A gamekeeper's notes are written for the most part on the tablets of
his mind. He is a man of silence; yet he is ever ready to unlock the
casket of his memories if old friends, and sympathetic, are about him.
We have known keepers who could talk, when so minded, as well as they
could shoot, making their points as certainly as they would bowl over
any straying cat that crossed their paths. But few keepers can handle
a pen with the same confidence as a gun. Some keepers, it is true,
carry note-books, and therein make certain brief notes--simple records
and plain statements of fact, interesting enough to glance over, but
nothing to read.
The vermin bag has an honourable place in these notes--year by year the
keeper may set down precisely how many malefactors (and others) have
fallen to his gun and traps. It is a record in which he takes almost as
much pride as in his daily and yearly lists of game; the grand total
of a good season for game or vermin lingers for ever on his lips. The
date of a shoot, the beat, the number and names of the guns, and what
luck befell them, all may be noted with scrupulous care, with a word
about the weather, perhaps, and possibly also on the benefits in cash
received by the keeper at the day's end. Many carry little pocket
note-books wherein they keep an account of dates and places--the date
of all dates in the year being, of course, that on which the first wild
pheasant's egg was found among the primroses. A page of the book may be
filled with the names and nicknames of poachers caught, and a record of
their transgressions and penalties. For the rest, for all the details,
that should clothe the nakedness of these briefly written words, one
must go to the keeper's mind. And the best of all a keeper's notes are
the ones he never jots down.
In this book the notes set out are culled chiefly from a series of
genuine note-books, covering a certain keeper's ten years' experience
of gamekeeping and life-long experience in woodcraft: we have taken
the rough jottings of his pocket-books, and have done our best with
thoughts and memories to sketch in the foreground and background of
his facts. Where he has merely noted, "April --, first wild pheasant's
egg seen," we have tried to picture him as he set out hopefully
expectant, and to describe his feelings as he found that egg, to him
more precious than all others of the year. Where, again, he only says,
"Saw cubs at play," we have sympathised with him as he noted what wings
of partridges and pheasants, what legs of hares and bones of rabbits,
littered the playground.
An abundant source of incident and story we have found in our dealings
with many good gamekeeper friends, old men and young, some of them
locally renowned as "characters," and all good sportsmen. We have
elaborated many a note on gamekeepers themselves, about their wives and
children, their cottages, their dreams, their ways of speech and their
philosophic sayings, matters which no keeper would trouble to record.
Should we be pressed to name the original author of the note-books
from which our memories have been mainly refreshed, we should have to
name one of ourselves: we would be excused. Together, we share the
recollection of glad companionship through many a long day and night;
and, above all, that magic interest in the countless phases of a
gamekeeper's life and work covered by that wide word, Woodcraft.
Our notes appeared originally in the Saturday editions of the _Evening
Standard and St. James's Gazette_, in which journal they have long been
and are still a regular feature: we thank the editor for permission
to publish them in the present form. We are indebted to the editor of
_Pearson's Magazine_ for permission to reproduce the two bird-pictures
by Mr. Frank Southgate, R.B.A.
O. J. and M. W.
_September 1910._