CHAPTER XV 
TRESPASSERS AND POACHERS 
A lady and her dog — Primrose-pickers — Egg-poachers — Wilful 
destruction of eggs—A lump of coal—Gipsies—Inferences—An 
old shepherd—Unsuspected poachers—Plausible excuses of 
poachers—Poachers and policy. 
TRESPASSERS are a greater worry to the keeper than 
poachers—at least, I found them so. One reason 
is that trespassers are so much more numerous than 
poachers, and the loss of game they cause, by dis- 
turbing it, is much greater; another, that the 
keeper is not in a position to get the satisfaction 
from trespassers that he can from downright 
poachers. In effect, a trespasser often does far 
more harm than a genuine poacher. 
The lady with a dog is the despair of keepers. 
I had come up with a lady whose dog was dis- 
porting himself among a lot of sitting partridges 
and pheasants, and with polite warmth had called 
her attention to the doings of the dear creature, 
She deprecated my suggestions with indignation, 
saying ‘that her dog was a pure-bred Canadian 
boar-hound, and would scorn to hunt common game.’ 
My own opinion was that he was a_pure-bred 
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