Sport in the Fields and Woods (eBook)

An anthology compiled by Rebecca Welshman

Richard Jefferies (Autor)

Rebecca Welshman (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019 | 1. Auflage
224 Seiten
Merlin Unwin Books (Verlag)
978-1-913159-15-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Highly acclaimed author and naturalist Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) made his living writing about the countryside in which he lived.  He made his name through his newspaper columns about the countryside and rural life, and achieved the peak of his fame as author of The Gamekeeper at Home and The Amateur Poacher. His love of nature and wildlife was nurtured by his father who taught him much about the life of the fields and woods. Jefferies' own remarkable powers of observation infuse his writing on the habits and habitat of his quarry, the techniques of fieldsports and the enjoyment of outdoor pursuits. These sporting articles are collected here for the first time in a new anthology.

Textauszug

Poaching on Exmoor

The way up to the woods is beside the trout-stream; it is indeed but a streamlet, easy to stride across, yet it is full of trout. Running with a quick tinkle over red stones, the shallow water does not look as if it would float a fish, but they work round the stones and under hollows of the banks. The lads have not forgotten how to poach them; such knowledge is handed down by tradition, and will never be lost while a stream flows; it will be familiar when the school-books are dust and mildew. They tickle the fish as it lies under a stone, slightly rubbing it underneath to keep it still, and then quickly run a sharpened kitchen fork through the tail, and so secure the slippery trout. They tie a treble hook, like a grapnel, to a stout piece of twine, and draw it across the water till under the fish, when, giving a sudden snatch, one of the hooks is sure to catch it at the side. Trout can also be wired with a running loop of wire. Groping for trout (or tickling), still practised in the rivers when they are low so that the fish can be got at, is tracing it to the stone it lies under, then rubbing it gently beneath, which causes the fish to gradually move backwards into the hand till the fingers suddenly close in the gills, where alone a firm hold can be obtained.

The rivers of Somerset have stony bottoms, so that the eels can be seen moving about like black snakes. They glide over the stones at the bottom, exactly as a snake glides over the surface of the ground, and when still, remain in a sinuous form. Trout swim over and past them. All their motions can be watched, while in the brooks and streams of other counties, where the bottom is of mud or dark sandy loam, they are rarely seen. There they seem to move through the mud, or its dark colour conceals them. Getting into the water, men move the stones till they find an eel, and then thrust a fork through it, the only way to hold it.

Some distance up the streamlet in a coombe, wooded each side to a great height, are three trout ponds. Ferns grow green and thick where the water falls over the hatch, and by the shore flourishes the tall reed-mace (so rarely distinguished from the lesser bulrush). A ripple here, a circle yonder, a splash across in the corner, show where trout have risen to flies. The osprey was shot at these ponds, and once now and then the spoor of an otter is found on the shore. Leaving the water, the path goes up the steep coombe under oaks, far up to the green pasture at the summit. Across on another slope, against which the declining sun shines brightly, there are two or three white spots – quite brilliantly white. One moves presently, and it is seen that they are white wild rabbits. Their brown friends are scarcely visible except when moving. Red deer used to lie in the cover yonder till they were chased, since which none have returned to the spot. Beside the oak wood in the pasture on the summit it is pleasant walking now in the shade after the heat of the day.

It is along the side of a cover like this that the poachers set their larger rabbit-nets at night. There is one seized from poachers down at the old hall. The net is about a hundred yards long and a yard or so wide, made of bluish-green hemp, three threads to the strand, and the mesh about two inches square – just large enough for a rabbit to get his head through; a very young rabbit could go right through the mesh. There is an iron pin at each end to thrust in the ground. The poacher having pushed the iron pin in, steps a pace or two and runs a stick in the ground, twists the string at the upper part of the net round the top of the stick, leaving the net suspended, and repeats this every few steps till he comes to the iron pin at the other end of the net. In this way he can set the net almost as quickly as he walks.

Three are required to work it properly, and the net is placed along the head of a cover between nine and ten at night while the rabbits are out feeding in the pasture, so as to cut off their return to their burrows. Either one of the poachers or a lurcher next go round some distance and drive everything towards it, while the other poachers stand behind the net to take out the rabbits as they come. In a moment or two they rush from all quarters helter-skelter in the darkness, and bound into the net. The rabbit’s head enters the mesh, and he rolls over, causing it to bag round him. The poachers endeavour to get them out as fast as they come to prevent their escape, and to make ready for fresh captives. They wring the rabbits’ necks, killing them instantly. Sometimes the rabbits come in such numbers and all together in a crowd, so that they cannot get them out fast enough, and a few manage to escape. Once, however, the rabbit’s head is well through the mesh, he is generally safe for a quarter of an hour.

Large catches are often made like this. Sometimes as many as sixty or eighty rabbits may be seen out feeding in the evening by the head of a cover – that is, where the wood joins the meadows. Besides rabbits a hare now and then runs in, and a fox is occasionally caught. Everything out in the fields, on being alarmed, scampers back to the wood, and the large net, invisible in the darkness, intercepts the retreat. Bluish-green meshes are scarcely noticeable even in daylight when laid in ferns, on bushes, or by tall grass. This net down at the hall cost the poachers two or three pounds, and was taken from them the very first night they used it. It is heavy and forms a heap rolled up – enough to fill a bushel basket. The meshes are very strong and will hold anything. A very favourite time to set these nets, and indeed for all kinds of poaching, as with wires, is after rain, when rabbits, and hares too, feed voraciously. After rain a hare will run at night twice as much as other nights; these evenings are the best for shooting rabbits out feeding.

The poacher who goes out to net hares has a net about twelve feet long, similar in shape, and takes with him a lurcher. He has previously found where hares feed at night by their tracks to and fro and the marks of their pads on the wet ground, as the sand in gateways. Hares usually go through gateways, so that he knows which way they will come. He sets the net across the gateway inside the field, stands aside and sends the dog to drive the hare into it. The dog is a cross between a sheep-dog and a collie, very fast, and runs mute; he does not give tongue on finding the scent; if he did the poacher would strangle him as useless, since barking would announce too plainly what was going forward.

The lurcher is very intelligent, and quite understands what he is wanted to do. On finding the hare he gives chase; often the hare goes straight for the net, but may of course follow another direction, when it is the lurcher’s work to turn her, and not let her leave the field except by that one exit. To do this the lurcher must be swift, else the hare can distance him. If he succeeds and drives her that way, the instant she is in the net the poacher falls on it and secures her. Hares struggle hard, and if he stayed to catch hold with his hands she might be gone, but by falling bodily on the net he is certain of getting her, and prevents her too from screaming, as hares will in the most heartrending manner. By moving on from gateway to gateway, where he has previously ascertained hares are usually out at night, the poacher may catch four or five or more in a little while.

But it sometimes happens that a hare escapes from the net, not getting sufficiently entangled, and she remembers it ever afterwards, and tries hard the next time for her life. The marks of the struggle are plainly visible on the wet ground next morning – the marks of her pads as she raced round and round the field, refusing to be driven by the lurcher through the gateway, where she now suspects danger. Round and round she flies, endeavouring to gain sufficiently on the dog to be able to leap at some favourable place in the hedge, and so to get through and away. Sometimes she cannot do it; the lurcher overtakes her, and either seizes her, or forces her to the net; sometimes she increases her distance sufficiently, leaps at the hedge, is through and safe. It is the hedge and wall that trouble her so; she cannot put forth her swiftest pace and go right away; she must course in a circle. This is another reason why the poacher falls on the hare the instant she strikes the net, because if she does escape she will always remember and be so difficult to take afterwards. Several poachers often go out like this in the evening, one one way and another another, and so scour the fields.

A young fellow once, who wanted some money and had heard of the hauls made by a gang of poachers, joined them, and his first essay on the following night was with a hare net. The net being set for him in a gateway, he was instructed to instantly fall on anything that entered it. He took his stand; the poachers went on to different gateways and gaps, set their own nets, and finally despatched their dogs. The young poacher watched his net as closely as he could in the darkness, ready to obey his orders. All at once something struck the net; he fell headlong on it and got it under him right enough, but the next instant he received a terrible bite. He shouted and yelled ‘Murder!’ at the top of his voice, but held on groaning to the net and the creature in it, though in an agony of pain.

No one came to his assistance, for at the sound of his yell the poachers imagined the keepers were collaring him, and snatching up their nets ran off at full speed. Shouting and yelling, he struggled and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.11.2019
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Angeln / Jagd
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Natur / Ökologie
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Sport
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Schlagworte: gamekeeper • Gundog • Hawk • Partridge • poacher • poaching • Rabbit Shooting • trout • wild fowl
• ISBN-10: 1-913159-15-9 / 1913159159
• ISBN-13: 978-1-913159-15-3 / 9781913159153