Preparations
From the young days of the year, when his hens began to lay once more, the keeper adds eggs to his store for the sake of the birds of May. His cares and worries, his long hours and weary trudgings, and the chances and changes of the weather make the keeper grumble more and more with the years; but he is always a devoted slave to sport, and takes pleasure in each act of preparation for a new season. Every time he adds to the store of feeding eggs he is thinking of the prospects of his pheasants. He sees chicks turning to awkward poults, and poults turning to full-feathered birds, topping the lofty trees or sailing high over the valley, while the guns are coughing below. Over his store of eggs for feeding he gloats like a miser over gold. Stowed away in a cool place these eggs—after each one has been dipped for about thirty seconds in boiling water—will keep their good feeding qualities for months.
Hungry Rabbits
From the New Year until well on in March rabbits are hard pressed to find food—not necessarily because the weather may be bad, but because so many fields present a surface of bare earth, where hitherto rabbits have been able to find ungrudged pickings. When barred from other food, they will be driven to bark underwood, and so cause a price to be set on their heads; and cause people to think and say that a couple of rabbits are at least a score. When they are shut in a wood by wire netting, they will be almost certain to attack the undergrowth, whereas if free to come and go they would have done no damage to speak about, outside or in.
To Save Underwood
The secret at once of preserving a few rabbits and saving the underwood from their attacks is judicious feeding. Swedes or mangels, and some tightly tied bundles of clover-hay, if thrown down in the rabbits' resorts will prevent much damage, and prove indirectly an excellent investment. The food will go far towards allowing foxes, shooting tenants, farmers, landlords, and the rabbits to dwell together without extraordinary annoyance to each other. Rabbits always have to bear the brunt of much more blame than they deserve, and are continuously persecuted from one year's end to another. Yet they are essential to the well-being alike of foxes and game, and ought to be better respected—especially when foxes and game in combination are considered desirable. The man so anxious to preserve foxes for hounds that he would not object if the foxes ate his last pheasants acts foolishly if he refuses to keep a few rabbits. The foxes will turn more than their usual attention to the pheasants, or they will shift their quarters to where rabbits are to be found, and a living is to be made with the least exertion.