90 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



way, I saw no more of that old stoat, and thought 

 she had eluded me altogether. But one morning, 

 a week afterwards, while I was coming down a 

 ride a couple of hundred yards from the scene of 

 the mysterious removal, my terrier stood in no 

 uncertain way at a small pile of bavins. I had 

 just started to roll the bavins apart as best I could 

 with my right hand, keeping my gun cleared for 

 action with the left, when out whipped a stoat, and 

 I blew off her head. Being curious to see what 

 plunder she had beneath the bavins, I moved them, 

 and there were the eight young stoats I had lost. 

 Think of the labour of carting them, each one bigger 

 than herself, a distance of two hundred yards ! 



Once, having secured part of a litter of stoats, 

 and having set traps for the rest, I was waiting a 

 while to watch if anything happened, well knowing 

 that if only I could get the mother, to secure her 

 family would be easy. After about ten minutes, I 

 caught sight of her on the end of a birch log, and 

 since there was no prospect of a better chance, I 

 had a go at her at a good fifty yards. She dived 

 into a rabbit-hole without the least sign of being 

 hit. But the next morning she was in a trap baited 

 with two of her young ones, in spite of a broken 

 thigh. The reason why, up to the time when the 

 litter breaks up, it is easy to trap young stoats to 

 their defunct mother seems to be that, although 

 they long since have ceased to obtain milk from her, 



