As to brown hares, they can only be plentiful where the relations between landowner and tenant are of the very best. The latter can, if they like, kill hares all the year round. Good land, a liberal landlord, and yearly tenancies are the conditions under which hares can thrive. The author likes to see plenty of them as proofs that the tenants are not unsportsmanlike, and that the keepers are friendly with the farmers and enemies to the poachers. Opposites in both cases have not been quite unknown.
It has been said that hares can be “called up” by poachers. Perhaps that is so; the only cry of the hare the author has heard is that distress note that will often, on the contrary, drive away the other hares. If they will come to call, they must be in the habit of calling. It is the note of the doe hare that is supposed to be imitated. If she calls her young she has no cause to call the “jack”; she is found by him by the trail scent, and is worried far more by his attentions than she likes. It is not uncommon to see half a dozen “jacks” persecuting one doe hare, and continuing to do so for hours if not for days together. The “jack” seems to hunt the trail of the doe when it is hours old, and long after any harrier would notice it.
The esteem in which the hare was held in the Middle Ages is shown by a verse attached to an English translation of the Norman-French Le Art de Venerie, by William Twici, huntsman to King Edward II.:—
“To Venery y caste me fyrst to go,
Of wheche iiij best is be, that is to say,
The hare, the herte, the wulfhe, the wylde boor also;
Of venery for sothe there be no moe.”
Who wrote the verse does not appear to be accurately known; evidently it was not Twici.
SNIPE
Snipe shooting is the fly fishing of the shot gun.