Poachers and Poaching. John F.L.S. Watson
used to show the whereabouts of the fish. A light, too, attracts salmon. Of course, this can only be attempted when the beats of the watchers and keepers are known. The older generation of poachers, who have died or are fast dying out, seem to have taken the receipt for preparing salmon roe with them. For this once deadly bait is now rarely used. Here is a field incident.
A silent river reach shaded by trees. It is the end of a short summer night. We know that the poachers have lately been busy knitting their nets, and have come to intercept them. The "Alder Dub" may be easily netted, and contains a score nice trout. Poachers carefully study the habits of fish as well as those of game, both winged and furred. To the alder dub they know the trout make when the river is low. The poachers have not noted signs of wind and weather and of local migrations for twenty years past to be ignorant of this. And so here, in the dew-beaded grass, we lie in wait. It is two o'clock and a critical time. A strange breaking is in the east: grey—half-light, half-mist. If they come they will come now. In an hour the darkness will not hide them. We lie close to the bank thickly covered with bush and scrub. Two sounds are and have been heard all night—the ceaseless call of the crake and the not less ceaseless song of the sedge-bird. A lapwing gets up in the darkness and screams—an ominous sound, and we are all ear. Three forms descend the opposite bank, and on to the gravel bed. They empty the contents of a bag and begin to unroll its slow length. The breaking of a rotten twig in a preparatory movement for the rush sufficiently alarms them, and they dash into the wood as we into the water—content now to secure their cumbersome illegal net, and thus effectually stop their operations for three weeks at least. The grey becomes dawn and the dawn light as we wade wearily home through the long wet grass. And still the sedge warbler sings.
CHAPTER II.
POACHERS AND POACHING.—II
The confines of a large estate constitute a poacher's paradise; for although partridge and grouse require land suited to their taste, rabbits and pheasants are common to all preserved ground. Since the reclamation of much wild land these latter afford his chief spoil. And then rabbits may be taken at any time of the year and in so many different ways. They are abundant, too, and always find a ready market. The penalties attached to rabbit poaching are less than those of game, and the vermin need not be followed into closely preserved coverts. The extermination of the rabbit will be contemporaneous with that of the lurcher and poacher—two institutions of English village life which date back to the planting the New Forest. Of the many modes of taking the "coney," ferreting and field-netting are the most common. Traps with steel jaws are sometimes set in their runs, and are inserted in the turf so as to bring them level with the sward. But destruction by this method is not sufficiently wholesale, and the upturned white under parts show too plainly against the green. The poacher's methods must be quick, and he cannot afford to visit by day traps set in the dark. When the unscrupulous keeper finds a snare he sometimes puts a leveret into it, and secretes himself. He then waits, and captures the poacher "in the act." As with some other methods already mentioned, the trap poacher is only a casual. Ferreting is silent and usually successful. In warrens, both inequalities of the ground and mounds and ditches afford cover for the poacher. A tangled hedge bank with tunnellings and coarse herbage is always a favourite spot. There are generally two and often half-a-dozen holes in the same burrow. Small purse nets are spread over these, and the poacher prefers them loose to being pegged or fixed in any way. When the nets are set the ferrets are taken from the moucher's capacious pockets and turned in. They do not proceed immediately, but sniff the mouth of the hole; their decision is only momentary for soon the tips of their tails disappear in the darkness. Now, above all times, silence is essential. Rabbits refuse to bolt if there is noise outside. A dull thud, a rush, and a rabbit goes rolling over and over entangled in the net; one close after it gets clear away. Reserve nets are quickly clapped to the holes as the rabbits bolt, these invariably being taken, except where a couple come together. Standing on the mound a shot would stop these as they go bounding through the dead leaves; but this would bring up the keeper, and so the poacher practices self-denial. Unlike hares, rabbits rarely squeal when they become entangled; and this allows the poacher to ferret long and silently. Rabbits that refuse to take the net are sometimes eaten into by the ferret, but still refuse to bolt. If a rabbit makes along a blind burrow followed by a ferret, the former is killed, and the latter gluts itself upon the body. When this occurs it is awkward for the poacher; the ferret in such case usually curls itself up and goes to sleep; left to itself it might stay in the hole for days; and so it has either to be dug or starved out. Both processes are long, the burrows ramify far into the bank, and it is not certainly known in which the ferret remains.
The poacher's wholesale method of night poaching for rabbits is by means of two long nets. These are set parallel to each other along the edge of a wood, and about thirty yards out into the field or pasture. Only about four inches divides the nets. A clear star-lit night is best for the work, and at the time the nets are set the ground game is far out feeding. The nets are long—the first small in mesh, that immediately behind it large. When a hare or rabbit strikes, the impetus takes a part of the first net and its contents through the larger mesh of the second, and there hanging, the creature struggles until it is knocked on the head with a stick. Immediately the nets are set two men and a couple of lurchers begin to range the ground in front—slowly and patiently, gradually driving every feeding thing woodwards. A third man quietly paces the sward behind the nets, killing whatever game strikes them. And in this way hundreds of rabbits may be, and are, taken in a single night. Some years ago half-a-dozen young rabbits appeared in our meadow-lot which were of the ordinary grey with large white patches. Whilst feeding these stood out conspicuously from the rest; they were religiously preserved. Of these parti-coloured ones a normal number is now kept up, and as poachers rarely discriminate, whenever they disappear, it is primâ facie evidence that night work is going on.
Of all poaching that of pheasants is the most beset with difficulty; and the pheasant poacher is usually a desperate character. Many methods can be successfully employed, and the pheasant is rather a stupid bird. Its one great characteristic is that of wandering, and this cannot be prevented. Although fed daily, and with the daintiest food, the birds, singly or in pairs, may frequently be seen far from the home covers. Of course the poacher knows this, and is quick to use his knowledge. It by no means follows that the man who rears the pheasants will have the privilege of shooting them. In autumn, when beechmast and acorns begin to fall, the pheasants make daily journeys in search of them; and of these they consume great quantities. They feed principally in the morning, dust themselves in the turnip-fields at noon, and ramble through the woods in the afternoon; and when wandered birds find themselves in outlying copses in the evening they are apt to roost there.
It need hardly be said that pheasants are generally reared close to the keeper's cottage; that their coverts immediately surround it. Most commonly it is a gang of armed ruffians that enter these, and not the country poacher. Then there are reasons for this. Opposition must always be anticipated, for the covert should never be, and rarely is, unwatched. And then there are the results of capture to be taken into account. This effected, and with birds in his possession, the poacher is liable to be indicted upon so many charges, each and all having heavy penalties.
When wholesale pheasant poaching is prosecuted by gangs, it is in winter, when the trees are bare. Guns, the barrels of which are filed down so as to shorten them, are taken in sacks, and the birds are shot where they roost. Their bulky forms stand sharply outlined against the sky, and they are often on the lower branches. If the firing does not immediately bring up the keepers, the game is quickly deposited in bags and the gang makes off. It not unfrequently happens that a light cart is waiting to receive the men at some grassy lane end. But the moucher obtains his game in a quieter way. He eschews the preserves, and looks up outlying birds. He always carries a pocketful of corn, and day by day entices the birds further and further away. This accomplished he may snare them; and take them in iron traps. He sometimes uses a gun, but only when other methods have failed. A common and successful way he has is to light brimstone beneath the trees in which the pheasants roost. The powerful fumes soon overpower the birds, and they come flapping down the trees one by one. This method has the advantage of silence, and if the night is still need not be detected. Away from the preserves time is no object, and so the moucher who works systematically, and is content with a brace of birds at a time, usually gets the most in the end, with least chance of capture. The pugnacity of the