The Tipping System
Gamekeepers are much associated with tipping. If tips are to be reckoned as part wages, the element of chance is great and unfair. There are cases when tipping amounts to bribery, as when a rich man buys the best place in a shoot. For the system, it may be said that a tip is the most convenient token of appreciation of skill in producing good sport. And we agree that if any servant of pleasure deserves a tip it is the gamekeeper. But among the fallacies of the system is the fact that the scale of tips is seldom in proportion to skill and energy. Thus, a tip of a certain amount is given for a day's covert shooting of, say, under a hundred head, half pheasants, calling for a certain amount of energy and skill on the keeper's part. But a tip of only half the amount will be given after a thirty-brace day at driven partridges, which has afforded five times the amount of shooting, and called for ten times more skill and energy from the keeper. There is a saying among keepers that tips may be looked upon to provide three useful things—beer, 'baccy, and boots. In old times a five-pound note was the order of the day—this is represented now by half a sovereign or five shillings. A few keepers are lucky enough to serve where wealthy sportsmen shoot regularly, who willingly give the keeper a ten-pound note. But most keepers praise heaven for £10 received in tips in a season. Where the scale of tips most fails is when a tip covers compensation for injuries. But the beater who received a note on account of a stray pellet in his person was more than satisfied. "Bless you, sir," he said, "you may give me the other barrel for another of 'em." But beaters always find contentment in a tip, whatever its size. We recall how three beaters were more or less bagged successively during a three days' covert shoot. One, at the time, appeared to have had his right eye destroyed, but saw his way to accept twenty-five shillings. Another buried a shot in his little finger, and on receiving seven shillings was eager to undergo the same treatment for six days a week. A third was peppered behind, and awarded eighteen-pence, which satisfied him, being, as he lamented, "only a boy, like." By the way, there seems no place in the sportsman's scale of tips for awards for narrow escapes. We have known a keeper mention the fact quite unavailingly that his cap had been shot from his head by a careless gunner, who had brought down an easy bird with his first barrel, then, swinging round, had blazed at a second bird just as it topped the keeper's head. "Aw," he drawled, by way of answer, when the keeper respectfully intimated that he had escaped death by a miracle, "I certainly ought to have killed both of those birds."
Free Suppers for the Fox
How many foxes have owed their deaths indirectly to covert shooting? It is a nice question for hunting men. The fox is one of the craftiest creatures in the world. A very short experience is enough to make him associate the particular squeal of a rabbit when caught in a snare with a cheap supper. And he discovers quickly that luxurious banquets await him after a day's covert shooting. The discovery has a certain result; after covert shooting foxes gorge themselves, and become totally unfit to stand before hounds. To keepers this is well known, of course; and there are those who are not slow to take advantage of the fox's gluttony. Suppose a keeper thinks that a fox or two the less would not be amiss, and knows that on the morrow hounds are to be expected. There is, suppose also, no covert shooting at the moment in his immediate vicinity. Though unwilling to take more direct steps, he is fully prepared to handicap foxes before hounds so far as he may, and in the night before hounds come he provides free suppers for his foes. He is hardly to be blamed, and if blamed by the hunt one keeper at least has a ready answer. In view of a visit from so fine a pack, he says, he wished to show that he had forgiven the doomed foxes their sins, by spreading a final feast.
There are keepers who, not making the best of necessity, harbour in their breasts an undying grievance against foxes and take every chance to malign the foe. After a beat, during which the guns had stood in a hollow where pheasants had come at a good height, a sportsman was collecting birds that had fallen behind him, and to his surprise found a pheasant with its head apparently torn off. He suggested to the keeper that there must be foxes in the wood—foxes near at hand, and very bold. The keeper had reason to know better—but on picking up another headless pheasant, remarked sadly, "If they treats 'em like this 'ere when they be dead, it be cruel to think how they'd serve 'em when they ketched 'em alive." The sportsman was impressed by the keeper's melancholy tone, and began to share his fox-enmity. But the keeper's sharp eyes had seen what fate really had befallen the pheasants' heads—a fate strange enough, for as the birds fell their heads were torn off by the forks of ash-stems, in which they caught.
Clues to the Thief
By many signs keepers read the story of the presence and work of foxes. A fox makes a half-hearted attempt to bury game that he has partly eaten, and wishes otherwise to dispose of—and the buried game is so impregnated with his scent that no other creature will touch it. He barks at night in mid-winter days—and spreads uneasiness among sheep, as betrayed by the bleating of ewes. He digs in a way all his own, throwing out the soil behind him in a slovenly heap; he noses about mole-heaps and ant-hills, and his visit is easily detected. On soft spots he leaves his footmarks—and he always leaves his scent behind him. Pheasants without tails tell a story of a young fox's spring that failed to bring him a supper. Heads of rabbits, and nothing else, in snares, rejected maws lying near by—the disinterment of poaching cats which the keeper has buried—these show where hungry foxes have passed. By day their presence is revealed if a cock pheasant cries a sudden, uneasy, short alarm-note, by the screaming of jays, and by a particular blackbird note, which, if it does not mean stoat or cat, certainly bespeaks a fox. A crow may be seen suddenly swooping angrily as he passes over a field—a fox lurks there. The hidden cause for the continuous uneasy springing of partridges is often a fox, or at least a cub amusing himself by partridge hunting.