A GAMEKEEPER'S
NOTE-BOOK
LONDON, EDWARD ARNOLD.
A GAMEKEEPER'S
NOTE-BOOK
BY
OWEN JONES
AUTHOR OF "TEN YEARS' GAMEKEEPING"
AND
MARCUS WOODWARD
JOINT AUTHOR OF "WOODCRAFT"
WITH PHOTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND IMPRESSION
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1910
[All rights reserved]
PREAMBLE
A gamekeeper's notes are written for the mostpart on the tablets of his mind. He is a man ofsilence; yet he is ever ready to unlock the casketof his memories if old friends, and sympathetic,are about him. We have known keepers who couldtalk, when so minded, as well as they could shoot,making their points as certainly as they would bowlover any straying cat that crossed their paths. Butfew keepers can handle a pen with the same confidenceas a gun. Some keepers, it is true, carry note-books,and therein make certain brief notes—simplerecords and plain statements of fact, interestingenough to glance over, but nothing to read.
The vermin bag has an honourable place in thesenotes—year by year the keeper may set downprecisely how many malefactors (and others) havefallen to his gun and traps. It is a record in whichhe takes almost as much pride as in his daily andyearly lists of game; the grand total of a goodseason for game or vermin lingers for ever on hislips. The date of a shoot, the beat, the numberand names of the guns, and what luck befell them,all may be noted with scrupulous care, with a word- viii -about the weather, perhaps, and possibly also onthe benefits in cash received by the keeper at theday's end. Many carry little pocket note-bookswherein they keep an account of dates and places—thedate of all dates in the year being, of course,that on which the first wild pheasant's egg wasfound among the primroses. A page of the bookmay be filled with the names and nicknames ofpoachers caught, and a record of their transgressionsand penalties. For the rest, for all the details, thatshould clothe the nakedness of these briefly writtenwords, one must go to the keeper's mind. And thebest of all a keeper's notes are the ones he neverjots down.
In this book the notes set out are culled chieflyfrom a series of genuine note-books, covering acertain keeper's ten years' experience of gamekeepingand life-long experience in woodcraft:we have taken the rough jottings of his pocket-books,and have done our best with thoughts andmemories to sketch in the foreground and backgroundof his facts. Where