TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
CHAPTER I 
HOW I BECAME A KEEPER 
Early days—Schemes and dreams by day and night—The fascination 
of game-keeping—The bright side—I fire a gun—Caps and 
candles—Mimic shoots—The question of a career—I become a 
gamekeeper at fifteen shillings 2 week—First impressions—The 
finger trick—The best start—Value of education—Responsi- 
bilities—Worries of first shoot. 
So soon as I could run I acquired a determined 
love for rabbits, and acquired also the most dis- 
appointing proof that they could run faster than I 
could. For all that, my sister and I persevered 
heroically, encouraged by the suggestion of our 
nurse that the placing of salt on a rabbit’s tail 
would insure our catching it. To live for ever in 
a shepherd’s hut in a field of rape, to which thou- 
sands of pigeons flocked, was one of our childish 
schemes. We thought in those sanguine days that 
we could make, not only a living, but a fortune, by 
shooting pigeons and selling those we could not 
eat. To miss a pigeon seemed impossible, then. 
Of poachers we talked with awe by day, and by 
I 
