



Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)






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 lurchers, she
is bred between the greyhound and sheepdog. The produce of this cross
have the speed of the one, and the "nose" and intelligence of the
other. Such dogs never bark, and, being rough coated, are able to stand
the exposure of cold nights. They take long to train, but when
perfected are invaluable to the poacher. Upon them almost wholly
depends success.

Poaching is one of the fine arts, and the most successful poacher is
always a specialist. He selects one kind of game, and his whole
knowledge of woodcraft is directed against it. In autumn and winter the
"Otter" knows the whereabouts of every hare in the parish; not only the
field in which it is but the very clump of rushes in which is its
"form." As puss goes away from the prickly gorse bush, or flies down
the turnip "rigg," he notes her every twist and double, and takes in
the minutest details. He is also careful to examine the "smoots" and
gates through which she passes, and these spots he always approaches
laterally. He leaves no scent of hand nor print of foot, and does not
disturb rough herbage. Late afternoon brings him home, and upon the
clean sanded floor his wires and nets are spread. There is a peg to
sharpen and a broken mesh to mend. Every now and then he looks out upon
the darkening night, always directing his glance upward. His dogs whine
impatiently to be gone. In an hour, with bulky pockets, he starts,
striking across the land and away from the high-road. The dogs prick
out their ears upon the track, but stick doggedly to his heels. After a
while the darkness blots out even the forms of surrounding objects, and
the poacher moves more cautiously. A couple of snares are set in holes
in an old thorn fence not more than a yard apart. These are delicately
manipulated, and from previous knowledge the poacher knows that the
hare will take one of them. The black dog is sent over, the younger
fawn bitch staying with her master. The former slinks slowly down the
field, sticking closely to the cover of a fence running at right angles
to the one in which the wires are set. The poacher has arranged that
the wind shall