Poachers' Weapons
Of poachers there are many types; and the worst are the organised bands that hail chiefly from colliery and manufacturing districts. These men are murderous ruffians, and the keeper who interferes with them carries his life in his hand. Wives look anxiously indeed for their husbands' return when such a band is about. The gangs chiefly practise night shooting, and pheasants are their object. But they are as ready to fire at a keeper as at pheasants. We were shown a single-barrelled muzzle-loading gun which a keeper had taken from such a poacher, who had shot a roosting pheasant under his very eyes. After the shot, the keeper went up to the man, who pointed the gun straight at his head, threatening to fire if he advanced another yard. But the keeper knew his man—and his gun. He knew there had been no time for the ruffian to reload. He knocked up the barrel, and caught his man, who in due time was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment. Had his gun been double-barrelled, it would have been another story, and a tragic one. A favourite weapon, and a deadly, in these poachers' hands is a heavy stone slung in a stocking.
Moles' Skins for Furs
For moles' skins the keeper has no sentiment. He will not part with his skins of rare birds—but will willingly barter the prospect of wearing a moles' skin waistcoat for the price of an ounce of shag a skin. By catching moles he pleases the farmers, who know no more than he himself about any good work that moles do: he frees his rides from unsightly heaps and raised tunnellings; and now and then his mole-traps catch a weasel. Many keepers make a fair sum of money each year by selling moles' skins; furriers will as readily give twopence for a skin as others threepence or sixpence. The skins, cut close round the head, are drawn from the moles' bodies as a man draws stockings from his legs; they are pegged out, fur downwards, on a board, to be dried and powdered with alum, then are stuffed with meadow hay, and packed by scores or hundreds. Perhaps no fur is quite so soft and beautiful as the mole's; and the keeper is always well pleased to note how well the pelts of his enemies become women-folk's faces.
Covert-shooting Problems
To shoot while there are still many leaves on the underwood and trees, and while there is a full muster of pheasants, or to wait until there are fewer leaves and fewer pheasants—that often is the question. For there are many coverts in which pheasants will not stay after the fall of the leaf. Then the shooting man who does not own the coverts to which his birds will betake themselves must make the best of things, and be content to bring down more leaves than pheasants, and often nothing but leaves. What with the showering of leaves and the crashing of shot-pruned boughs and dead wood, he may imagine that a pheasant must be an extra heavy bird—only to find that not a feather has been touched. To shoot pheasants among a crowd of leafy oaks is no simple matter—it is more difficult than to shoot a rocketer in the open valley. One thing may be said for this aggravating pastime; it teaches the slow shooter to be quick.