ioo TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



more harm to game nests, than most people imagine. 

 One may detect the work of a hedgehog at a nest 

 by the clumsy havoc there is the wide passage 

 through the herbage, and the eggs are partly eaten 

 and the remains mixed with the rooted-up material 

 of the nest (which seems to suggest that the insects 

 that lurk beneath the nest are thought as much of as 

 the eggs). Still, there is no getting away from the 

 fact that a hedgehog invariably falls to an egg-bait 

 pure and simple. Though eggs or carrion answer 

 admirably, there is no bait more effective for trapping 

 hedgehogs than the carcasses of those hogs that have 

 gone before. In fairness to hedgehogs, it should be 

 stated that they come more freely to matured than 

 to fresh bait, not only because of the former's stronger 

 scent, but for the sake of the maggots it produces 

 and the beetles it attracts. All the same, this is not 

 evidence that hedgehogs do not like eggs, and even 

 birds. I heard of a proved instance in which a 

 hedgehog attacked pheasants in a coop, and killed 

 the fowl foster-mother by gnawing out her entrails. 

 During my first season as a keeper of pheasants 

 I found there were many hedgehogs in the woods. 

 I got a hundred and forty odd that season. One 

 tunnel-trap at an angle of one of the coverts accounted 

 for forty-four. There passed by this trap a ride, up 

 which people were not supposed to walk, so I set to 

 work to print HEDGEHOGS in an elaborate design with 

 the ones I caught, and made splendid progress till a 



