MODERN CONDITIONS OF HUNTING 39 



what was required of him, and in a year or two the 

 coverts were the most reliable in the hunt. 



Now it must be understood that this man was of retir- 

 ing character, honest in every other respect except with 

 regard to vulpicide. He never blustered or attempted 

 to defend his conduct, but merely stated that he had 

 been brought up in the idea that game preservation 

 could not be carried on where foxes were allowed to 

 live, and had acted accordingly. Another gamekeeper, 

 a rough, bad-mannered man of very indifferent 

 character, had charge of a biggish shoot for many 

 years, and foxes were always scarce, though the coverts 

 were first rate. He was far too lazy to go in for ex- 

 termination, but he caught and killed what foxes he 

 could, and sold the carcases to naturalists for stuffing. 

 When this man was out of place, and working as a 

 labourer, hounds ran a fox to ground in a field drain, 

 on the very shoot he had so long had charge of. He 

 knew all about the drain, and on his advice an open- 

 ing was made in the middle of a field, and a terrier put 

 in. But before the fox bolted we had some conversa- 

 tion with the man, who told us, with a sly wink, that 

 he had taken between thirty and forty foxes out of that 

 particular drain while he had been in charge of the 

 shooting. He quite boasted of the performance, and, 

 on another occasion, he opened his heart, and let us 

 into a lot of tricks of the trade. As a matter of fact we 

 did not believe all he told us, but he certainly opened 

 our eyes in some degree, so that we were afterwards 

 better qualified to estimate the position in subsequent 

 cases of a suspicious nature. 



But it is not the known fox-destroyer who causes all 

 the trouble in those hunts where foxes are scarce, for 

 almost as much mischief is perpetrated by the keeper 



