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- Herausgeber: Merlin Unwin Books
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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.
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SPORTintheFIELDSandWOODS
Richard Jefferies
an anthology compiled by Rebecca Welshman
Contents
Introduction
by Dr Rebecca Welshman
Richard Jefferies (1848–1887) was an author and naturalist, born in Wiltshire. He wrote The Gamekeeper at Home, The Amateur Poacher, Round About a Great Estate, and numerous other works. Jefferies was a pioneer in countryside and nature writing, and his style has been widely embraced and replicated by writers over the last century. He wrote with great feeling and insight about the nature and landscapes of the Wiltshire Downs, and later about the natural history and human life around Surbiton, Brighton, and London.
Jefferies’ writings on sport are from firsthand experience. As a teenager he spent time observing the habits and habitats of birds and animals, and through his friendship with the gamekeeper on the Burderop estate he learnt the techniques of shooting. After befriending local poachers and sportsmen, he became familiar with the methods of poaching, and the culture of rural sporting traditions. He also learnt much from his father who cultivated the land and gardens around the family home, Coate Farmhouse, near Swindon, which can still be visited and enjoyed today.
For Jefferies, sport was more than just a pastime. It gave him a reason to be out in the fields or woods, or by the water, and allowed him to enjoy and reflect upon the treasures of the natural world. Sport is present in some form in the majority of his books. We might remember the relentless physical pursuits of the two boys in Bevis who shoot, fish, swim, and sail, or Felix, the accomplished archer in After London, both of whom were modelled on Jefferies himself. In his essay ‘A Defence of Sport’, written for the National Review in 1883 as a response to the debates surrounding the cruelty of fieldsports, Jefferies refers to sport as an ‘instinct’ that betters mental and physical health, and suggests that a person will be better equipped in all areas of life if they are first well educated in the life of the outdoors.
This is the first anthology to focus on Jefferies’ writings on sport. With extracts from well known and lesser known works, and newly discovered articles republished for the first time, the collection represents Jefferies’ experiences of shooting ground game and wildfowl, hunting, poaching, fishing, and hare coursing. The selections also highlight Jefferies’ interests in estate management and the lives of people who lived in the countryside. Printed alongside are seasonal pieces and some of his more reflective observations.
Jefferies’ sketches of sportsmen, squires, gamekeepers, and poachers are based on people he knew and spent time with. As an agricultural journalist in the 1870s he attended events, such as fairs, markets, shows, and exhibitions. Many of the farmers and labourers who he would have met along the way would have participated in rural sports. In his notebook from 1876 Jefferies records attending the Epsom Derby, which was one of Britain’s largest sporting fixtures. Horses fascinated Jefferies; their strength, endurance and beauty of form were qualities which he envied. In the Amateur Poacher Jefferies writes: ‘The proximity of horse-racing establishments adds to the general atmosphere of dissipation. Betting, card-playing, ferret breeding and dog-fancying, poaching and politics, are the occupations of the populace.’ The sporting territories of the Wiltshire Downs lay close to Jefferies’ birthplace. At Lambourn, which is known as the Valley of the Racehorse, horses have been trained since the eighteenth century. Also close by is Ashdown Park, the home of the Earl of Craven, which in the nineteenth century was one of the best known venues for coursing meetings. In ‘Walks in the Wheatfields’ Jefferies writes that ‘hares are almost formed on purpose to be good sport’ and that ‘coursing is capital, the harriers first-rate.’ His passion for the sport is also evident in the hare-coursing scenes in The AmateurPoacher, which Edward Thomas called ‘the finest thing in the book.’
Jefferies also appreciated fox hunting – not because it was a blood sport – but because as a rural tradition it had a unique aesthetic and atmosphere. In 1876 Jefferies made a note on the insight into social history that hunting afforded, saying that ‘to hunting we owe no little knowledge of men and manners’. He bemoaned the fact that landscape painters seemed to avoid painting the gritty details of hunting scenes: ‘no one paints the foggy days, the dead leaves, the soaking grass… its melancholy landscape. Why does not someone paint the natural hunt? With the cottager and his bill hook looking up, and even the scarlet dulled by the rain or splashed by a fall and the fence tearing the coat.’
In his sporting contributions Jefferies makes clear and striking observations about movement, position and individual response to the environment. These qualities are particularly evident in his contributions on shooting. Soon after his country books were serialised in the Pall Mall Gazette in the 1870s, Jefferies was asked by the publisher Charles Longman to write a manual on shooting. Although this project was never finished, fragments of manuscript were printed in 1957 by Samuel Looker, some of which are reproduced here in this collection. However, although he grew to be an accurate shot, Jefferies also expressed his desire to simply observe birds and animals. In The Amateur Poacher he describes the moment when he lets the gun go just to watch the flight of a pheasant:
My finger felt the trigger, and the least increase of pressure would have been fatal; but in the act I hesitated, dropped the barrel, and watched the beautiful bird. That watching so often stayed the shot that at last it grew to be a habit: the mere simple pleasure of seeing birds and animals, when they were quite unconscious that they were observed, being too great to be spoilt by the discharge. After carefully getting a wire over a jack; after waiting in a tree till a hare came along; after sitting in a mound till the partridges began to run together to roost; in the end the wire or gun remained unused. The same feeling has equally checked my hand in legitimate shooting: time after time I have flushed partridges without firing, and have let the hare bound over the furrow free.
I have entered many woods just for the pleasure of creeping through the brake and the thickets. Destruction in itself was not the motive; it was an overpowering instinct for woods and fields. Yet woods and fields lose half their interest without a gun – I like the power to shoot, even though I may not use it.
In 1883 Jefferies spent the summer on Exmoor researching the area. After being introduced to Arthur Heal, huntsman to the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, Jefferies experienced firsthand the finer details of the chase. These experiences became the foundation of his book Red Deer. In the book he refers to the ‘complete catalogue of sport’ that took place in Red Deer land – including salmon fishing, otter hunting, stag hunting, black game shooting, as well as pheasant and partridge shooting. For Jefferies Exmoor ways of life were refreshingly remote from the ordinary grind of urban living, and illustrated an ancient form of human occupation and relationship with the land.
Sadly, for someone who so loved the outdoors, Jefferies’ failing health meant that he was confined to the indoors during his last few years. In ‘Hours of Spring’ he describes watching the unfurling of the season from his place by the little window of his cottage at Goring: ‘Today through the window-pane I see a lark high up against the grey cloud, and hear his song. … It is years since I went out amongst them in the old fields, and saw them in the green corn’. As his illness worsened the benefits and pleasures of sport became memories rather than realities. Yet the faculties employed in sport – instinct, precision, and focus – and the beauty and grace of animals and birds, continued to inspire Jefferies until the very end of his life. For the love of sport is often closely associated with a love of the countryside – as Jefferies writes in The Amateur Poacher: ‘Let us get out of these indoor narrow modern days … into the sunlight and the pure wind. A something that the ancients called divine can be found and felt there still.’
Rebecca Welshman
A Defence of Sport
A sportsman, or a sportswoman, is never forgotten. The memories of many are still green, though the grass has grown rank over them long since, and while yet one of their generation endures they will be spoken of. Never do you hear a sportsman speak ill of another sportsman. He may joke to any extent, but you will not hear an evil word of another behind his back. A true sportsman has a kind heart for his fellow men; there is no hunting country, not a village where examples may not be collected. There are instances where the inhabitants of a whole district look upon the master of the hounds as their friend and guide. The humblest cottager knows that he can get assistance – everyone speaks well of the master, and deeply would the countryside, especially the poorer population, feel any interruption to that intercourse. One pack of hounds will cause more good feeling among men than fifty pulpits resounding. Give me for a friend a man who rides. With gun, or rod, or in the saddle, a man, let me repeat, is the better, larger in heart and mind, for exercise in the field. He becomes himself; the layers of interest, self, and prejudice which circumstances have placed round about him disappear. He forgives and forgets; his vision opens, and his heart expands.
A pliant rod and silken line, beguiling the footsteps away beside a trout stream, will open a new view of the world. The management of the rod and line, the art to throw it exactly where the ripple runs swiftly at the foot of the rapid, gradually takes up the mind. Intense preoccupation yields to physical effort – the turn and sway of the wrist, the lissom bend of the rod, the swish of the line, transmute thought into the pleasure of action. The very rush of the water against the fishing-boots recalls the strained brain to flesh and blood; the nerves resume their long-suspended functions, and the thrill of life courses to and fro. Sounds of ripples, and splash, the leap of trout, the soft, loving sigh of the wind in the trees, the passage and call of birds – these stroke away the heavy ache of ceaseless labour. Gleams of light reflected, shadowy pools, green meads, and hills whose very curves against the sky are soothing in their slumberous, reposeful outline – these charm the inner existence into accord with the earth. The wound-up sternness of thought melts away, and the fisherman discovers how beautiful it is simply to live.
River and meadow, sunlight and wind, have shown the fisherman his own heart; he finds that there is such a thing as friendship, as good-fellowship, as unselfish companionship. Once know these, and honour is no more an empty word – honour and truth, straightforwardness in everything, are far above the measure of the banker’s book. Let us take a broader, a nobler view of this our lovely country. Let us not look at our land as merely so many acres worth so much. Let us remember the long roll of greatness which forms the real title-deed of the nation. You see the river, and the meadow, the sun, and the wind, bring to the mind a sense of reality – a grasp of the fact that this is England. Till a man has in some manner or other gone afield he does not thoroughly comprehend the meaning of his own country. In a word, it is not home to him. After knowledge of the river and the wood, the hill and mead, such knowledge as gun, rod, or saddle alone can give, he realizes that it is his country, that it is his home. I claim for sport that it makes a man feel himself an Englishman in the full sense of the word, and that it counteracts the narrowing spirit of commerce alone.
Our fields and woods, moors and rivers, are our playgrounds, from which we emerge, strong and ready, to fight the battles of the world. Their value as playgrounds increases year after year. Their thought, heart, and body are alike recruited, and energy stored up for work. As the bees gather their honey from the broad stretches of heather, so those who go out into the open air gather up vigour of frame, and infinite nerve-power which is more valuable than muscular strength. Nothing but sport can supply it, and thus the country has a value over and above its utilitarian produce. A moor – a vast stretch of heather – may graze a few sheep: the money they represent is but little. But the grouse give an increase of strength, a renewal of nerve-force, to those who pursue them over the mountain side, not to be estimated in pounds, shillings, and pence. A little trout stream, if it were farmed on the most utilitarian principle, could only send a small tribute of fish towards feeding a town. But the same river may lead many and many a sportsman out into the meadows, insensibly absorbing the influence of the air and sunlight, the woods and hills, to his own profit individually and to the benefit of all with whom he associates.
from Chronicles of the Hedges, 1948
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 held the creature down till he had kicked it to death, when he found it was a badger. Out feeding, the badger had been alarmed by the dog, and made for the gateway; so soon as he was touched, he began to bite as only a badger can. The young fellow was terribly hurt, both his arms and legs having suffered, and had to keep his bed for some time. Indignant at the faithless conduct of his associates, who had so meanly abandoned him, he renounced poaching. Besides watching the net the poacher watches to see if a keeper approaches. The keeper knows as well as the poacher where hares run, and suspects that certain gateways may be netted. If he sees the keeper coming he snatches up his net and bolts, and this he is sometimes obliged to do at the very moment the hare has entered the meshes, so that in tearing up the net he turns her out, unexpectedly free. The netting of partridges depends on a habit these birds have of remaining still on the ground at night until forced to move. Roosting on the ground, they will not rise till compelled; and the same thing may be observed of larks, who lie quiet at night till nearly stepped on. A partridge-net is held by a man at each end and dragged along the ground. It is weighted to keep one side of it heavy and close to the earth, and in action somewhat resembles a trawl. The poachers know where birds are roosting, and drag the net over them. They will not move till then, when they rise, and the instant the poachers hear anything in the net they drop it, and find the birds beneath it. Poaching varies in localities; where hares abound it is hare-poaching, or rabbits – as the case may be.
The most desperate poachers are those who enter the woods in the winter for pheasants. They shoot pheasants, and sometimes in the deep-wooded coombes, where the sound rolls and echoes for several seconds from the rocks, it is difficult to tell where the gun was fired. It might have been at one end of the valley or at the other. The gangs, however, who shoot pheasants openly declare their indifference as to whether they are detected or not.
They simply let it be known that they do not intend to be taken; they have guns and will use them, and if the keepers attack them it is at the risk of their lives. The question arises whether a too severe punishment for game-theft may not be responsible for this, and whether it does not defeat its object, since, if a poacher is aware that a heavy term of imprisonment awaits him, he will rather fire than be captured. At all events, such is the condition of things in some districts, and the keepers, for this reason, rarely interfere with such a gang. Such severe terms of imprisonment are cruel to keepers, whose lives are thereby imperilled.
The path has now led up by the oak woods to a great height, and the setting sun gleams over the hills of Red Deer Land. It is a land full of old memories. It is strange that Sir Francis Drake, like Virgil, should have acquired the fame of a magician. Sometimes in the hottest noon-tide of summer, when the sky is clear, the wood still, and the vapour of heat lying about the hillsides, there comes from unknown distances a roll and vibration like heavy thunder, fined to a tremble of the air. It is an inexplicable sound. There are no visible thunderclouds, no forts within audible distance. Perhaps it is the implacable Drake discharging his enchanted cannon in the azure air against the enemies of England.
from Red Deer, 1884
The Farmer Loves his Gun
With the exception of knocking over a young rabbit now and then for household use, the farmer, even if he is independent of a landlord, as in this case, does not shoot till late in the year. Old-fashioned folk, though not in the least constrained to do so, still leave the first pick of the shooting to some neighbouring landowner between whose family and their own friendly relations have existed for generations. It is true that the practice becomes rarer yearly as the old style of men die out and the spirit of commerce is imported into rural life: the rising race preferring to make money of their shooting, by letting it, instead of cultivating social ties.
At Wick, however, they keep up the ancient custom, and the neighbouring squire takes the pick of the wing-game. They lose nothing for their larder through this arrangement – receiving presents of partridges and pheasants far exceeding in number - what could possibly be killed upon the farm itself; while later in the year the boundaries are relaxed on the other side, and the farmer kills his rabbit pretty much where he likes, in moderation.
He is seldom seen without a gun on his shoulder from November till towards the end of January. No matter whether he strolls to the arable field, or down the meadows, or across the footpath to a neighbour’s house, the inevitable double-barrel accompanies him. To those who live much out of doors a gun is a natural and almost a necessary companion, whether there be much or little to shoot; and in this desultory way, without much method or set sport, he and his friends, often meeting and joining forces, find sufficient ground game and wild-fowl to give them plenty of amusement. When the hedges are bare of leaves the rabbit-burrows are ferreted: the holes can be more conveniently approached then, and the frost is supposed to give the rabbit a better flavour.
About Christmas-time, half in joke and half in earnest, a small party often agree to shoot as many blackbirds as they can, if possible to make up the traditional twenty-four for a pie. The blackbird pie is, of course, really an occasion for a social gathering, at which cards and music are forthcoming. Though blackbirds abound in every hedge, it is by no means an easy task to get the required number just when wanted. After January the guns are laid aside, though some ferreting is still going on.
from Wild Life in a Southern County, 1879
Shooting a Rabbit
Towards half-past five or six o’clock on a summer afternoon the shadow of a summer-rick will be found to have lengthened sufficiently to shelter anyone who sits behind it from the heat of the sun. For this purpose a margin of shadow is necessary, as just within the edge, though the glare ceases, the heat is but little diminished. The light is cut off with a sharp line; the heat, as if refracted, bends in, so that earlier in the afternoon, when the shade would but just include your feet as you sat on the sward, there would not be the anticipated relief from the oppressive warmth. Ladies sometimes go into the garden to read under a favourite tree, and are surprised that it is not cool there; but the sun, nearly vertical at the time, scarcely casts a shade beyond the boughs. There must be a shadow into which you can retire several yards from the verge, as into a darkened cave, before the desired effect can be enjoyed.
About six the sun perceptibly declines, and can be seen at once without throwing the head back to look up; and then the summer-rick has a conical shadow of some extent. It is, too, the time when the rabbits in the burrows along the adjacent mound begin to think of coming out for their evening feed. A summer-rick of course stands in aftermath [remaining stubble] which is short, and allows of everything being seen in it at a glance. This rick is about twenty yards from the hedge, and the burrow, or the principal part of it, as you sit with your back leaning against the hay, is on the left-hand side. Place the double-barrel on the sward close to the rick, with the muzzle towards the burrow. If the gun were stood up against the rick it would not improbably be considered a suspicious object by the first old rabbit that came out, nor could it be got to the shoulder without several movements. But it can be lifted up from the grass, where it lies quite concealed, sidling it up slowly, brushing the rick, without any great change of attitude, and in the gradual imperceptible manner which is essential to success. Sometimes when the rabbit is in full view, right out in the field, the gun must be raised with the deliberate standstill motion of the hour hand on a clock, which if watched does not apparently move, but looked at again presently has gone on. The least jerk – a sudden motion of the arm – is sure to arouse the rabbit’s attention. The effect is as with us when reading intently – if anything passes quickly across the corner of the eye we look up involuntarily. Had it passed gradually it would not have been observed. If possible, therefore, in choosing the spot for an ambush, the burrow should be on the left hand, whether you sit behind a rick, a tree, or in a dry ditch. Otherwise this slow clockwork motion is very difficult; for to shoot to the right is never convenient, and in a constrained position sometimes nearly impossible.
When expecting a rabbit in front or to the left it has occasionally happened that one has approached me almost from behind and on the right, where without turning the body it would be actually impossible to bring the gun to bear. Such a movement must alarm not only the particular rabbit, but any that might be about to come out in front; so that the only course is to let the creature remain and resolutely refuse the temptation to try and take aim. This difficulty of shooting to the right is why gamekeepers and others who do much potting learn to fire from the left shoulder, when they can command both sides. The barrel should be placed near the rick and lifted almost brushing it, so that it may be hidden as much as possible till the moment of pressing the trigger. Rabbits and all animals and birds dislike anything pointed at them. They have too good memories, and it is quite within probability that an old rabbit may be out who, though not then hit, or stung only in the skin, may recollect the flash and the thunderous roar which issued from similar threatening orifices. I used to try when waiting on a mound to get a ‘gicks’, or cow-parsnip, or a frond of fern or some brome grass, to partly overhang the barrel, so that its presence might not be suspected till the sight was taken.
Now, having placed the gun ready and arranged yourself comfortably, next determine to forget the burrow entirely, and occupy the mind with anything rather than rabbits. They will never come out while watched for, and every impatient peep round the side of the rick simply prolongs the time. Nor is a novel of any use: whether it is the faint rustle of the leaves or the unconscious changes of position while reading, but no rabbit will venture near, no wood-pigeon will pass over while there is a book on the knee. Look at anything – look at the grass. At the tip much of it is not pointed but blunt and brown as if burned; these are the blades recently severed by the scythe. They have pushed up higher but bear the scar of the wound. Bare spots by the furrows are where the mower swept his scythe through ant hills, leaving the earth exposed to the hot sun. Fond as the partridges are of ants’ eggs, the largest coveys cannot make much impression upon the immense quantity of these insects. The partridges too frequently are diminished in numbers, but not from lack of particular food. A solitary humble-bee goes by to the ditch; he does not linger over the aftermath. Before it was cut the mowing grass was populous with insects; the aftermath has not nearly so many, though the grasshoppers are more visible, as they can be seen after they alight, which is not the case when the grass is tall. A chaffinch or greenfinch may come out from the hedge and perch on the sloping roof of the summer-rick, probably after the seeds in the plants among the hay. The kestrel hawk occasionally swoops down on to a summer-rick, stays for a second, and glides away again.
If you should chance to be waiting like this near a cattle-shed, perhaps you may see the keen muzzle of a weasel peep out from a sparrow’s hole in the thatch of the roof. Yonder across the field is a gateway in the hedge, without either gate or rail, through which every now and then passes a blackbird or a thrush, and lesser birds, scarce distinguishable in the distance, flit across. The note of the grasshopper lark, not unlike a very small and non-sonorous bell continually agitated, sounds somewhere; it rings for several minutes, then stops, and rings again with short intervals. For a while it is difficult to tell whence it comes; the swift iteration of exactly the same note gives no indication of locality. But presently the eye seems guided by some unconscious sympathy with the ear to a low hawthorn bush which grows isolated a little way from the ditch a hundred yards down. The bird is there. Under an elm in the hedge on the right hand a gap was mended very early in the spring by driving in a stake and bending down some bushes. The top of the stake is the perch of a flycatcher; he leaves it every few seconds to catch insects floating past, now one side and now the other of the hedge, but immediately returns. His feeble and rather irritating call is repeated at intervals. From the same hedge comes, too, the almost incessant cry of young birds, able to fly, but not yet to find their own food. The dry scent of hay emanates from the summer-rick; the brown stalks of plants, some hollow hedge-parsley mown by the shore of the ditch, project from the side. Now the shadow of a tree which has been silently approaching from behind has reached the rick, and even extends beyond.
Something suddenly appears in the gateway across the field: a rabbit hops with much deliberation through the opening and stays to nibble among the clover, which always grows where the ground has been trodden but not worn bare by cattle. It would seem as if the wild rabbit and the tame did not feed on the same kind of food: the succulent plants carried home in such quantities for the tame animals often grow thickly near large burrows and to all appearance untouched. When shot in the act of grazing in meadows the wild rabbit has seldom anything but grass in his teeth. No doubt he does vary it, yet the sow-thistle flourishes by his bury. The gateway is far beyond the range of small shot, but if the rabbits are coming out there so they may be here.
Very gently, with no jerk or rapid motion, take off your hat, and looking rather at the outline of the rick than at the hedge, slowly peer round so that at first sight of anything you may stay at once and not expose yourself. There is something brown on the grass, not fifteen yards distant; but it is too low, it does not stand above the short aftermath; it is a rabbit, but too young. Another inch of cautious craning round and there is a rabbit on the shore of the ditch, partly hidden by some hawthorn. He is large enough, but it is chance if he can be got: even if severely hit he has but to tumble and kick in a few feet to the bury. Retire as slowly as you advanced and wait again.
A rabbit is out now close to the bush where the grasshopper lark still sings; and another comes forth there shortly afterwards. The first runs twenty or thirty yards into the meadow; the rabbit across at the distant gateway becomes aware that there is company near, and goes to meet it. Further still, on the right hand, there are two or three brown specks in the grass, which stay a long time in one spot, and then move. Something catches the eye on the mound near at hand: it is a rabbit hopping along the ridge of the bank, now visible and now hidden by the bushes. Lower down, a very young one nibbles at the grass which grows at the edge of the sand thrown out from the bury. The rabbit moving along the top of the mound is well within shot, but he, too, if hit will certainly escape, and it is uncertain if he can be hit hard, for although visible to the eye, there are many twigs and branches interposing which would lessen the force of the charge, or even avert it. He has now disappeared; he has gone out into the field on the other side. There seem rabbits everywhere except where wished: what a pity you did not sit behind the isolated hawthorn yonder or near the distant gateway through which a second rabbit comes.
The long-drawn discordant call of a heron sounds; glancing up he floats over with outstretched wings. They are so broad that he does not seem far, yet he is very likely 200 yards high. He loves to see the shadows lengthening beneath him as he sails, till they reach the hedges on the eastern side of the fields, so that he may find the shallow corner of the pool already dusky when he reaches it. The strained glance drops to the grass again… Ah! there is a rabbit on the left side now, scarce five-and-twenty, certainly less than thirty yards away, and almost on a level with the rick, well out therefore from the ditch and the burrows. The left hand steals to the barrels, the right begins to lift the broad stock, first to the knee, then gradually – with slow clockwork motion – to the waistcoat. Stay, he moves to choose a fresh grazing place – but only two yards. The gun rises, the barrels still droop, but the stock is more than halfway up. Stay again – the rabbit moves, but only turns his back completely, and immediately the gun comes to the shoulder. Stay again – is he full or nearly full grown, or is he too small? Is it a buck, or a doe? If the latter, she should be spared at that season. If full-grown, though a buck, he will be very little good at this time of the year. You must judge by the height of the ears, the width across the flanks, and the general outline, by calling to mind previous experience. On comparison with others that you have shot you think this rabbit is little more than half-grown, not quite three quarters – that is, tender and white, and the best for the summer season. But looking along the barrels the hump of the buck intervenes; if hit there he will be cut all to pieces. Shut the lips and cry gently, ‘Tcheck!’ Instantly the rabbit rises to his haunches with ears up straight. As instantaneously a quick sight is taken at the poll and the trigger pressed. The second barrel is ready, but do not move or rise, or you will most likely miss with that barrel, disconcerted by jumping up. It is not needed; the rabbit is down kicking on his side, but it is merely a convulsive kick which jerks the already lifeless and limp body without progress. As you stoop to pick him up the kick ceases. There is a tremor in the flanks, a little blood oozes up the hollow of the ear, and it is over. Had he crept as far as the threshold of his bury the full dark eyeball would have been dimmed by the sand thrown on it by his last effort.
If you have the patience to resume your seat and wait, you may very likely obtain another shot presently from the same ambush. The young rabbits, which are the sort you want, have not yet had much experience of danger, and may venture forth again, or at all events another may be got in other parts of the same field. I remember firing eight successive times in the same meadow during one evening, by changing about from summer-rick to summer-rick. Once I crept on hands and knees some sixty or eighty yards, keeping a rick all the time between me and the rabbit and so shot him. In long grass by lying down at full length and dragging my limbs behind me – progressing rather by the arms only than with aid of the knees – I have approached rabbits straight across the open meadow without the least shelter, crawling towards them right, as it were, before their faces. At the least perking-up of ears or sign of alarm I stopped. The top of my head was never above the bennets and sorrel, so that the least lowering of my neck was sufficient to hide me altogether. The very fact of approaching in front was favourable, as rabbits do not seem able to see so well straight before them as in any other direction. Hares are notoriously deficient of vision in that way, and rabbits in some degree share the defect. But such approach, whether with gun or rifle, can only be accomplished by the exercise of extreme patience and unwavering attention upon the animals, so that the faintest suspicion may be allayed by stillness.
After such an amount of trouble you naturally wish to make quite sure of your game, and would rather wait some time till the rabbit turns and offers a sure mark, than see him presently scramble wounded into a burrow. The shoulder is the safest spot; a rabbit will often run with shot in the head, but pellets near the heart are usually deadly; besides which, if the shoulder is disabled, it does not matter how much he kicks, he cannot guide himself, and so cannot escape. But as the shoulder is the very best part for eating– like the wing of the fowl – it is desirable when shooting a young rabbit not to injure the flesh there or cause it to be bloodstained. You must, then, wait till near enough to put plenty of shot in the head, enough to stun at once. When you can see the eyeball distinctly you are sure of killing, and it is the deadliest spot if you can draw a bead on it. For in this kind of shooting the one object should be to kill outright; merely to wound is both cruel and bad economy.
Summer-ricks are not general now, the hay being carted to the yard, and sheltered by the rick-cloth, but large haycocks occasionally remain some time in the fields; or you may hide behind a tree, a hawthorn, or projecting bush. A chance shot may be obtained sometimes by walking very quietly up to a hedge and peering through, but many rabbits are lost when shooting at them through a hedge. If there is one out in the grass on the other side, with a little manoeuvring you may manage to get an aim clear of boughs. But if the rabbit be not killed on the instant he is nearly sure to escape, since it is always slow work and sometimes impossible to force one’s way through a thick hedge. By the time you have run round to the gate the rabbit is dying four feet deep in the mound. With a dog it might be different, but dogs cannot well be taken for ambush-shooting; even a dog often fails when a rabbit has so long a start as thirty yards. The most difficult running shot at a rabbit is perhaps when he crosses a gateway on the other side; the spars, though horizontal, somehow deceive the eye, and generally receive most of the shot. Nor is it easy to shoot over a gate if at a short distance from it.
The easiest place to procure a rabbit is where there is a hollow or a disused quarry. Such hollows may be seen in meadows at the foot of wooded slopes. If a hedge bounds or crosses the hollow, if there is a burrow in it, you have only to walk in the evening gently up to the verge, and, taking care that your head is not visible too soon, are sure to get a shot, as the rabbits do not for some time scent or see any one above them. Where they feed in the bottom of an old quarry the same thing may be done. Burrows in such places should not be ferreted too much, nor the rabbits too much disturbed. The owner will then be able to shoot a rabbit almost whenever he wishes; a thing he certainly cannot do elsewhere; for although there may be a hundred in a mound, they may not be out just when he wants them. Some people used to take pleasure in having ‘blue’ rabbits about their grounds. These were the descendants of black tame animals turned out long previously; their colour toned down by interbreeding with the wild. Some thought that they could distinguish between the wood rabbit and the rabbit of the hill or the field warrens, and would pronounce where you had shot your game; the one having a deeper brown than the other, at least in that locality. But of recent years the pleasant minutiae of sport, not alone concerning rabbits, have rather fallen into disuse and oblivion.
from Chronicles of the Hedges, 1948
