchers are tolerably sure of catching a couple—young rabbits are neither so swift nor so quick at doubling as the older ones. Before the farmer and his men, who are carting the summer-ricks in an adjacent field, can quite comprehend what the unusual stir is about yonder, the poachers are off, jogging comfortably along, with their game hidden under an old sack or some straw.
Their next essay is among the ploughed fields, where the corn is ripening and as yet no reapers are at work, sothat the coast is almost clear. Here they pick up a leveret, and perhaps the dogs chop a weakly young partridge, unable to fly well, in the hedge. The keeper has just strolled through the copses bordering on the road and has left them, as he thinks, safe. They watch his figure slowly disappearing in the distance from a bend of the lane, and then send the dogs among the underwood. In the winter men will carry ferrets with them in a trap like this.
The desperate gangs who occasionally sweep the preserves, defying the keepers in their strength of numbers and prestige of violence, sometimes bring with them a horse and cart, not so much for speed of escape as to transport a heavy bag of game. Such a vehicle, driven by one man, will, moreover, often excite no suspicion, though it may be filled with pheasants under sacks and hay. A good deal of what may be called casual poaching is also done on wheels.
Some of the landlords of the low beer-houses in the country often combine with the liquor trade the business of dealing in pigs, calves, potatoes, etc., and keep a light cart, or similar conveyance. Now, if any one will notice the more disreputable of these beer-houses, they will observe that there are generally a lot of unkempt, rough-looking dogs about them. These, of course, follow their master when he goes on his short journeys from place to place; and they are quite capable of mischief. Such men may not make a business of poaching, yet if in passinga preserve the dogs stray and bring back something eatable, why, it is very easy to stow it under the seat with the potatoes. Sometimes a man is bold enough to carry a gun in this way—to jump out when he sees a chance and have a shot, and back and off before any one knows exactly what is going on.
Somehow there always seems to be a market for game out of season: it is ‘passed’ somewhere, just as thieves pass stolen jewellery. So also fish, even when manifestly unfit for table, in the midst of spawning time, commands a ready sale if overlooked by the authorities. It is curious that people can be found to purchase fish in such a condition; but it is certain that they do. In the spring, when one would think bird and beast might be permitted a breathing space, the poacher is as busy as ever after eggs. Pheasant and partridge eggs are largely bought and sold in the most nefarious manner. It is suspected that some of the less respectable breeders who rear game birds like poultry for sale, are not too particular of whom they purchase eggs; and, as we have before observed, certain keepers are to blame in this matter also.
Plovers’ eggs, again, are an article of commerce in the spring; they are protected now by law, but it is to be feared that the enactment is to a great extent a dead letter. The eggs of the peewit, or lapwing, as the bird is variously called, are sought for with great perseverance, and accounted delicacies. These birds frequent commonswhere the grass is very rough, and interspersed with bunches of rushes, marshy places, and meadows liable to be flooded in the winter. The nest on the ground is often made in the depression left by a horse’s hoof in the soft earth—any slight hole, in fact; and it is so concealed, or rather differs so little from the appearance of the general sward around, as to be easily passed unnoticed. You may actually step on it, and so smash the eggs, before you see it.
PLOVER’S NEST.PLOVER’S NEST.
Aware that the most careful observation may fail to find what he wants, the egg-stealer adopts a simple but effective plan by which he ensures against omitting to examine a single foot of the field. Drop a pocket-knife or some such object in the midst of a great meadow, and you will find the utmost difficulty in discovering it again, when the grass is growing tall as in spring. You may think that you have traversed every inch, yet it is certain that you have not; the inequalities of the ground insensibly divert your footsteps, and it is very difficult to keep a straight line. What is required is something to fix the eye—what a sailor would call a ‘bearing.’ This the egg-stealer finds in a walking-stick. He thrusts the point into the earth, and then slowly walks round and round it, enlarging the circle every time, and thus sweeps every inch of the surface with his eye. When he has got so far from the stick as to feel that his steps are becoming uncertain he removes it, and begins again in another spot. A person not aware of this simple trick will search a field till weary and declare there is nothing to be found; another, who knows the dodge, will go out and return in an hour with a pocketful of eggs.
On those clear, bright winter nights when the full moon is almost at the zenith, and the ‘definition’ of tree and bough in the flood of light seems to equal if not to exceed that of the noonday, some poaching used to be accomplished with the aid of a horsehair noose on the end of a long slender wand. There are still some districts inthe country more or less covered with forest, and which on account of ancient rights cannot be enclosed. Here the art of noosing lingers; the loop being insidiously slipped over the bird’s head while at roost. By constant practice a wonderful dexterity may be acquired in this trick; men will snare almost any bird in broad daylight. With many birds a favourite place for a nest is in a hollow tree, access being had by a decayed knothole, and they are sometimes noosed as they emerge. A thin flexible copper wire is said to be substituted for large game. This method of capture peculiarly suits the views of the ornithologist, with whom it is an object to avoid the spoiling of feathers by shot.
Every now and then a bird-catcher comes along decoying the finches from the hedges, for sale as cage-birds in London. Some of these men, without any mechanical assistance, can imitate the ‘call’ note of the bird they desire to capture so as to deceive the most practised ear. These fellows are a great nuisance, and will completely sweep a lane of all the birds whose song makes them valuable. In this way some localities have been quite cleared of goldfinches, which used to be common. The keepers, of course, will not permit them on private property; but in all rural districts there are wide waste spaces—as where two or more roads meet—broad bands of green sward running beside the highway, and the remnants of what in former days were commons; andhere the bird-catcher plies his trade. It so happens that these very waste places are often the most favourite resorts of goldfinches, for instance, who are particularly fond of thistledown, and thistles naturally chiefly flourish on uncultivated land. These men and the general class of loafers have a wholesome dread of gamekeepers, who look on them with extreme suspicion.
The farmers and rural community at large hardly give the gamekeeper his due as a protection against thieves and mischievous rascals. The knowledge that he may at any time come round the corner, even in the middle of the night, has a decidedly salutary effect upon the minds of those who are prowling about. Intoxicated louts think it fine fun to unhinge gates, and let cattle and horses stray abroad, to tear down rails, and especially to push the coping stones off the parapets of the bridges which span small streams. They consider it clever to heave these over with a splash into the water, or to throw down half a dozen yards of ‘dry wall.’ In many places fields are commonly enclosed by the roadside with such walls, which are built of a flat stone dug just beneath the surface, and used without mortar. There are men who make a business of building these walls; it requires some skill and patience to select the stones and fit them properly. They serve the purpose very well, but the worst is that if once started the process of destruction is easy and quick. Much more serious offencesthan these are sometimes committed, as cutting horses with knives, and other mutilations. The fact that the fields are regularly perambulated by keepers and their assistants night and day cannot but act as a check upon acts of this kind.