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.’ 
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! 1 knewa 
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 
