A Gamekeeper's Note-book

by Owen Jones; Marcus Woodward

HAMPSHIRE HURDLES
LONDON, EDWARD ARNOLD.

The Woodman

Not all who work in the woods are entitled to the name of woodman: a word standing for an ancient and an honourable calling. The woodman proper is an estate official, a sort of general foreman over the underwood and the timber. He ranks a grade below the gamekeeper. A man of parts, he knows his woods through and through. He can tell you the exact age of the various growths of underwood, for it is his duty to advise what shall be cut each year, to map it out in lots for sale, to undertake the marking and felling of timber, and to see to the upkeep of covert fences, and the trimming of rides. He receives a retaining weekly wage, except when he is turning underwood to account or laying a hedge, when he is paid by the piece. In time of need, the gamekeeper calls on the woodman's assistance, and he seldom goes long in want of a rabbit. The keeper is always generous with his friends and allies.

A Dying Race

Below the woodman in rank, and not rightly to be called a woodman, is the copse-worker, or copser; a piece-worker, free to work for any one who will give him a job. He is a skilled craftsman, one of a dying race, for his boys are kept too long at school ever to take kindly to his calling. This is his constant complaint: and he will air his views freely on "eddication" and the making of "scholards." He himself had only enough learning drubbed into him to allow him to make every night an entry of his day's work—so many bavins, so many bundles of pea-sticks, so many fencing-poles. His daily earnings fluctuate with the quality of the wood, which he is sure to declare is nothing like what it was in the days of his youth.

Choice Nesting-Places

It is the keeper's lot to make the best of many a bad job. If he could have his way, all underwood would be chopped and stacked in neat piles by the middle of April, so that his nesting birds might enjoy undisturbed peace in his woods. In olden days, all underwood was cut, worked up, and cleared off the ground by certain fixed dates so that the new shoots of the shorn stumps had full measure of light and air. But the dates are no longer remembered, and the work is carried on into early summer. The birds benefit in some ways. Pheasants find the long rows of felled underwood very attractive as nesting-places, and many pairs of partridges decide to give them a trial. Pheasants and partridges prefer to nest in dead material—it is warmer and drier than greenstuff, does not hold dew or rain, and cannot grow, and so possibly upset the nest. Dry leaves are driven by the wind beneath the rows of wood, so nesting material is plentiful. And there is no dense canopy of leaves to shut out the sun that is so loved by the sitting birds.