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POACHERS AND POACHING


"Knowledge never learned in schools."


[Illustration: LURCHERS.]



POACHERS AND POACHING


By

JOHN WATSON, F.L.S.

AUTHOR OF
"NATURE AND WOODCRAFT," "SYLVAN FOLK," "BRITISH SPORTING FISHES,"
EDITOR OF "THE CONFESSIONS OF A POACHER."


With a Frontispiece


LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL
LIMITED
1891

[_All Rights reserved_]

WESTMINSTER:
PRINTED BY NICHOLS AND SONS,
25, PARLIAMENT STREET.




Transcriber's Note: Minor spelling and typographical errors have
been corrected without note. Dialect spellings, contractions and
inconsistencies have been retained as printed.




NOTE.


These chapters originally appeared as articles in _Macmillan's
Magazine_, the _Cornhill Magazine_, the _National Review_, the
_Gentleman's Magazine_, the _St. James's Gazette_ and the _Pall Mall
Gazette_; and I have to thank the Editors and Proprietors of these
periodicals for permission to reprint them. The chapter entitled
"Water Poachers" is reprinted by permission from the _Nineteenth
Century_.

As to the facts in the volume, they are mainly taken at first hand
from nature.

J. W.




CONTENTS.


                                                       PAGE

CHAPTER I.

POACHERS AND POACHING.--I                                 1

CHAPTER II.

POACHERS AND POACHING.--II                               17

CHAPTER III.

BADGERS AND OTTERS                                       33

CHAPTER IV.

COURIERS OF THE AIR                                      44

CHAPTER V.

THE SNOW-WALKERS                                         86

CHAPTER VI.

WHEN DARKNESS HAS FALLEN                                 94

CHAPTER VII.

BRITISH BIRDS, THEIR NESTS AND EGGS                     118

CHAPTER VIII.

MINOR BRITISH GAME BIRDS                                143

CHAPTER IX.

WATER POACHERS                                          162

CHAPTER X.

WILD DUCKS AND DUCK DECOYING                            195

CHAPTER XI.

FIELD AND COVERT POACHERS                               223

CHAPTER XII.

HOMELY TRAGEDY                                          245

CHAPTER XIII.

WORKERS IN WOODCRAFT                                    266

CHAPTER XIV.

SKETCHES FROM NATURE                                    287




POACHERS AND POACHING.




CHAPTER I.

POACHERS AND POACHING.--I.


The poacher is a product of sleepy village life, and usually "mouches"
on the outskirts of country towns. His cottage is roughly adorned in
fur and feather, and abuts on the fields. There is a fitness in this,
and an appropriateness in the two gaunt lurchers stretched before the
door. These turn day into night on the sunny roadside in summer, and
before the cottage fire in winter. Like the poacher, they are active
and silent when the village community is asleep.

Our Bohemian has poached time out of mind. His family have been
poachers for generations. The county justices, the magistrates' clerk,
the county constable, and the gaol books all testify to the same fact.

The poacher's lads have grown up under their father's tuition, and
follow in his footsteps. Even now they are inveterate poachers, and
have a special instinct for capturing field-mice and squirrels. They
take moles in their runs, and preserve their skins. When a number of
these are collected they are sold to the labourers' wives, who make
them into vests. In wheat-time the farmers employ the lads to keep down
sparrows and finches. Numbers of larks are taken in nooses, and in
spring lapwings' eggs yield quite a rich harvest from the uplands and
ploughed fields. A shilling so earned is to the young poacher riches
indeed; money so acquired is looked upon differently from that earned
by steady-going labour on the field or farm. In their season he gathers
cresses and blackberries, the embrowned nuts constituting an autumn in
themselves. Snipe and woodcock, which come to the marshy meadows in
severe weather, are taken in "gins" and "springes." Traps are laid for
wild ducks in the runners when the still mountain tarns are frozen
over. When our poacher's lads attain to sixteen they become in turn the
owner of an old flintlock, an heirloom, which has been in the family
for generations. Then larger game can be got at. Wood-pigeons are
waited for in the larches, and shot as they come to roost. Large
numbers of plover are bagged from time to time, both green and grey.
These feed in the water meadows through autumn and winter, and are
always plentiful. In spring the rare dotterels were sometimes shot as
they stayed on their way to the hills; or a gaunt heron was brought
down as it flew heavily from a ditch. To the now disused mill-dam ducks
came on wintry evening--teal, mallard, and pochards. The lad lay coiled
up behind a willow root, and waited during the night. Soon the
whistling of wings was heard, and dark forms appeared against the
skyline. The old duck-gun was out, a sharp report tore the darkness,
and a brace of teal floated down stream and washed on to the mill
island. In this way half-a-dozen ducks would be bagged, and dead or
dying were left where they fell, and retrieved next morning. Sometimes
big game was obtained in the shape of a brace of wild geese, the least
wary of a flock; but these only came in the severest weather.

At night the poacher's dogs embody all his senses. An old black bitch
is his favourite; for years she has served him faithfully--in the whole
of that time never having once given mouth. Like all good