A Cotswold Village; Or, Country Life and Pursuits in Gloucestershire

by J. Arthur Gibbs

It is amusing to watch the cubs playing in the corn on a summer's evening. If you go up wind you can approach within ten yards of them. Round and round they gambol, tumbling each other over for all the world like young puppies. They take little notice of you at first; but after a time they suddenly stop playing, stare hard at you for half a minute, then bolt off helter-skelter into the forest of waving green wheat.

One word more about the scent of foxes. Not long ago a man wrote to the Field saying that he had proved by experiment that on the saturation or relative humidity of the air the hunter's hopes depend: in fact, he announced that he had solved the riddle of scent. It so happened that for some years the present writer had also been amusing himself with experiments of the same nature, and at one time entertained the hope that by means of the hygrometer he would arrive at a solution of the mystery. But alas! it was not to be. On several occasions when the air was well-nigh saturated, scent proved abominable. That the relative humidity of the air is not the all-important factor was often proved by the bad scent experienced just before rain and storms, when the hygrometer showed a saturation of considerably over ninety per cent. But there are undoubtedly other complications besides the evaporations from the soil and the relative humidity of the air to be considered in making an enquiry into the causes of good and bad scent. The amount of moisture in the ground, the state of the soil in reference to the all-important question of whether it carries or not, the temperature of the air, and last, but not by any means least, the condition of the quarry, be it fox, stag, or hare, are all questions of vital importance, complicating matters and preventing a solution of the mysteries of scent.

As the atmosphere is variable, so also must scent be variable. The two things are inseparably bound up with one another. For this reason, if after a period of rainy weather we have an anti-cyclone in the winter without severe frost, and an absence of bright sunny days, we can usually depend on a scent. Instead of the air rising, there is during an anti-cyclone, as we all know, a tendency towards a gentle down-flow of air or at all events a steady pressure, and this causes smoke, whether from a railway engine or a tobacco pipe, to hang in the air and scent to lie breast high.

Unfortunately the normal state of the atmospheric fluid is a rushing in of cold air and a rushing out or upwards of warmer air, causing unsettled variable equilibrium and unsettled variable scent. The barometer would be an absolutely reliable guide for the hunting man were it not for the complications already named above, complications which prevent either barometer or hygrometer from offering infallible indications of good or bad scenting days. However, scent often improves at night when the dew begins to form; and it may also suddenly improve at any time of day should the dew point be reached, owing to the temperature cooling to the point of saturation. This is always liable to occur at some time, on days on which the hygrometer shows us that there is over ninety per cent of moisture in the air. But here again radiation comes in to complicate matters; for clouds may check the formation of dew. It may safely be said, however, that other conditions being favourable, a fast run is likely to occur at any time of day should the dew point be reached. Thus the hygrometer is worthy to be studied on a hunting morning.

In May there is a good deal of weed-cutting to be done on a trout stream. Our plan is to have a couple of big field days about May 12th. The weeds on over two miles of water are all cut during that time. As they are not allowed to be sent down the stream, we get them out in several different places; they are then piled in heaps, and left to rot. The operation is repeated at the end of the fishing season. About a dozen scythes tied together are used. Two men hold the ends and walk up the stream, one on each side of the river, mowing as they go.

There is a certain amount of management required in weed-cutting. If much weed is left uncut, the millers grumble; if you cut them bare, there are no homes left for the fish. The last is the worse evil of the two. The millers are usually kind-hearted men, whilst poachers can commit fearful depredations in a small stream that has been cut too bare.

The way these limestone streams are netted is as follows: About two in the morning, when there is enough light to commence operations, a net is laid across the stream and pegged down at each end; the water is then beaten with long sticks both above and below the net. Nor is it difficult to drive the trout into the trap; they rush down helter-skelter, and, failing to see any net, they soon become hopelessly entangled in its meshes. The bobbing corks intimate to the poachers that there are some good trout in the net; one end is then unpegged, and the haul is made.

About ten trout would be a good catch. The operation is repeated four or five times, until some fifty fish have been bagged. The poachers then depart, taking care to remove all signs of their night's work, such as scales of fish, stray weeds, and bits of stick.

In weed-cutting by hand, instead of with the long knives, it is wonderful how many trout get cut by the scythes. There used to be several good fish killed this way at each annual cutting, when the men used to walk up the stream mowing as they went. One would have thought trout would have been able to avoid the scythes, being such quick, slippery animals.

Until the present season otters have seldom visited our parts of the Coln. Unfortunately, however, they have turned up, and are committing sad havoc among the fish. It is such a terribly easy stream for them to work. The water is very shallow, and the current is a slow one.