Practical Game-Preserving. 402 



teristics, besides knowledge of all details of his craft, alike 

 as regards the practical and the legal portion thereof, so 

 far as it concerns poaching and poachers; he should 

 never commune except with his master, and on this subject 

 he should be implicitly trusted. 



With regard to the vexed question of the keeper 

 whether a head man or an under-keeper in charge of a 

 separate beat carrying a gun, I have but one opinion, and 

 it is in the affirmative. If a man be fit to be a game- 

 keeper he is fit to be entrusted with a gun ; but at the 

 same time discretion in its employment is necessary. Its 

 uses are innumerable for vermin-killing, but its abuse is 

 most reprehensible. The number of keepers necessary on 

 a preserve depends upon circumstances too numerous to 

 detail. The more roads and paths about an estate, the 

 more keepers are required. The preserver should always 

 endeavour, moreover, to enlist in an unofficial way as 

 watchers the services of any trustworthy labourers or 

 others with outlying cottages, never giving them power to 

 act in repressing trespass, but employing them simply as 

 informants. 



Whenever any raid by more than two or three men is 

 about to take place, in nine cases out of ten it is known 

 beforehand, and the man who holds the information will 

 generally tell it if appealed to in a proper manner. No 

 one can do this better than a sharp labourer, whose resort 

 to the local ale-house for a gossip occasionally would be 

 unsuspicious. A stray word as to the keeper's where- 

 abouts by him although misleading would be accepted 

 as gospel, and is as sure to gain hints of any projected 

 enterprise as it is to be believed. 



There is a good deal to be learnt as to the proper mode 

 of capturing or of interrupting poachers. Nothing puts 

 them off so easily as to know that they are being watched 



