Free Suppers for the Fox
How many foxes have owed their deaths indirectly to covert shooting? It is a nice question for hunting men. The fox is one of the craftiest creatures in the world. A very short experience is enough to make him associate the particular squeal of a rabbit when caught in a snare with a cheap supper. And he discovers quickly that luxurious banquets await him after a day's covert shooting. The discovery has a certain result; after covert shooting foxes gorge themselves, and become totally unfit to stand before hounds. To keepers this is well known, of course; and there are those who are not slow to take advantage of the fox's gluttony. Suppose a keeper thinks that a fox or two the less would not be amiss, and knows that on the morrow hounds are to be expected. There is, suppose also, no covert shooting at the moment in his immediate vicinity. Though unwilling to take more direct steps, he is fully prepared to handicap foxes before hounds so far as he may, and in the night before hounds come he provides free suppers for his foes. He is hardly to be blamed, and if blamed by the hunt one keeper at least has a ready answer. In view of a visit from so fine a pack, he says, he wished to show that he had forgiven the doomed foxes their sins, by spreading a final feast.
There are keepers who, not making the best of necessity, harbour in their breasts an undying grievance against foxes and take every chance to malign the foe. After a beat, during which the guns had stood in a hollow where pheasants had come at a good height, a sportsman was collecting birds that had fallen behind him, and to his surprise found a pheasant with its head apparently torn off. He suggested to the keeper that there must be foxes in the wood—foxes near at hand, and very bold. The keeper had reason to know better—but on picking up another headless pheasant, remarked sadly, "If they treats 'em like this 'ere when they be dead, it be cruel to think how they'd serve 'em when they ketched 'em alive." The sportsman was impressed by the keeper's melancholy tone, and began to share his fox-enmity. But the keeper's sharp eyes had seen what fate really had befallen the pheasants' heads—a fate strange enough, for as the birds fell their heads were torn off by the forks of ash-stems, in which they caught.
