The Earth-Stoppers' Feast
The reward paid to keepers from the funds of fox-hunts is a sovereign for a litter of cubs when hounds come cub-hunting. Ten shillings is paid for each fox found by hounds. And a florin is the keeper's usual reward for stopping earths when the meet is within a distance of four miles. These moneys are paid in round sums on a great occasion in the keeper's year—the earth-stoppers' dinner. In olden days keepers were full of resources for benefiting themselves from the hunt funds, while saving their pheasants' skins from foxes at the same time. The cunning keeper would induce a huntsman to pay a stealthy unofficial visit to the home of a litter, and after his departure, when a reward had been made sure, would quietly take steps to rid himself of fox troubles. Visiting the earth with a supply of sulphur matches and bags of grass, he would light the matches within, block the holes with the bags, and leave the deadly fumes to do their work. Or two keepers would combine to defraud the hunt. One would show a litter and pocket his sovereign, then shift the litter to the preserves of his friend, who in turn would call in the huntsman and pocket his reward, then return the cubs whence they came; and so the game would go on. Luck plays a great part in this matter of fox-rewards. It often happens that foxes which have been harboured honestly by one keeper are found in the preserves of another who is a vulpicide, yet is not above accepting the reward which really is the due of his scrupulous friend in the next parish. How to show foxes to the hunt and pheasants to a shooting party is the prickliest of all the manifold problems of the gamekeeper's life.
