Somehow there always seems to be a market for game out of season: it is ‘passed’ somewhere, just as thieves pass stolen jewellery. So also fish, even when manifestly unfit for table, in the midst of spawning time, commands a ready sale if overlooked by the authorities. It is curious that people can be found to purchase fish in such a condition; but it is certain that they do. In the spring, when one would think bird and beast might be permitted a breathing space, the poacher is as busy as ever after eggs. Pheasant and partridge eggs are largely bought and sold in the most nefarious manner. It is suspected that some of the less respectable breeders who rear game birds like poultry for sale, are not too particular of whom they purchase eggs; and, as we have before observed, certain keepers are to blame in this matter also.
Plovers’ eggs, again, are an article of commerce in the spring; they are protected now by law, but it is to be feared that the enactment is to a great extent a dead letter. The eggs of the peewit, or lapwing, as the bird is variously called, are sought for with great perseverance, and accounted delicacies. These birds frequent commons where the grass is very rough, and interspersed with bunches of rushes, marshy places, and meadows liable to be flooded in the winter. The nest on the ground is often made in the depression left by a horse’s hoof in the soft earth—any slight hole, in fact; and it is so concealed, or rather differs so little from the appearance of the general sward around, as to be easily passed unnoticed. You may actually step on it, and so smash the eggs, before you see it.
Aware that the most careful observation may fail to find what he wants, the egg-stealer adopts a simple but effective plan by which he ensures against omitting to examine a single foot of the field. Drop a pocket-knife or some such object in the midst of a great meadow, and you will find the utmost difficulty in discovering it again, when the grass is growing tall as in spring. You may think that you have traversed every inch, yet it is certain that you have not; the inequalities of the ground insensibly divert your footsteps, and it is very difficult to keep a straight line. What is required is something to fix the eye—what a sailor would call a ‘bearing.’ This the egg-stealer finds in a walking-stick. He thrusts the point into the earth, and then slowly walks round and round it, enlarging the circle every time, and thus sweeps every inch of the surface with his eye. When he has got so far from the stick as to feel that his steps are becoming uncertain he removes it, and begins again in another spot. A person not aware of this simple trick will search a field till weary and declare there is nothing to be found; another, who knows the dodge, will go out and return in an hour with a pocketful of eggs.
On those clear, bright winter nights when the full moon is almost at the zenith, and the ‘definition’ of tree and bough in the flood of light seems to equal if not to exceed that of the noonday, some poaching used to be accomplished with the aid of a horsehair noose on the end of a long slender wand. There are still some districts in the country more or less covered with forest, and which on account of ancient rights cannot be enclosed. Here the art of noosing lingers; the loop being insidiously slipped over the bird’s head while at roost. By constant practice a wonderful dexterity may be acquired in this trick; men will snare almost any bird in broad daylight. With many birds a favourite place for a nest is in a hollow tree, access being had by a decayed knothole, and they are sometimes noosed as they emerge. A thin flexible copper wire is said to be substituted for large game. This method of capture peculiarly suits the views of the ornithologist, with whom it is an object to avoid the spoiling of feathers by shot.
Every now and then a bird-catcher comes along decoying the finches from the hedges, for sale as cage-birds in London. Some of these men, without any mechanical assistance, can imitate the ‘call’ note of the bird they desire to capture so as to deceive the most practised ear. These fellows are a great nuisance, and will completely sweep a lane of all the birds whose song makes them valuable. In this way some localities have been quite cleared of goldfinches, which used to be common. The keepers, of course, will not permit them on private property; but in all rural districts there are wide waste spaces—as where two or more roads meet—broad bands of green sward running beside the highway, and the remnants of what in former days were commons; and here the bird-catcher plies his trade. It so happens that these very waste places are often the most favourite resorts of goldfinches, for instance, who are particularly fond of thistledown, and thistles naturally chiefly flourish on uncultivated land. These men and the general class of loafers have a wholesome dread of gamekeepers, who look on them with extreme suspicion.
The farmers and rural community at large hardly give the gamekeeper his due as a protection against thieves and mischievous rascals. The knowledge that he may at any time come round the corner, even in the middle of the night, has a decidedly salutary effect upon the minds of those who are prowling about. Intoxicated louts think it fine fun to unhinge gates, and let cattle and horses stray abroad, to tear down rails, and especially to push the coping stones off the parapets of the bridges which span small streams. They consider it clever to heave these over with a splash into the water, or to throw down half a dozen yards of ‘dry wall.’ In many places fields are commonly enclosed by the roadside with such walls, which are built of a flat stone dug just beneath the surface, and used without mortar. There are men who make a business of building these walls; it requires some skill and patience to select the stones and fit them properly. They serve the purpose very well, but the worst is that if once started the process of destruction is easy and quick. Much more serious offences than these are sometimes committed, as cutting horses with knives, and other mutilations. The fact that the fields are regularly perambulated by keepers and their assistants night and day cannot but act as a check upon acts of this kind.