ENGLISH KEEPERS COMPARED WITH SCOTCH 253 



district. This I, of course, declined to pay, and I 

 also returned the cheque to the game-dealer in the 

 South, with a few words of caution. It transpired 

 that he had himself been taken in, and he was eventu- 

 ally the means of showing^ up a gang of netters who, 

 since then, have changed the scene of their operations; 

 but, nevertheless, night-poaching goes on worse than 

 ever. 



As a rule, an English keeper is worth half a dozen 

 Scotch at detecting night-poaching. The Highland 

 keepers go about together, and are generally hum- 

 bugged by the poachers' scouts ; but the English keeper 

 acts in a more scientific way, and is able to cope with 

 the science of the poacher. • 



An English gamekeeper walks as noiselessly as any 

 poacher, and no two of them ever get together unless 

 some preconcerted signal, such as the hoot of an 

 owl, is passed between them. In a big affair, where 

 all the keepers are on the watch, it is a good plan to 

 fire a rocket in the direction towards which the 

 poachers are making, as the men who are on the 

 watch in that portion of the ground are then able to 

 unite together and to meet them, and at the same 

 time one or two rockets may be fired in the direction 

 in which it is desired that the other keepers should 

 follow. However, the more quietly matters can be 

 carried out the better, for a noisy signal often gives 

 the poachers time to separate ; whereas, by quiet mea- 

 sures being adopted, the whole gang may often be 

 surrounded and taken. I can remember an instance 

 where seven men were at work poaching, and they 

 separated on being discovered, and ran for their lives ; 

 the keepers, however, had been so well placed at all 



