242 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



certain field. * Ah, well, it was like this 'ere,' he 

 confessed : ' a friend in town writ to I as how 'e 

 wanted a hare ter-rubble bad, and I owns I did 

 ketch one far'n. But I never had it arter all. 1 

 Which latter statement, I told him, I believed and 

 why. 



Curiously enough, the only instance I had of two 

 hares being caught in one wire at the same time was 

 in a wire set by a highly respected labourer, who 

 had the privilege to wire rabbits with a view to 

 keep them down and let the hares up ! I knew a 

 groom who might have developed into a regular 

 hare-poacher, but luckily his beginning was nipped 

 in the bud. It was his duty to exercise horses in a 

 field of rough grass near a wood which contained 

 many hares. The keeper found a snare set on the 

 bank of the wood, secured by red blind-cord. The 

 keeper knew that the groom's quarters recently had 

 been fitted with new blinds, and, by asking this 

 groom, when he next met him, if he could supply 

 a bit of blind-cord (preferably red) for snaring 

 purposes, cured him of a taste for poaching. It was 

 the job of another groom to tend horses turned out 

 in a series of fields, in which were some fenced-off 

 clumps of trees, much used by hares. It was noticed 

 that the groom was in the habit of carrying a fold- 

 shore by way of a walking-stick ; and the true 

 reason became evident when he was seen to enter 

 one of the clumps, and aim a murderous blow at a 



