PREFACE 
Ir occurred to me that to become a gamekeeper 
was the only way of mastering the subject of game 
and shooting, and the thousand and one details 
connected with a gamekeeper’s craft and duties— 
that it was also a way of avoiding a conventional 
calling, of enjoying sport combined with woodcraft, 
of earning enough to keep body and soul together, 
and, above all, of obtaining first-hand experience 
which would enable me to write from the triple 
view-point of sportsman, naturalist, and gamekeeper. 
When I became a gamekeeper, I did so in real 
earnest, taking the rough with the smooth, the kicks 
with the ha’pence. 
After these long years as a working keeper (not 
merely a steward or overseer of others), I have a 
large stock of material for books, of which this is 
a forerunner. That the book mainly concerns 
Vv 
