208 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



silver and copper. The keenness of keepers is con- 

 stant, and is prompted by a higher motive, as when 

 a tired man voluntarily takes a long tramp in the 

 late evening, after an arduous day's work, on the 

 remote chance of adding another head of game to 

 the season's tally. 



There is one point upon which all keepers are 

 extremely sensitive the bagging of a pheasant on 

 an adjoining shoot, within sight or sound of the 

 boundary. I must admit that such an event had a 

 potent effect upon myself. When a keeper personally 

 witnesses the various scenes leading up to the fatal 

 shot, the effect is much aggravated. There is, 

 however, no sight which pleases him more than to 

 see a pheasant elude a neighbouring keeper and 

 return to his own wood. Yet I know many keepers 

 who will behold with equanimity various wholesale 

 disasters to their pheasant prospects, yet regard the 

 loss of an isolated bird during the season as a 

 calamity. I have heard a keeper actually boast of 

 the necessity of carrying a bucket, in which to 

 collect the dead, at each round of the coops. 

 Another would turn out hen pheasants with cut 

 wings into the jaws of foxes without any more com- 

 punction than is suggested by the remark that ' he 

 supposed they'd have the (whatever was his pet 

 adjective) lot.' 



A keeper who rears only a few score pheasants 

 often will labour under the delusion that every 



