While February 1 brings security to pheasants and partridges,
hares--where any survive in spite of the Ground Game Act--are now also
nearly safe from persecution, thanks, however, to the courtesy of
sportsmen, and not to the law. Like rabbits, hares may be killed all
the year round, but, unlike rabbits, they may not be sold or exposed
for sale between the first day of March and the last day of July.
The end of the season has a strong effect on the gamekeeper. February
2 marks his annual truce with his birds, save woodcock, snipe and
wild-fowl. Thereafter he loses the vindictive look of the shooting
season--he becomes a man of peace. For long months he has been scheming
death and destruction--he has devoted himself wholly to the science of
killing game. Happy, if anxious, his face has been as he has bustled
his birds to guns belching forth some three hundred pellets of lead at
each discharge. At the end of the day he has rejoiced over the long
rows of the dead, in feather and fur, while his hand jingles gold and
silver--his reward for success in the contest of wit and reason against
cunning and instinct. The second day of February comes--and his whole
nature seems to undergo a change. No longer he boasts to his rival
neighbour how a week ago come to-morrow the bag was so many hundred
pheasants, and would have been doubled if the guns had shot "anyhow at
all." But he will make a boast of the numbers of his hen pheasants. The
sight of hen pheasants is the greatest joy of his days--over his hens
he watches with maternal love. "And how many hens was there?"--this is
the answer he will return should you mention casually that you had seen
pheasants feeding in a field.
As to cock pheasants, his sensations are different. The sight of a
cock pheasant is a taunt. The veteran cocks that have passed unscathed
through the shooting season now grow proud in bearing, and the keeper
thinks they seem to eye him with scornful looks. They are approaching
the reward of their cunning, of their keen eyes, their sharp ears,
their speedy legs--the possibility of several wives is before them. No
matter where the keeper goes now, he is taunted by the sight and sound
of these victorious veterans that have eluded all his efforts to bring
them low. In summer it is the lament of the twenty thousand gamekeepers
in this country that there are "too many cocks by half."
[Illustration: SPRING'S LOOKING-GLASS