A Gamekeeper's Note-book

by Owen Jones; Marcus Woodward

She is an admirable mother. Her litters are large ones—numbering as a rule from five to eight, though occasionally as many as twelve are found—and the feeding of these hungry mouths can only be a work of desperate energy in the weaning days. It is a fine sight to see the mother foraging at the head of her grown-up family. A long time passes before the young stoats can cater for themselves. The mother does not leave them until they are perfectly qualified to hunt on their own accord—which their innate blood-thirstiness at last prompts them to do in preference to eating food which their mother has captured. In the young stoat's natural love of hunting lies the cause of the final severance of family ties. With many animals it appears that motherly solicitude continues relatively to the relief obtained through the young taking their mother's milk. Yet in the stoat there appears to be a scrap of the human mother's reasoning love for her children. We have known a stoat whose young had been destroyed, when as large as herself, to seek them out, and with diligent care and labour remove their bodies to a distant resting-place, where she stayed by them for days, though she appeared no longer to bring them their former abundant supplies of food. When a stoat, the mother of a family, is killed, her young do not fail to come to her—but in this case there is no disinterested love. The apparent affection springs chiefly from desire of food. No food forthcoming, the young stoats quickly begin to devour their unfortunate mother. The gamekeeper knows that having once caught a mother stoat, he will have little difficulty in catching her family also; but having captured the family, it is by no means easy to secure the mother.

When June comes, litters of young stoats, each one as big as the mother, are strong enough to travel about, but for many weeks they remain together, and depend for food on what their mother catches. Like fox cubs, they spend their days eating, sleeping, and playing. Without the aid of a trained dog the keeper is unlikely to discover the lodging of a litter unless he chances to see the mother going to her young. He may see her entering a burrow, a bavin-pile, a pile of hurdle-rods, or of hurdles, or he may chance to see the young stoats out at play. Should he come upon their playground his sharp eyes instantly note the runs and the signs of rollings in the herbage—the playground is as the playground of fox cubs in miniature. The comings and goings of a mother stoat are cunning and silent. Once we found a place where a litter had been lodging for weeks within a few yards of a man who had been making hurdles day after day, and his report was that he had not seen "ne'er a sign of a stoo-at." The family had gone when we found their lodging, and it was evident that the old stoat had moved her young ones at night just before they were old enough to proclaim their presence by coming out from their wood-pile to play.

Lurking-places

The keeper's eyes are always open for stoats. They are fond of prying about the base of a gate-post, where a trap is often set to good purpose. Then they delight in frisking along the middle of a ride, especially after rain. There the keeper sets a tunnel trap, covering it with bundles of brushwood; and every stoat that comes along will explore so likely a lurking-place for a rabbit, and each naturally enters by the fatal passage. Those heaps of corn-rakings placed in the woods for pheasants form a favourite stoat-haunt. Here they find a warm, dry lair, and good hunting, for the corn attracts a crowd of small birds. Chancing once to right an overturned sheep-trough which had been lying inverted for some weeks, we disturbed the peace of a couple of stoats which had made the trough their home. They were gone like flashes of lightning, and though we overturned the trough again for their benefit, they had the good sense not to be caught napping a second time.

Not half the stoats that are caught are trapped by bait; for the only bait which is a certain charm is something which the stoat has caught itself, from the enjoyment of which it has been newly disturbed. Many stoats are shot. They pursue young blackbirds and thrushes which hover about the sides of country lanes; and when intent on dragging a blackbird up a bank they give the keeper the easiest of marks. Should his coming drive a feeding stoat to cover, he has only to wait within range for a few minutes for a chance to pull the avenging trigger. Stoats would soon be exterminated if they were attracted to baited traps for the sake of food. It would seem that they come chiefly from curiosity; for though they live on warm flesh and blood, when they fall victims to traps it is usually in those with the bait stale and strong in scent.

Studies in Stoat Ways

We heard a gamekeeper say that he would be better pleased to harbour a litter of cubs on his beat than a litter of stoats. But this was too flattering a compliment to the stealthiest of the keeper's foes: foxes would smile at a comparison between the havoc they play with game interests and all the robber-work of stoats and weasels combined. No doubt the gamekeeper's idea was that while foxes may be found and dealt with according to their deserts without difficulty, stoats may be on the ground and do endless damage before they are detected. With a litter of cubs on his ground the keeper, if minded, may promptly put an end to the nuisance. But he may never congratulate himself that there are no stoats. Where there is game, there stoats must be also. Just where they lurk the keeper may never know; and every art may fail to catch these sly thieves.

The keeper does not wait to see a stoat before he sets his traps; usually when a stoat is caught he sees it for the first time. During the mating season, in the early spring, stoats are trapped most easily. When one has been caught it serves as a lure to attract others. The body is suspended just out of the reach of curious relatives and friends, and a neatly hidden trap is set beneath it. Since rabbits supply the staple food of stoats, they serve as bait: anything that suggests newly done rabbit work is almost sure to attract the attention of any passing stoat. So after setting a trap just inside a hole in the track of stoats, the keeper with his stick scratches up a little fresh soil on each visit to the trap, to imitate what he calls the "ferricking" of a rabbit. A hollow underwood stump is always a likely place for a stoat. Rabbits love to sit in such stumps, and a stoat never misses a chance to investigate them, surprising the rabbit before he can scoot away, and then himself lodging in a recess of the stump, on a cosy couch made from the fur of his victim.