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The Grouse poacher used to be a great thorn in the side of the man of velveteen, but he is now an almost vanished figure.
Grouse netting
I know one old man well who years ago used to don a white shirt and pair of sheep-shearing drawers of the same colour over his ordinary attire, and on a bright moonlight night, when snow lay thick upon the ground, he would steal forth from his house, which stood on the edge of a moor, and creeping quietly up to a flock of sleeping Grouse, deal death amongst them by a shot from his old single-barrel, directed where he saw the most birds in line.
Although the Grouse poacher of the picturesque old school has almost disappeared, his place has been taken up by a man here and there, where peculiar circumstances permit it, whose methods are loudly anathematised by sportsmen, and especially by those whose game he bags. We have been fortunate enough to secure an interview with one of these men, and a series of photographs of him at work with his engines of destruction.
He rents a small piece of heather-clad freehold land, surrounded by some of the very best Grouse moors in the British Islands, and as soon as the shooting season commences he plants two thousand copper wire snares, which he calls "hanks," in the sheep tracks, along which Grouse love to run, and erects nets in such positions as the birds are likely to fly over in entering or crossing his domain. These nets are seven or eight feet in height by about one hundred yards in length, and he sometimes secures as many as thirty victims at a time in one of them.
Occasionally, when a bird is flying with a strong wind behind it the impetus derived from its increased speed will drive it clean through the net, but the threads forming its meshes are not broken without doing some damage to their destroyer, which drops on the other side either dead or with both wings broken. If a Grouse happens to strike the wire from which the net is suspended with its neck, it at once decapitates itself, and the severed head generally twirls high in the air.
This man has sometimes taken as many as fifteen brace of Grouse out of his snares in a single morning; and, as will be seen from the picture below, he very obligingly allowed himself to be photographed in the act of resetting one from which he had just obtained the bird protruding from his jacket pocket. These snares are particularly destructive, because driven Grouse fly into the bit of freehold as a haven of rest, and when they have been shot at and thoroughly disturbed they run about in a state of agitation, and many of them become fatally entangled in the innocent-looking bits of wire.
The old man also shoots a bit, and has a favourite pointer bitch, eighteen years old, and so infirm that she cannot leap over a wall of any height worth mentioning. Her master, who is very fond of his canine friend, therefore lifts her on to the top of any stone fence they desire to cross, and there she sits watching him until he himself has surmounted the obstacle, when he tenderly conveys her to the ground.
She is quite conscious of the great esteem in which she is held, and imposes upon her good-natured owner accordingly. When the time came for her to have her portrait taken along with her master and their day's bag, she obstinately refused to sit until a piece of warm dry carpet had been provided for her especial accommodation and comfort. The old man explained her conduct just as if he had been talking about his wife. She had been suddenly woke up from a sound sleep, and was indulging in a bit of temper on account of not being allowed to finish her nap.
The lessee of the surrounding moor has tried many more or less ingenious devices to spoil the old fellow's sport and reduce his plunder, but with little success. A brace of tethered Falcons, so placed as to scare the Grouse away from his bit of freehold, came within legal reach of his gun and perished; a number of flags erected all round mysteriously disappeared one dark night; and a wooden hut, built for the accommodation of a couple of watchers, accidentally caught fire whilst its occupiers were supping of sociability at some farm-house in the valley below.
Of course, it is not illegal to snare or net Grouse, however unsportsmanlike it may be considered, provided the man who does so is upon land where he has the necessary right to do so, and is armed with a licence to kill game; but he must take all his snares up on Saturday night, as the law resents the Sabbath being broken by profane bits of wire hanging about like round O's amongst the heather. Our old friend was caught napping in this direction last year, and was fined for his wickedness.
Snaring grouse
A favourite method of poaching Grouse by those who still indulge a little in illicit gunning is known as "becking." It is a much more sportsmanlike business than netting or snaring, and is often usefully employed by gamekeepers in October and November for killing off a number of superfluous and very artful old cocks that stick to the higher ground.
When I was a lad I used to go "becking" with a keeper nearly every suitable Saturday morning in the late autumn, and have probably lured more Moorcocks to their destruction in this way than any youngster living. My companion was an excellent shot, and together we have on many occasions bagged six brace of birds by breakfast-time.
"Becking" consists of getting up very early in the morning and reaching the deep moss lags before the first peep of day. I have on many occasions called a bird within shot before there was sufficient light to see it by whilst on the ground. At the very first suggestion of day-dawn Grouse begin to stir; the males fly twenty or thirty feet into the air, and come down slowly with their heads thrown back and their tails erect, whilst they utter their resounding "err, beck, beck, beck," and alighting on a "knowe," finish with a more deliberate "goback, goback, goback." The females utter their peculiar call-note, which is much easier to imitate than to represent by the characters of the alphabet. It sounds something like "yap, yap, yap," or "yowk, yowk, yowk," and can be reproduced by compressing the nostrils with the index finger and thumb and then emitting the breath in sharp, forced gasps.
A couple of veterans
There are various other methods of calling, but by far the most successful is that of sucking quickly at the stern of a clay tobacco-pipe. With the bowl of an ordinary "churchwarden" and six or seven inches of stem, I would at any time undertake to create such magic sounds as would effectually deceive the most experienced gamekeeper, shepherd, or old cock Grouse that ever crossed a moor.
The great secret of successful "becking" is to get on to the ground where it can be done before the birds begin to stir in the morning, to keep well out of sight, and to call creditably.
As a rule, Grouse are very talkative, and come well to call on frosty mornings between the first peep of day and sunrise; but directly the sun shows its ruddy disc above the Eastern hills, they become as silent as the grave. The fact is grace has been said and breakfast begun. On some mornings when conditions appear to be ideal the birds are almost silent, and keep on flying restlessly to and fro, and a wet day generally follows. Most poachers who go "becking" prefer a misty to a frosty morning, as the birds will come quite as well to their imitative blandishments, and often continue to do so right up till noon; hiding is also easier, and the report of a gun travels but little.
On frosty mornings birds will fly long distances, by stages, to answer a call, and I have brought them so close that a shot would have blown them to pieces. Hens often respond quite as well as cocks. If the "becker" happens to start calling close to a company of Grouse, an old male will run up on to a "knowe" or other eminence, and if he catches sight of his deceiver at once utters his alarm-note of "Cock, cock, cock!" and flies away; but if not, and he is bowled over, another and another will in all probability run up and take his place until four or five victims have been accounted for.
It is a glorious experience, and one which I have enjoyed many, many times, to sit on a bit of bleached sandstone at the bottom of a peat hag during a fine November morning and watch the rising sun purple the Eastern sky, whilst all around the Grouse are making the air ring with their noble music. It sometimes happens that when the whole countryside appears to be literally alive with birds a sudden silence falls upon the land, and the listener is at a loss to understand the reason why, until a distant hoarse croak or the appearance of a black speck far away up in the sky tells him of the presence of a Raven.
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