GATE-NET
.—A GATE-NET is a principal part of the stock in trade of an expert and experienced POACHER; and, in respect to HARES, the most destructive nocturnal instrument that can be brought into use. They, at a certain hour in the dead of night, when hares are sure to be at feed, are fixed to the third bar of the gates of such fields as have green wheat, young clover, or any other where (by daily observation) they are known to use; when being fattened to the ground under the lower bar by means of wooden forked pegs, a lurcher is turned over the gate, who having been trained to the business, and running mute, scours the field in a circuitous direction; when the victims, thus suddenly and unexpectedly alarmed, make immediately for the gate, (by which they entered,) when the dog being close at their heels, at least not far behind them, they have no alternative, but to rush into the net, where becoming entangled, they meet their destruction. In this way three or four brace are taken in a plentiful country at one adventure. The only likely mode of rendering such attempts abortive, is by painting the lower bars of the gate white, which will occasion the hares to shun the gateway, and have recourse to their meuses; if GAME-KEEPERS and SPORTSMEN will but occasionally examine which, to take up the well-intended wires, it will, at any rate, go a great way towards preventing such incredible havoc and wholesale destruction.