When the morning’s bag was reckoned up, we found that nineteen rabbits in all had fallen to our share—not bad for a farm where no kind of preserving is carried on, and for a district where poachers are not scarce.
III. A Winter Day’s Sport
At sunrise on a summer morning the dewy grass shows where wild game has passed during the hours of darkness; but, though eloquent, these signs speak a language unknowable to the casual observer, and you rarely meet a man so talented as to be able to say with certainty what species have brushed these moist tracks, whose perception is keen enough to note the difference between the traces of rabbit and hare, and who can tell what winged occupant of the preserve alighted here and there. It is only after a thick fall of snow that Nature reveals itself by footprints to anyone who can enjoyably spend an hour or two in the frosty air.
Three inches of snow masked meadow, moor, and mountain, and showed through the acres of leafless coppice. The gamekeeper had prepared for a long tramp, and we proposed to accompany him part of his journey. Though well advanced in middle life, he could still outstride us juniors on the rougher ground, while abrupt ascent or descent, or progress through tangled heather or thicket, taxed him far less than us. As we had the run of the shooting, we took guns with us on even our shortest jaunts; for though game was not abundant (measured by so many head an acre), there was often a curious animal or bird to be got for preservation. In the lane the snow crunched pleasantly beneath our passing feet; but when we began to cross the meadows travelling became heavy, for clods of snow, three inches or so thick, adhered to our boots at every stride. The keeper alone stepped with ease, and we groaned to hear him say that he had taken the precaution to oil the soles of his boots at starting. Our progress was so slow now that we readily agreed to his pushing on, leaving us to follow at our leisure. We touched the first wall a little below its junction with the boundary of the woods. The smooth surface of the field was dotted with long lines of footprints. Rabbits and hares had, in the few hours which had elapsed since the cessation of the storm, been afoot, and here and there little cavities showed where wandering animals had nosed their way through to a few succulent plants available for food. The morning, which had been somewhat dark so far, brightened as the day approached; a stronger light seemed to be spreading along the valley-sides, and the mists which had dimmed the distant lowlands began to rise and recede seawards. At about seven o’clock full day had come, though the sun still tarried; a rosy light was visible even over the head of the great fellside on which we were. The scene was one in which wide snowfields and dense woodlands, shaggy coppices and huge naked rocks, made splendid contrasts; while the ice-covered pools in the valley beneath took on all the varying, ever-changing tints of the sky above.
My companion had eyes for other things than the exquisite beauty of our surroundings, and as I turned I noticed that he was intently looking at a trail which wound aimlessly in and out among the bushes fringing the main wood. The tracks were deep in the snow—obviously, the animal was of more than the usual weight of the woodland denizens; the prints were joined, as though the foot that made them was not lifted high, but, rather, shuffled from one contact to another. What was it? Last year, the keeper told us, there had been rumour through the countryside that some strange animal occupied the Craigside woods. This was the first sign we had had of the mysterious visitant. The footprints were deep, the marks were connected: a closer look showed that the spoor was that of a small plantigrade—the badger. Here and there in the open rides we came across labyrinths of footprints: the badger had wandered through one clearing, the tiny paws of the squirrel had pattered along the snow at another place—see where his tail had brushed aside a little ruffle of snow as he passed along. But most of our judgments as to what birds had been present were mere speculation; and in a short time even my enthusiastic friend took his eyes from the evidences of past presences to look through the groves and up the hillsides for those creatures of which glimpses were now and again to be had. Wild pheasants in their brave plumage called as they ran out of sight or flew up among the trees, a jay screamed as it winged away, and here and there a magpie chattered. Craigside Woods hold game, but much feathered vermin finds home there. It is impossible for the keeper to keep their numbers down without help. Think of an area three miles long and five miles wide—woods, moor, fell, and dale—in the charge of one man, and he hampered by having to rear a thousand pheasants per season. The smaller birds hop sadly from twig to twig, dislodging tiny puffs of snow every time they perch. They, poor things! suffer during this sort of weather severely, not only from want of food, but from the persecutions of buzzards and sparrow-hawks and others of the falcon kind. At other seasons the lesser birds are able, by reason of corresponding so closely in colour with their environment, to escape serious diminution, but now, when everything is backed by white, there is no such protection. Indirectly to-day the hawks’ keenness for harrying brings them little good, as both J—— and myself are able to get good shots and effective. Viewed closely, alive and dead, the sparrow-hawk is a neat bird; its gray-brown and white feathers harmonize quietly and well, and the poise of the body and wings, when alive, are pretty. Then, the speed at which they pounce down on a bird they have selected is worth watching. In the dense larch coppice we hear the cooing of many cushats, but they do not come in sight. In the very darkest dell a rowan-tree has established itself, and on its slender branches still hang a few clusters of what were in autumn bright golden berries, but which by this have lost their lustre. But the tree is alive with the forms of birds, which keep up a low cuttering the while they strip the fruit from the swaying stems.
Beyond the dark wood is a narrow belt of furze and cevins; and at our entering into this domain there is a tremendous rushing of wings as a covey of grouse takes the air just out of effective range. The moor-birds on the most exposed shootings regularly at the approach of the winter famine migrate temporarily to lower and more fruitful grounds. The next incident was the crossing, within a hundred yards of us, of a fox. It leapt out of the wood, and, dodging through the whins, was away for its distant borran [pile of stones] before we had time to move. But as it crossed the hollow in which we were standing we had a good view. At a steady gallop the redskin skimmed along, nor seemed barely to touch the frozen snow; at the edge of the ravine he hesitated a moment, then in two bounds was down the declivity, and nimbly balancing himself on a boulder in the bed of the ghyll. Here he hardly seemed to pause to gather his limbs beneath his body, but without sign of effort jumped well on to the steep bank opposite. As he regained the level of the moor, he resumed the swinging stride which mayhap had during the night carried him a dozen miles away.
The wan sunlight was now streaming over the great scaur on our right; on every foot of the many miles within sight frost spangles glittered; the river pools gleamed like polished silver. On the higher ground the wind had piled many drifts; every rock was plastered white; every bed of heather which had resisted the wind’s sweep was swamped in it. Yet from many a long spit of even grass the hindering mantle had been swept, and we walked with more ease than at any part of our journey. To break the death-like stillness of a frozen moor any sound is welcome—the croak of a raven, the bleating of a stray sheep, or the wild skirl of a heron or curlew. It was the first-named sound which attracted our attention. No such bird was visible; the sound seemed to come from over the hillock we were ascending. In a few seconds the bird of ill-omen was viewed by the beckside, busy at some carrion meal. ‘Quietly,’ whispered my companion. ‘I want a raven for my collection.’ The dusky one was so intent upon satisfying its appetite that we got well within range before it rose. We had both prepared to fire, though J—— was to have first shot. I kept my eye on the big bird slowly gaining its regular flight, speed, and rhythm; my friend hesitated—perhaps, as he afterwards said, he was in the midst of a shivering bout, and did not care to risk a miss. Probably it was in despair that he discharged one barrel at last in the direction of what was fast becoming a quickly-moving black dot on the white mountainside; but the result was startling. There was a sharp rustle of snow, a crisp crackle of heather branchlets, and a covey of fine grouse shot away, keeping low as they went. They, however, did not get off without paying toll, as both my ready barrels got home, and J—— ’s single chamber brought down a bird. Habit, I suppose, made me exchange the empty shells for full ones at panic speed (considering the numbness of my ungloved hands), but the habit was justified by results. The noise of the routed grouse started the whole stock of game in the dell: a stray rabbit scurried away towards the warren five hundred feet lower down—the choke barrel stopped it, just as I feared distance was going to bring immunity; a pair of snipe whirring up from a sphagnum morass got my other shot. The effect was somewhat curious, for both birds fluttered away at a slow, painful pace, evidently hard stricken. The cock-bird came to earth sixty yards away, but the other, after a period in which it seemed likely to fall, gradually regained its customary wing-power, and we saw it no more. A curlew shot wailing upwards, several plovers added their querulous cries, and long after we had passed from the glen the excited bird-calls rang through the clear air.
Meanwhile, scrambling on hands and knees up the stiffest parts, we had scaled a slack between two precipices, and by dint of hard work reached the summit of the mountain. This was not a very great height, yet commanded an extensive outlook. To northward lay a rolling moor, its white expanse broken here and there by gray, where the heather was only partly buried in the snow, by sharp-cut lines of occasional larch plantations, or by blurs of clustering cevins. Beyond, against the brilliant blue of the sunlit winter sky, stood a great disconnected sea of mountains, their pure white garb varied by irregular blue-black masses—great cliffs on which the snow could find no lodgment. Through the glasses, however, the cliffs were broken up by snow-floored gullies and rock-splits, and traversing ledges carrying fleecy loads, till it seemed as if a white lacework had been drawn across the bold steeps. One peak stood out from the sea of mountains, lording it over a series of minor but rugged hills. On both sides, deep below, were snow-bound valleys, and in the distance, dark and leaden, beyond the brightening power of the winter sun, the sea. On isolated shoulders of the moors one or two bright dots showed mountain tarns not yet frozen completely over, and like ribbons of silver the main streams wound down the valleys. On this upland the air was still, and hardly a sound came to our ears. At any other season the rivulets dashing and fretting down their rocky courses would have been easily heard, but now they were frozen. At any other season the numerous sheep grazing about the hills and slopes would have sent up occasional bleats; but these were now far away— driven to the valleys on the approach of winter. Gone, too, were the hawks and ravens and foxes, and the other wild creatures of the uplands, nearer to the haunts of men, where the means of subsistence were procurable.
Our glasses ranged over the wide area in view: little dots in far-off meadows enlarged into men and animals, the shepherd dragging the small hay-ration from the stackyard to his flock, the other servants doing the various offices of the farms. One house seemed to be the rendezvous for men and dogs slowly dragging across snow-covered fields. When a small crowd had collected, we watched it leave the farmyard and strike into the belt of larches, above which, somewhat scattered, it appeared, moving faster and apparently without any canine following. Instantly it came to me what was occurring—we were witnessing one of the ruthless informal fox-chases for which the district is famous. A fox had been plundering hen-roosts in its bloodthirsty fashion. A pack of canines—collies, hounds, bobtails, cross-breds, terriers, of all denominations and sizes, anything that could scent and run—had been collected, put on the red-hot trail, and were now streaming somewhere in front of those careering dots, pursuing the redskin, who, after a night’s blood orgie, was at a terrible disadvantage. But, though again and again we swept the bare hillside with our glasses, the scratch pack eluded our vision, and it was not till they had gone some two miles that we detected them. A number of restlessly moving dots was dashing about a big borran or moraine of stones in which, seemingly, the fox had taken refuge. They were almost opposite us, across the gulf of the dale, and in full sight. We watched the men come up at their best speed and examine the heap of stones. Apparently the chief entrance was on the side nearer us, as they clustered mainly in that direction. Man after man knelt down among the snow, and through the still air came faint echoes of their shouts encouraging the terriers presumably at work deep below. But now the men come away from Reynard’s fastness, and we watch anxiously to see him, worried by his enemies, make a bolt for life. But this he does not do, and a few minutes later a figure detaches itself from the group and moves swiftly along the ridge, disappearing from ken near the top of a sharp peak. His comrades stand idly about the borran, save one or two who return to the opening among the rocks to egg on the unseen terriers. It is quite a long time before the man we watched away returns with what appears to be a stick in his hand—a crowbar, by means of which the stones of the fox’s fortress will be prised asunder. Instantly the whole company is at work, two working the lever, the others throwing out the stones dislodged. Ten minutes’ frenzied labour sees a huge gap in the heap of stones; there is a sudden movement among the men; their dogs, which have been lying in odd hollows in the snow, cast themselves into the group; the air is rent with a wild yell. Then all is peace to us, but an oscillating, tearing patch of dog-flesh marks where Reynard’s carcase is being fought for. ‘Chopped at a borran’ is the fate of many a redskin wanderer of great and evil repute among the mountains.