The Confessions of a Poacher. John F.L.S. Watson
London, and well remember what, as a country lad, impressed me most. It was the fact that I had, during the small hours of the morning, stood alone on London Bridge. The great artery of life was still; the pulse of the city had ceased to beat. Not a moving object was visible. Although bred among the lonely hills, I felt for the first time that this was to be alone; that this was solitude. I felt such a sense as Macaulay's New Zealander may experience when he sits upon the ruins of the same stupendous structure; and it was then for the first time I knew whence the inspiration, and felt the full force and realism of a line I had heard, "O God! the very houses seemed to sleep." I could detect no definite sound, only that vague and distant hum that for ever haunts and hangs over a great city. Then my thoughts flew homeward (to the fells and upland fields, to the cold mists by the river, to the deep and sombre woods). I had never observed such a time of quiet there; no absolute and general period of repose. There was always something abroad, some creature of the fields or woods, which by its voice or movements was betrayed. Just as in an old rambling house there are always strange noises that cannot be accounted for, so in the night-paths of nature there are innumerable sounds which can never be localised. To those, however, who pursue night avocations in the country, there are always calls and cries which bespeak life as animate under the night as that of the day. This is attributable to various animals and birds, to beetles, to night-flying insects, even to fish; and part of the education of the young poacher is to track these sounds to their source.
I have said that our family was a family of poachers. The old instinct was in us all, though I believe that the same wild spirit which drove us to the moor and covert at night was only the same as was strongly implanted in the breast of Lord –, our neighbour, who was a legitimate sportsman and a Justice of the Peace. If we were not allowed to see much real poaching when we were young we saw a good deal of the preparations for it. As the leaves began to turn in autumn there was great activity in our old home among nets and snares. When wind and feather were favourable, late afternoon brought home my father, and his wires and nets were already spread on the clean sanded floor. There was a peg to sharpen, or a broken mesh to mend. Every now and then he would look out on the darkening night, always directing his glance upward. The two dogs would whine impatiently to be gone, and in an hour, with bulky pockets, he would start, striking right across the land and away from the high road. The dogs would prick out their ears on the track, but stuck doggedly to his heels; and then, as we watched, the darkness would blot him out of the landscape, and we turned with our mother to the fireside. In summer we saw little but the "breaking" of the lurchers. These dogs take long to train, but, when perfected, are invaluable. All the best lurchers are the produce of a cross between the sheep-dog and greyhound, a combination which secures the speed and silence of the one, and the "nose" of the other. From the batches of puppies we always saved such as were rough-coated, as these were better able to stand the exposure of long, cold nights. In colour the best are fawn or brown—some shade which assimilates well to the duns and browns and yellows of the fields and woods; but our extended knowledge of the dogs came in after years.
The oak gun-rack in our old home contained a motley collection of fowling pieces, mostly with the barrels filed down. This was that the pieces might be more conveniently stowed away in the pocket until it was policy to have them out. The guns showed every graduation in age, size, and make, and among them was an old flint-lock which had been in the family for generations. This heirloom was often surreptitiously stolen away, and then we were able to bring down larger game. Wood pigeons were waited for in the larches, and shot as they came to roost. The crakes were called by the aid of a small "crank," and shot as they emerged from the lush summer grass. Large numbers of green plover were bagged from time to time, and often in winter we had a chance at their grey cousins, the whistling species. Both these fed in the water-meadows through winter, and the former were always abundant. In spring, "trips" of rare dotterel often led us about the higher hills for days, and sometimes we had to stay all night on the mountain. Then we were up with the first gray light in the morning, and generally managed to bring down a few birds. The feathers of these are extremely valuable for fishing, and my father invariably supplied them to the county justices who lived near us. He trained a dog to hunt dotterel, and so find their nests, and in this was most successful—more so than an eminent naturalist who spent five consecutive summers about the summits of our highest mountains, though without ever coming across a nest or seeing the birds. Sometimes we bagged a gaunt heron as it flapped heavily from a ditch—a greater fish poacher than any in the country side. One of our great resorts on winter evenings was to an island which bordered a disused mill-dam. This was thickly covered with aquatic vegetation, and to it came teal, mallard, and poachard. All through the summer we had worked assiduously at a small "dug-out," and in this we waited, snugly stowed away behind a willow root. When the ducks appeared on the sky-line the old flint-lock was out, a sharp report tore the darkness, and a brace of teal or mallard floated down stream, and on to the mill island. In this way half a dozen ducks would be bagged, and, dead or dying, they were left where they fell, and retrieved next morning. Sometimes big game was obtained in the shape of a brace of geese, which proved themselves the least wary of a flock; but these only came in the severest weather.
Cutting the coppice, assisting the charcoal burners, or helping the old woodman—all gave facilities for observing the habits of game, and none of these opportunities were missed. In this way we were brought right into the heart of the land, and our evil genius was hardly suspected. An early incident in the woods is worth recording. I have already said that we took snipe and woodcock by means of "gins" and "springes," and one morning on going to examine a snare, we discovered a large buzzard near one which was "struck." The bird endeavoured to escape, but, being evidently held fast, could not. A woodcock had been taken in one of our snares, which, while fluttering, had been seen and attacked by the buzzard. Not content, however, with the body of the woodcock, it had swallowed a leg also, around which the nooze was drawn, and the limb was so securely lodged in its stomach that no force which the bird could exert could withdraw it. The gamekeepers would employ us to take hedgehogs, which we did in steel traps baited with eggs. These prickly little animals were justly blamed for robbing pheasants' nests, and many a one paid the penalty for so doing. We received so much per head for the capture of these, as also for moles which tunnelled the banks of the water meadows. Being injurious to the stream sides and the young larches, the farmers were anxious to rid these; and one summer we received a commission to exercise our knowledge of field-craft against them. But in the early days our greatest successes were among the sea ducks and wildfowl which haunted the marram-covered flats and ooze banks of an inland bay a few miles from our home. Mention of our capturing the sea birds brings to mind some very early rabbit poaching. At dusk the rabbits used to come down from the woods, and on to the sandy saline tracts to nibble the short sea grass. As twilight came we used to lie quiet among the rocks and boulders, and, armed with the old flint-lock, knock over the rabbits as soon as they had settled to feed. But this was only tasting the delights of that first experience in "fur" which was to become so widely developed in future years. Working a duck decoy—when we knew where we had the decoyman—was another profitable night adventure, which sometimes produced dozens of delicate teal, mallard and widgeon. Another successful method of taking seafowl was by the "fly" or "ring" net. When there was but little or no moon these were set across the banks last covered by the tide. The nets were made of fine thread, and hung on poles from ten to twenty yards apart. Care had to be taken to do this loosely, so as to give the nets plenty of "bag." Sometimes we had these nets hung for half a mile along the mud flats, and curfew, whimbrel, geese, ducks, and various shore-haunting birds were taken in them. Sometimes a bunch of teal, flying down wind, would break right through the net and escape. This, however, was not a frequent occurrence.
There is one kind of poaching, which, as a lad, I was forbidden, and I have never indulged in it from that day to this. This was egg poaching. In our own district it was carried on to a large extent, though I never heard of it until the artificial rearing of game came in. The squire's keeper will give sixpence each for pheasants' eggs, and fourpence for those of partridges. I know for certain that he often buys eggs (unknowingly, of course) from his master's preserves as well as those of his neighbours. In the hedge bottom, along the covert side, or among broom and gorse, the farm labourer notices a pair of partridges roaming morning after morning. Soon he finds their oak-leaf nest and olive eggs. These the keeper readily buys, winking at what he knows to be dishonest. Ploughboys and farm labourers have peculiarly favourable opportunities for egg