A Gamekeeper's Note-book

by Owen Jones; Marcus Woodward

Homely Medicines

The gamekeeper is among the few people left in the country who have any knowledge of herb-lore, and faith in home-brewed herbal remedies. His medicine-chest contains a varied assortment. From rose-pink centaury he boils an appetising tonic for his pheasants, which he is not above drinking himself. The roots of couch-grass provide him with a powerful emetic for dogs in the first stages of distemper. He bakes acorns, grinds them to powder, and with its aid quells a rebellious stomach. His good-wife has the secret of cowslip and nettle tea. From the pounded leaves of dock blended with lard, he prepares a salve for cuts. Rheumatism, from which all keepers suffer in their old age, is treated with the fat of hedgehogs, well rubbed in—not that this is a herbal remedy. Cramp in pheasants calls for cayenne pepper boiled in their food; chopped onions are for gape-worms; a little saffron with drinking water—as much as will lie on a threepenny-bit in the water for a thousand birds—assists young birds through the troubles of feather-growing; while the first moult is aided by a few crystals of sulphate of iron in water. But oil is the sovereign remedy: castor-oil for dogs out of sorts, oil of almonds for the glued eyelids of blind birds, linseed-oil and laudanum for gapes—oil of every kind for every purpose. With corn scented with oil of rhodium-wood the keeper lays a trail which every pheasant must follow.

The Earth-Stoppers' Feast

The reward paid to keepers from the funds of fox-hunts is a sovereign for a litter of cubs when hounds come cub-hunting. Ten shillings is paid for each fox found by hounds. And a florin is the keeper's usual reward for stopping earths when the meet is within a distance of four miles. These moneys are paid in round sums on a great occasion in the keeper's year—the earth-stoppers' dinner. In olden days keepers were full of resources for benefiting themselves from the hunt funds, while saving their pheasants' skins from foxes at the same time. The cunning keeper would induce a huntsman to pay a stealthy unofficial visit to the home of a litter, and after his departure, when a reward had been made sure, would quietly take steps to rid himself of fox troubles. Visiting the earth with a supply of sulphur matches and bags of grass, he would light the matches within, block the holes with the bags, and leave the deadly fumes to do their work. Or two keepers would combine to defraud the hunt. One would show a litter and pocket his sovereign, then shift the litter to the preserves of his friend, who in turn would call in the huntsman and pocket his reward, then return the cubs whence they came; and so the game would go on. Luck plays a great part in this matter of fox-rewards. It often happens that foxes which have been harboured honestly by one keeper are found in the preserves of another who is a vulpicide, yet is not above accepting the reward which really is the due of his scrupulous friend in the next parish. How to show foxes to the hunt and pheasants to a shooting party is the prickliest of all the manifold problems of the gamekeeper's life.

The Keeper's Garden

The gamekeeper, like many a countryman, would be at a loss without his garden. His little plot of land means much to him: green food for his table, tonic foods for his pheasants, and a place where, by digging, he may bury some of his cares. He knows no such exercise as digging for keeping away ill-humours. He believes that the more a man sows the more he will reap—it is a lesson daily brought home to him. So he puts his best work into his garden, which is often the model plot of a rural community. In March he divides his time between spade work and his never-ending war on vermin. If he has a pen of stock pheasants he spends a good many minutes a day in admiration of the birds, besides tending to their wants; and he will defy you to prove that you ever saw a finer lot of birds. "Look at that old cock up agen yon corner—ain't 'e got some 'orns? Bless ye, them birds is worth a pound apiece."

So many a March afternoon finds the keeper hard at work at home with spade, fork, trowel or dibbler. His great object is to finish the more laborious work before the time of pheasants' eggs. A feature of the garden is the neat and spacious onion-bed, smoothed with the polished back of a favourite spade, which has dug out countless rabbits. There must be plenty of onions for the young pheasants to come. In time of need a keeper may sacrifice the whole of his onion-bed to his birds, gladly buying such onions as his wife demands for the table. Then there are two or three long rows of peas. Before sowing, the seed is sprinkled with red lead against the ravages of long-tailed field-mice, and after sowing strands of black thread are carried up and down the surface against the attacks of sparrows, while above, as a terrible warning, swings the body of a sparrow-hawk. The site of an old pheasant pen is devoted to Brussels sprouts. A dilapidated dog-kennel will serve to coax rhubarb to be ready for Easter Sunday's dinner.

Flower seeds are not forgotten: in shallow cartridge-boxes, protected by a small home-made frame, seeds are sown for making the little patch of flower-garden gay with stocks and asters, sweet peas, sun-flowers, tobacco-plants, and zinnias. The keeper puzzles over zinnia seed, which is like the fragment of a dead leaf, yet will come up and grow with the speed of mustard and cress, producing a wealth of bloom.