POACHERS AND POACHING "Knowledge never learned in schools." [Illustration: LURCHERS.] POACHERS AND POACHING By JOHN WATSON, F.L.S. AUTHOR OF "NATURE AND WOODCRAFT," "SYLVAN FOLK," "BRITISH SPORTING FISHES," EDITOR OF "THE CONFESSIONS OF A POACHER." With a Frontispiece LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL LIMITED 1891 [_All Rights reserved_] WESTMINSTER: PRINTED BY NICHOLS AND SONS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET. Transcriber's Note: Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect spellings, contractions and inconsistencies have been retained as printed. NOTE. These chapters originally appeared as articles in _Macmillan's Magazine_, the _Cornhill Magazine_, the _National Review_, the _Gentleman's Magazine_, the _St. James's Gazette_ and the _Pall Mall Gazette_; and I have to thank the Editors and Proprietors of these periodicals for permission to reprint them. The chapter entitled "Water Poachers" is reprinted by permission from the _Nineteenth Century_. As to the facts in the volume, they are mainly taken at first hand from nature. J. W. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. POACHERS AND POACHING.--I 1 CHAPTER II. POACHERS AND POACHING.--II 17 CHAPTER III. BADGERS AND OTTERS 33 CHAPTER IV. COURIERS OF THE AIR 44 CHAPTER V. THE SNOW-WALKERS 86 CHAPTER VI. WHEN DARKNESS HAS FALLEN 94 CHAPTER VII. BRITISH BIRDS, THEIR NESTS AND EGGS 118 CHAPTER VIII. MINOR BRITISH GAME BIRDS 143 CHAPTER IX. WATER POACHERS 162 CHAPTER X. WILD DUCKS AND DUCK DECOYING 195 CHAPTER XI. FIELD AND COVERT POACHERS 223 CHAPTER XII. HOMELY TRAGEDY 245 CHAPTER XIII. WORKERS IN WOODCRAFT 266 CHAPTER XIV. SKETCHES FROM NATURE 287 POACHERS AND POACHING. CHAPTER I. POACHERS AND POACHING.--I. The poacher is a product of sleepy village life, and usually "mouches" on the outskirts of country towns. His cottage is roughly adorned in fur and feather, and abuts on the fields. There is a fitness in this, and an appropriateness in the two gaunt lurchers stretched before the door. These turn day into night on the sunny roadside in summer, and before the cottage fire in winter. Like the poacher, they are active and silent when the village community is asleep. Our Bohemian has poached time out of mind. His family have been poachers for generations. The county justices, the magistrates' clerk, the county constable, and the gaol books all testify to the same fact.