Gamekeepers are much associated with tipping. If tips are to be
reckoned as part wages, the element of chance is great and unfair.
There are cases when tipping amounts to bribery, as when a rich man
buys the best place in a shoot. For the system, it may be said that a
tip is the most convenient token of appreciation of skill in producing
good sport. And we agree that if any servant of pleasure deserves a
tip it is the gamekeeper. But among the fallacies of the system is
the fact that the scale of tips is seldom in proportion to skill and
energy. Thus, a tip of a certain amount is given for a day's covert
shooting of, say, under a hundred head, half pheasants, calling for
a certain amount of energy and skill on the keeper's part. But a
tip of only half the amount will be given after a thirty-brace day
at driven partridges, which has afforded five times the amount of
shooting, and called for ten times more skill and energy from the
keeper. There is a saying among keepers that tips may be looked upon
to provide three useful things--beer, 'baccy, and boots. In old times
a five-pound note was the order of the day--this is represented now
by half a sovereign or five shillings. A few keepers are lucky enough
to serve where wealthy sportsmen shoot regularly, who willingly give
the keeper a ten-pound note. But most keepers praise heaven for £10
received in tips in a season. Where the scale of tips most fails
is when a tip covers compensation for injuries. But the beater who
received a note on account of a stray pellet in his person was more
than satisfied. "Bless you, sir," he said, "you may give me the other
barrel for another of 'em." But beaters always find contentment in a
tip, whatever its size. We recall how three beaters were more or less
bagged successively during a three days' covert shoot. One, at the
time, appeared to have had his right eye destroyed, but saw his way
to accept twenty-five shillings. Another buried a shot in his little
finger, and on receiving seven shillings was eager to undergo the same
treatment for six days a week. A third was peppered behind, and awarded
eighteen-pence, which satisfied him, being, as he lamented, "only a
boy, like." By the way, there seems no place in the sportsman's scale
of tips for awards for narrow escapes. We have known a keeper mention
the fact quite unavailingly that his cap had been shot from his head
by a careless gunner, who had brought down an easy bird with his first
barrel, then, swinging round, had blazed at a second bird just as it
topped the keeper's head. "Aw," he drawled, by way of answer, when the
keeper respectfully intimated that he had escaped death by a miracle,
"I certainly ought to have killed both of those birds."
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