With nature and a camera

Chapter IV. Gamekeepers: their friends and foes

Netting hares

Hares are, and probably always have been, much sought after by poachers of all kinds. Only the other day an old man, bent almost half-double with age and carrying a hamperful of groundsel upon his back, called at the back door of a house occupied by a neighbour of mine, and when he found lie could not dispose of any of his ostensible stock-in-trade he glanced round furtively, and then promptly dived his hand through the groundsel and pulled a splendid Hare forth by the leg and offered her in a whisper for three-and-sixpence. The old fellow had doubtless snared her as she came through some favourite run in a hedgerow.

The commonest way of illicitly catching the animal in the North of England is netting it by night.

When a lad of seventeen I was very anxious to know exactly how this was done, and accordingly ingratiated myself into the confidence of a couple of poachers, and accompanied them one night after a heavy fall of snow on to some property which, curiously enough, belonged to my paternal grandfather. I think they were desirous of scaring me at the offset; for after telling all sorts of tales about narrow escapes from keepers whom we all knew quite well, they set me to watch a net stretched across a field-gate leading into a lane. I had stood waiting in fear and trembling for some time, when a black figure quietly rounded a bend in the road and came swiftly towards me.

[page 173]

The consciousness of my guilt made me jump to the conclusion that it was a keeper, and my heart started thumping wildly against my waistcoat, as it was impossible for me to run away; and there were special circumstances for making capture particularly disgraceful. Without stirring a foot, I jerked the net from the gate and instantly thrust it beneath my waistcoat, and waited with as much composure as I could summon. If ever piety had the upper hand of wickedness it was at that moment, for the dark figure turned out to be our minister going home from a prayer meeting. The sound of his soft "Good-night" relieved me beyond the telling but I fear I added all too readily to my sum total of iniquity by asking him to tell an imaginary chum along the road "to hurry up."

There could be no disputing that I had got a thorough fright, but after a few weeks I had so far got the better of it that I went out again on the same quest. One of the poachers, who was a keenly observant fellow, knew a meadow where a Hare came off the hills to feed every night, and we accordingly started about eight o'clock one evening to try to catch her. When we arrived at the gateway by which she entered, a recently-fallen shower of snow showed plainly that she was in the field. A net was hung lightly across by means of a little bob of sheep's wool thrust into the interstices of the stone wall on either side. I remained crouched down behind the fence with one of my companions, whilst the other and a rough-haired cur went by a circuitous route to the far side of the field.

[page 174]

In about ten minutes we heard a scuffling kind of rush, and an instant afterwards the net flew off the gateway in a great brown ball and rolled several feet along the ground, and the still night air was rent by the most piteous child-like skirling I ever had the ill-fortune to hear. The noise was of short duration, however, for the poacher with whom I stood threw himself upon the Hare and net and ended poor Pussy's squealing for ever. The dog never uttered a sound of any kind, and I only saw it once as it peeped between the bars of the gate through which the victim had come until we all met behind an old barn in a lonely place half a mile away.

Hare-net on gate

Hares will often take a net set in this way in broad daylight if they are hard pressed by a swift dog, and the accompanying pictures, taken by special arrangement with the man in them, illustrate how the trick is done.

The hare caught