Wood-pigeons are among the gamekeeper's perquisites. Apart from a very
occasional request from "the house" for the wherewithal for pigeon-pie,
the pigeons shot are for the benefit of the keeper and his family, and
when he shoots more than he requires there are always labourers and
others glad of a pigeon or two "to make a pudden." Rabbits, also, are
perquisites, but to be sold no more than pigeons. The popular idea is
that keepers may help themselves to any game they please--true, they
could if so minded. But no matter what a keeper's ethics in other
directions, as a rule he deals honourably with the game in his charge.
The keeper has no more right to take a brace of birds or a hare without
permission than has an ironmonger's assistant to take a coal-scuttle.
There is little to be said against the keeper making use of game
killed, but not eaten, by foxes or vermin, or of chance-killed game
unsuitable for his employer's table. One old keeper was so anxious to
make every available pheasant figure in the game-book that he would
never keep the brace given him at the end of a day's shooting. Instead,
he would include the birds with the bag on the following day, and this
he would do day after day.
Free though they are to kill and cook rabbits, few keepers care for
them, or eat them often. Most keepers, indeed, would be as pleased to
go to penal servitude, or to live in London, as to eat rabbits more
often than once a month. This is not because they have eaten too many,
but because the smell of rabbits has become distasteful. However,
rabbits prove a great help to the keeper with children to feed. Usually
his larder is well stocked, and his good-wife has a store of all kinds
of dainties in her cupboards--from home-made pickles to home-brewed
wine. Often your keeper is a clever gardener; he takes prizes for his
vegetables, and he will grow fine cucumbers and even melons under
fragments of glass. Something of a cook himself, well accustomed to
preparing luxurious meals for his sacred birds, he is a judge of cooks
and cooking, as many a keeper's wife has discovered. If she does not
know, he can tell her how to prepare a savoury dish which shall have
the special advantages of not spoiling through being kept warm or from
being warmed up--for the keeper's dinner is a movable feast, and must
be ready at any time between noon and night. The sheet-anchor of one
such dish is proper home-cured bacon, in winter baked in a pie-dish
with alternate layers of parboiled potatoes, for which in summer the
contents of eggs beaten just enough to blend the yolks and whites are
substituted. Served with new potatoes, it is the very dish to put heart
in a man.
* * * * *