The Old Race of Deer-Stealers 



Our old race of deer-stealers are hardly extinct yet. 



It was but a little while ago that, over their ale, they used to 

 recount the exploits of their youth ; such as watching the hind 

 to her lair, and when the calf was born, paring its feet with a pen- 

 knife to the quick, to prevent its escape, till it was large and fat 

 enough to be killed ; the shooting at one of their neighbours with a 

 bullet, in a turnip-field, by moonshine, mistaking him for a deer ; and 

 the losing a dog in the following extraordinary manner : 



Some fellows, suspecting that a calf new-born was deposited in 

 a certain spot of thick fern, went with a lurcher to surprise it ; when 

 the parent hind rushed out of the brake, and taking a vast spring, 

 with all her feet close together, pitched upon the neck of the dog, 

 and broks it short in two. G. W. 



THIS interesting description of old-time deer-poachers 

 is now a picture of the past. Before Gilbert White's 

 day red deer abounded in his neighbourhood, in 

 Wolmer Forest, and at the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century amounted to five hundred head. 



Where there were deer in those days there was an 

 ever-present temptation to deer-stealers, leading on to 

 every kind of idleness and wickedness. Mr. White 

 recorded how, when a bishop of Winchester was urged 

 to restock a famous chase with deer, he refused, saying, 

 " It has done mischief enough already." 



While forests and wastes with deer and rabbits 

 caused much crime of old, when the game was removed, 

 they were the greatest blessing to the poor, who, 

 before the movement arose for inclosing commons, 

 might employ themselves in cutting peat and other 

 fuel, making brooms, and so on ; while on the commons 

 their geese and young stock were kept at no expense. 

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