The Truce Ends
The first day of August is the most important of the gamekeeper's minor festivals, for the close time under the Wild Birds Protection Act has come to an end; duck-shooting begins to be a legal if not a difficult pastime, and hares, which, unfortunately, may be harassed all the year round, can now be sold openly. The time has come for the cutting of the first cornfields; and this is ever an important event to the keeper, for it allows him to make a shrewd estimate of the quantity of game.
The opening of the duck-shooting season finds the early broods of wild duck strong on the wing; happily, the old practice of shooting the immature birds is dying out. In the barley-fields where the wild duck resort at dusk, the cool passing of an August day makes requital for the heat of noon. Sport, if an object, will at least be unsullied by the modern taint of wholesale slaughtering; apart from shooting, there is the quiet of the fields to be enjoyed, the cool breeze that sets the barley rippling, the perfumes of corn crops, charlock, clover, turnips, and swedes. In a duck country, barley-fields, left standing as they are until dead ripe and after wheat and oats have been harvested, may suffer severely from their nocturnal visitors.
