A Gamekeeper's Note-book
A GAMEKEEPER'S NOTE-BOOK
A PIPE OF PEACE LONDON, EDWARD ARNOLD.
AND
MARCUS WOODWARD JOINT AUTHOR OF WOODCRAFT
WITH PHOTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND IMPRESSION
A gamekeeper's notes are written for the most part on the tablets of his mind. He is a man of silence; yet he is ever ready to unlock the casket of his memories if old friends, and sympathetic, are about him. We have known keepers who could talk, when so minded, as well as they could shoot, making their points as certainly as they would bowl over any straying cat that crossed their paths. But few keepers can handle a pen with the same confidence as a gun. Some keepers, it is true, carry note-books, and therein make certain brief notes—simple records and plain statements of fact, interesting enough to glance over, but nothing to read.
The vermin bag has an honourable place in these notes—year by year the keeper may set down precisely how many malefactors (and others) have fallen to his gun and traps. It is a record in which he takes almost as much pride as in his daily and yearly lists of game; the grand total of a good season for game or vermin lingers for ever on his lips. The date of a shoot, the beat, the number and names of the guns, and what luck befell them, all may be noted with scrupulous care, with a word about the weather, perhaps, and possibly also on the benefits in cash received by the keeper at the day's end. Many carry little pocket note-books wherein they keep an account of dates and places—the date of all dates in the year being, of course, that on which the first wild pheasant's egg was found among the primroses. A page of the book may be filled with the names and nicknames of poachers caught, and a record of their transgressions and penalties. For the rest, for all the details, that should clothe the nakedness of these briefly written words, one must go to the keeper's mind. And the best of all a keeper's notes are the ones he never jots down.
In this book the notes set out are culled chiefly from a series of genuine note-books, covering a certain keeper's ten years' experience of gamekeeping and life-long experience in woodcraft: we have taken the rough jottings of his pocket-books, and have done our best with thoughts and memories to sketch in the foreground and background of his facts. Where he has merely noted, April —, first wild pheasant's egg seen, we have tried to picture him as he set out hopefully expectant, and to describe his feelings as he found that egg, to him more precious than all others of the year. Where, again, he only says, Saw cubs at play, we have sympathised with him as he noted what wings of partridges and pheasants, what legs of hares and bones of rabbits, littered the playground.
Owen Jones
Marcus Woodward
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PREAMBLE
LIST OF CONTENTS
SPRING
SUMMER
AUTUMN
WINTER
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SPRING
The Keepers' Lot
Perquisites
Pets at the Cottage
Wood-Pigeons
The Keeper's Larder
Homely Medicines
The Earth-Stoppers' Feast
The Keeper's Garden
Keepers' Holidays
An Advantage of Marriage
The Keeper seeks a New Berth
In North and South
Poachers—
And their Dogs
Perfect Obedience
The Black List
A South-Country Record
Woodland Gallows
The Gallows Martyrs
Once Trapped, Twice Shy
Cunning Trappers
The Time to Catch a Weasel
Changes of Coats
The Vermin Bag
The Ways of Squirrels
The Squirrel's Appetite
The Departure of Cats
Skeletons and Cobwebs
The Persecuted Magpie
The Merciful Trap
The Rabbit in a Snare
The Sleep of Birds
Animals at Rest
Vigilant Fulfers
The Eyes of Wild Creatures
The Season's End
Beaters' Sport
Tailless Cocks
Preparations
Hungry Rabbits
To Save Underwood
Studies in Fear
The Rookery
When Rooks Build
Ways of the Crows
The Crow as Terrorist
Imperial Rooks
Rook-Pie
Birds for Stock
Old Hens
A Gamekeeping Problem
The Hare Poacher
March Hares
The Cubs' Birthday
Courtiers in Pens
When Hawks Nest
Love-Dances
Names that Puzzle Cockneys
Hares and their Young
Starving Birds
The Egg of Eggs
Pheasants' Eggs
Hens in Cocks' Feathers
About Nesting Pheasants
The Broody Hen
The Frenchmen's Nests
The Last of the Hurdlers
Hurdlers' Science
The Woodman
A Dying Race
Choice Nesting-Places
Hidden Nests
A Mutual Understanding
Many Guardians
Mark's Day
The Old, Old story
The Luck of Pheasant-rearing
From Egg to Larder
Fine Eggs and Good Mothers
The Cub-stealing Shepherd
Lures and Charms
The Law and the Peewit
The Partridge and the Peewit
A Friend to Agriculture
The Rats in the Stacks
Thoughts on Rat-hunting
When Cats are Angered
Hunters' Thirst
Life-in-Death
Ideal Ratters
Ratting without Ferrets
SUMMER
A Keeper Chorister
Velveteens
Owls and Hawks
The Bold Sparrow-Hawk
Nest and Young
The Keeper Outwitted
A Jackdaw Nursery
Detective Work
Cattle in the Woods
A Tragedy of the Woodlands
Fox and Partridge
A Study in Perseverance
The Hut in the Woods
Pheasant Chicks
The Roosting Habit
The Badger's Stealth
To Attract Bullfinches
Bird Warnings
A Rabbit's Fates
Game-Birds and Motors
Mysteries of the Nightjar
The Razor-grinder
A Ventriloquist
The Cock and the Hen
On Finding Feathers
When the Dog's Asleep
A Story of Rats
Blood and Water
The Untimely Opening
'Ware Wire
Witless Pheasants
Nature's Laws
The Partridge June
Favoured Pheasants
A Covey of Ancients
Keepers' Woe
Red-Legs
Water for Game-Birds
Ideal Coverts
The Thirst of Rabbits
Puppies at Walk
Schooling the Puppies
Dogs' Noses
The Thief of the World
The Cubs' Playground
A Fox's Feat
Dog-Washing Days
Shame-faced Cocks
The Turtle-Dove's Summer
The Lagging Landrail
The Truce Ends
The Thieving Jay
The Oldest Writing
Prospects
Useful Work by Game-Birds
Life of the Cornfield
The Keeper's Hopes
Finding the Fox
Harvest Sport
The Luck of the Game
Rabbit-Catchers' Craft
Among the Corn
The Last to Leave
In the Woods
Weasel Families
Mother Stoat
Lurking-places
Studies in Stoat Ways
The First
Early Birds
Walking-up
Thoughts on Cubbing
Wines of the Country
AUTUMN
The Verdict of the Season
Weather to pray for
After the Opening
An October Day
Low Flight and High
Wily Grouse Cocks
Rewards for Cubs
"Various"—the Landrail
Sport amid the Shocks
"Mark"
The Keeper's Dogs
Woodcock Owls
Dogs that Despise Woodcock
Pets of Pigs
Some Deals in Dogs
Marked Birds
Colour-Changes in Feathers
Nature's Healing
A Little Story
Accidents to Hares
Hares no longer Speedy
Starling Hosts
Trials of a Copser
Wild Birds in Cages
Truffles
Retriever's Usefulness
Nuts and Mice
The Hand of Time
The Keeper grows Old
Rabbit Ways in Autumn
The Rabbits' House-cleaning
The Guileless Countryman
Sporting Policemen
The Woodcraft of Gipsies
Gipsy Lies
Long-netters
Training Rabbits
Why Birds Flock
The Companies of Rats
The Fall
Late and Early Autumns
Hares in the Garden
Food for Pheasants
The Lingering Leaves
Planning Big Shoots
Plots and Counter-Plots
Indian Summer
Winter Sleep
A Dish of Hedgehog
WINTER
Rustic Wit
The Oak City
Acorns
Plump Rabbits
The Stoat's Hunting
Mysteries of Scent
The Axe in the Coverts
The Uses of Underwood
The Tipping System
Free Suppers for the Fox
Clues to the Thief
Muzzled by a Snare
Cunning Rascals
A Hunting Argument
The Clever Terrier
Born Retrieving
Some Sporting Types
Victims of Wire
Stoat or Weasel?
"The Horrid Badger"
Chalk-Pit Haunts
When the Fox sleeps
When Ferret meets Fox
February Rabbits
The Moucher's Excuse
When Hounds come
When Hounds are gone
Poachers' Weapons
Moles' Skins for Furs
Covert-shooting Problems
"Cocks only"—to compromise
What a Cat may kill
A Cockney Story
Hares in Small Holdings
The Sins of the Father
The Pheasants' Roosting-Trees
The Fox in the Storm
Foxes at Pheasant Shoots
Pheasants that go to Ground
Pheasants' Doomsday
The Hungry Retriever
The Old Wood
Memories of Muzzle-loaders
Relics of the Great Days
Cleaning a Muzzle-loader
The Knowing Beater
Old Friends
What Shepherds enjoy
Lives of Labour
In the Folds
Shepherds' Care
Winter Partridge-driving
The Fear of Snow
Hard-Weather Prophets
Weather-wise Beasts and Birds
Green Winters
What Rainy Days bring
Cubs at Christmas
Work for Rainy Days
The Old Lumber
When Foxes mate
A Keeper's Dreams
A Death-bed Vision
Christmas Sport
Cunning Cock Pheasants
A Dish of Greens
Christmas Shoots
Woodcock Talk
Spare the Hens
A Free-and-Easy
A Keeper's Ghost-Story
Old Friends in Velveteen
The Converted Shepherd
A Final Story
Careful Wives
"What Her was Like"
INDEX
