Gamekeeper

“ The gamekeeper, generally speaking, is the most ruthless of beasts of prey. If he is a good gamekeeper his great aim is to see that there is always a plentiful supply of partridges in his master’s fields, pheasants in his master’s coverts, or grouse on his master’s moors, as the case may be. ”

“ There is a saying that an old poacher makes the best gamekeeper, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief: a maxim however, of doubtful value, since no other{209} person could so thoroughly appreciate the tempting opportunities which must arise day after day. That keepers themselves are sometimes the worst of depredators must be admitted. Hitherto I have chiefly described the course of action followed by honest and conscientious men, truly anxious for their employers’ interests, and taking a personal pride in a successful shooting season. ”

“ They are approaching the reward of their cunning, of their keen eyes, their sharp ears, their speedy legs—the possibility of several wives is before them. No matter where the keeper goes now, he is taunted by the sight and sound of these victorious veterans that have eluded all his efforts to bring them low. In summer it is the lament of the twenty thousand gamekeepers in this country that there are "too many cocks by half." ”

“ The careful gamekeeper will stop all the rabbit-holes round about the place where he hopes that many pheasants will fall—perhaps for fifty yards before and behind the stands of the sportsmen. Many a pheasant is lost through going to ground in a rabbit-burrow, and there is seldom a spade and a grub-axe at hand. ”

“ It may be useful to a shooting party when cartridges have come to an end, or at the close of a day for transporting game speedily to the station, or at any time for bringing a doctor when the bag has been enriched by the addition of a gamekeeper. ”

“ For the keeper the days and nights spent in his rearing-fields pass in incessant anxiety. He never counts his pheasants before they are hatched. He may count them as morsels of fluff; when they begin to use their babyish wings; again when they fill the broad ride with a mass of seething brown—but not until the bracken is dead, and the trees are naked, and the game-cart has borne away its burden, does he count them as his own. Nor does his anxiety cease until the long tails hang safely in his larder. ”

“ If the valet sees the hero or the statesman too closely, so sometimes does the gamekeeper. A great man must have moments when it is a relief to fling off the constant posturing necessary before the world; and there is freshness in the gamekeeper’s unstudied conversation. The keeper thinks that nothing reveals a gentleman’s character so much as his ‘tips.’
‘Gentlemen is very curious in tips,’ he says, ‘and there ain’t nothing so difficult as to know what’s coming. Most in general them as be the biggest guns, and what you would think would come out handsome, chucks you a crown and no more ”

“ And we agree that if any servant of pleasure deserves a tip it is the gamekeeper. But among the fallacies of the system is the fact that the scale of tips is seldom in proportion to skill and energy. Thus, a tip of a certain amount is given for a day's covert shooting of, say, under a hundred head, half pheasants, calling for a certain amount of energy and skill on the keeper's part. But a tip of only half the amount will be given after a thirty-brace day at driven partridges, which has afforded five times the amount of shooting, and called for ten times more skill and energy from the keeper. ”

“ The gamekeeper cannot have this feeling: he may come to his task with the liveliest interest in, even with sympathy for, the wild creatures amidst which he will spend his life, but it is all soon lost. His business in the woods is to kill, and the reflex effect is to extinguish all interest in the living animal—in its life and mind. It would, indeed, be a wonderful thing if he could remember any singular action or appearance of an animal which he had witnessed before bringing his gun automatically to his shoulder. ”

“ Another benefit is felt by the gamekeeper: where there is no constant supply, he must trudge many weary miles carrying heavy buckets of water, and he knows all the time that his labour is almost in vain—so much of the precious water is wasted by evaporation, and fouled by the birds washing themselves, and by the drifting of leaves. ”

“ The gamekeeper finds his work fall upon him harder now than it used to do: first, sportsmen look for a heavier return of killed and wounded; next, they are seldom willing to take much personal trouble to find the game, but like it in a manner brought to them; and, lastly, he thinks the shooting season has grown shorter. Gentlemen used to reside at home the greater part of the winter, and spread{49} their shooting over many months. ”

“ If sportsmen would consider the evidence for and against sparrow-hawks as despoilers of game—if they would rely no longer on prejudice and crass ignorance—we feel sure they would take steps to stay the wanton slaughter by their gamekeepers of these handsome, useful birds. Keepers ought to be forbidden to destroy any sparrow-hawks, except those which clearly prove themselves guilty of killing game as a habit. How thoughtless, ruthless, and mistaken is the keeper's zeal in killing them, we could show by a hundred instances. ”

“ PREFACE. THOSE who delight in roaming about amongst the fields and lanes, or have spent any time in a country house, can hardly have failed to notice the custodian of the woods and covers, or to observe that he is often something of a ‘character.’ The Gamekeeper forms, indeed, so prominent a figure in rural life as almost to demand some biographical record of his work and ways. From the man to the territories over which he bears sway—the meadows, woods, and streams—and to his subjects, their furred and feathered inhabitants, is a natural transition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To rabbits he - 3 - may help himself freely, also to rooks and pigeons. After each shooting party his employer—if a generous master—invites him to take home a brace of pheasants and a hare; and there may be other ways in which game comes to his larder. Commissions and fees of various indeterminate sorts may swell his coffers. All kinds of supplies he secures, if not freely, at reduced prices. And always there is the harvest of tips. Clearly there is every chance for a gamekeeper to receive charity of some form or another, if it is not always offered ”

“ Old Christy and the gamekeeper both, for a time, set their faces against the whole plan of education; Christy having been nettled at hearing what he terms a wild-goose chase put on a par with a fox-hunt; and the gamekeeper having always been accustomed to look upon hawks as arrant poachers, which it was his duty to shoot down, and nail, in terrorem, against the out-houses. ”

“ Wood-pigeons are among the gamekeeper's perquisites. Apart from a very occasional request from "the house" for the wherewithal for pigeon-pie, the pigeons shot are for the benefit of the keeper and his family, and when he shoots more than he requires there are always labourers and others glad of a pigeon or two "to make a pudden." Rabbits, also, are perquisites, but to be sold no more than pigeons. The popular idea is that keepers may help themselves to any game they please—true, they could if so minded. ”

“ How are the preserves?”
“Well, sir, the game is increasing and multiplying to that degree for the want of sporting gents among ’em to thin ’em out, that for once in a way poachers is a blessing.”
“Poachers! Why, what is the gamekeeper about, to permit poachers to trespass?”
“Well, sir, there ain’t no gamekeeper here, nor likewise been none since the old squire died. The last gamekeeper went off to Australia to seek his fortune.”
“Thank Heaven!” breathed Ran with fervency, not loud but deep, that now he could put his friend in office without hurting any one’s feelings. ”

“ Centlivre's 'Love at a Venture,' which shows that it was only when the former failed, that he tried the latter plan. And, in an advertisement for a gamekeeper, it is noticed: 'Any one that is a very good Coach man, and can Shoot flying, perfectly well, may hear of a good Place.' If being a good coachman was useful to a gamekeeper, what can we say to this: 'Any Gentleman that wants a Man for Shooting, Hunting, Setting, or any Manner of Game, may hear of one well qualified. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Bold Sparrow-Hawk
It is time, and high time, that sparrow-hawks were placed under the protecting wing of the law. Generations of gamekeepers have persecuted them relentlessly: it says much for their courage, strength, and craftiness that any should remain to offer a target for the keeper's gun. But they grow scarce; they are seen far less commonly than kestrels, whose usefulness and innocence of gamecide is beginning to be a little understood. ”

“ Long service in one particular situation is not so common now as it used to be. Men move about from place to place, but wherever they are they still engage in the same capacity; and once a gamekeeper always a gamekeeper is pretty nearly true. Even in the present day instances of families holding the office for more than one or two generations on the same estate may be found; and years ago such was often the case. Occasionally the keeper’s family has in this way, by the slow passage of time, become in a sense associated with that of his employer ”

“ The gamekeeper, with dogs around him from morning till night, associated with them from childhood, has no doubts upon the matter whatever, but with characteristic decision is perfectly certain that they think and reason in the same way as human beings, though of course in a limited degree. ”

“ The- 229 - great art is to give even shooting through the day, and to distribute sport evenly among the guns, without favouritism—unless, indeed, orders are that the cream of the sport must pass the way of an important personage. If a keeper, for reasons of his own, should wish the bulk of the game to go to one quarter, he can manage this by retarding one end of the line of beaters, or by ordering certain beaters to tap with their staves more vigorously than the others—and by this stratagem his partiality is hidden completely from the sportsmen. ”

“ With Photogravure Illustrations.
Large crown 8vo., cloth, 7s. 6d. net.
In this charming and romantic book we follow the gamekeeper in his secret paths, stand by him while with deft fingers he arranges his traps and snares, watch with what infinite care he tends his young game through all the long days of spring and summer—and in autumn and winter garners with equal eagerness the fruits of his labour. He takes us into the coverts at night, and with him we keep the long vigil—while poachers come, or come not. ”

“ If a man had to get his living by the chase in Red Indian fashion, probably this would be the best breed for his purpose. Many shepherds’ dogs now have a cross of the lurcher in their strain, and are good at poaching.
Sunday is the gamekeeper’s worst day; the idle, rough characters from the adjacent town pour out into the country, and necessitate extra watchfulness. On Sunday the keeper, out of respect to the day, does not indeed carry his gun, but he works yet harder than on week-days. While the chimes are ringing to church he is on foot by the edge of the preserves. ”

“ In fact, he shows a little too much interest in the turf columns to be quite satisfactory to his father, who is somewhat anxious about his acquaintance with the jockeys from the training-stables on the downs hard by—an acquaintance he discourages as tending to no good. Like his father, he is never seen abroad without a pair of leathern gaiters, and, if not a gun, a stout gnarled ground-ash stick in his hand.
The gamekeeper’s calling naturally tends to perpetuate itself and become hereditary in his family. The life is full of attraction to boys—the gun alone is hardly to be resisted ”

“ Probably there would be no great difficulty training a dog to drop a hare, or anything else, at the approach of somebody other than its master. Dogs are sometimes trained to lie down, without receiving any signal or order, when their owners meet friends and stop to talk. One old gamekeeper would consider his dogs to be very ill-mannered if they did not lie down of their own accord when he stopped walking. Another keeper has trained his dog to quite an out-of-the-way trick, which is to the keeper's personal advantage, if highly detrimental to his duties. ”

“ The mother hare is wise to separate her family. Many dangers threaten the leveret's life; but if families were kept together the young ones would be even more open to attack from rooks and crows, and scent-hunting vermin in fur. The leveret with its eyes pecked out by a rook, yet still living, is a- 67 - sight which pleads for the mercy of a swift death at the gamekeeper's hands. The mother hare is keenly alive to the dangers besetting her family. ”