[49] In connection with this decoy, it may be added that, in order to prevent the wild ducks being disturbed, no shooting was allowed anywhere near it. There was a large rabbit warren close by, where a peculiar kind of wild rabbit, black with silver hairs, bred in great numbers. These, as they could not be shot, were caught in large deep pits with trap doors. The skins were exported to Prussia, to make busbies for the soldiers, while the bodies were sent to Hull market. For the entertainment of sporting readers, it may be further mentioned that the relative and his son were “crack” shots. The old gentleman rode a shooting-pony, and fired from his thigh, instead of from the shoulder. A wager was, on one occasion, laid between father and son as to which would miss his game first. They each fired 18 shots before a miss occurred. Which of the two was the defaulter, the writer “deponeth not”; but in either case it was not a bad score. Sir John Astley, in his autobiography, mentions that when he was invalided home from the Crimea, having been wounded in the neck, he, for some time, could not get his arm up, and shot from the thigh, and managed to kill his rabbits. In the case of my relative long practice had made perfect.
[53a] Mr. A. E. Pease, M.P., in his volume “Hunting Reminiscences, 1898,” in a chapter on badger hunting, says: “In countries where mange in foxes has become a scourge, the preservation of badgers would do much to remove this plague, for they are wonderful cleansers of earths.”
[53b] It is to be hoped that the cruel sport of badger baiting is no longer indulged in, although not many years ago (1888), there appeared in the columns of the “Exchange and Mart,” the following advertisement: “Very fine large badger and baiting cage, in good condition; price 20s.”
[54a] Badger hunting, a more legitimate sport, is still carried on in a few rare instances. A friend of the writer, for several years, kept badger hounds in Gloucestershire, where these animals, are still fairly numerous, and the writer still possesses the skin of a badger killed by his hounds. A variety of hounds are used for this sport. There is the “smell dog” to track the quarry by his trail left in the previous night; the pack of more ordinary dogs to hunt him, and the plucky, smaller dog, who “draws” him from his retreat. It takes a good dog to beard the badger.
[54b] “Nature Notes, vol. v., 1894, p. 98.”
[55a] The late Mr. E. R. Alston, F.Z.S., Selbourne Magazine Vol. ii., p. 169.
[55b] Mr. W. Cartmell. Ibidem.
[55c] The Rev. E. Adrian Woodruffe-Peacock, F.L.S., F.G.S., secretary of the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union, has assured me, that, seeing a pike lying dead on the river bank, with the shoulder eaten away in the above manner, he has watched it for two days, but the otter never returned. And Mr. H. C. Hey, Derwent House, West Ayrton, York, mentions a similar case. (“The Naturalist,” 1895, p. 106). While a writer in The Globe (April 30, 1896) says that he has seen half-a-dozen bream dead on a river bank, from not one of which has the otter taken more than this one bite.
[55d] See again Nature Notes, quoted above.
[56] To shew that the writer is not “speaking without book” in calling this neighbourhood a stronghold of Reynard in former years, it is sufficient to quote two or three of the entries in the accounts of the Parish Overseer of Woodhall, still preserved in the chest at Woodhall Church.