Hares love green corn stalks, and a field of young wheat is at hand. A net, twelve feet by six, is spread at the gate, and at a given sign the dogs depart different ways. Their paths would seem soon to have converged, for the night is torn by a piteous cry, the road is enveloped in dust, and in the midst of the confusion the dogs dash over the fence. They must have found their game near the middle of the field, and driven the hares--for there are two--so hard that they carried the net right before them. Every struggle wraps another mesh about them, and soon their screams are quieted. By a quick movement the poacher wraps the long net about his arm, and, taking the noiseless sward, gets hastily away from the spot. These are the common methods of hare-poaching. In March, when they are pairing, four or five may often be found together in one field. Although wild, they seem to lose much of their natural timidity, and now the poacher reaps a rich harvest. He is careful to set his nets and snares on the side _opposite_ to that from which the game will come, for this reason: That hares approach any place through which they are about to pass in a zig-zag manner. They come on, playing and frisking, stopping now and then to nibble the sweet herbage. They run, making wide leaps at right angles to their path, and sit listening upon their haunches. A freshly-impressed foot-mark, the scent of dog or man at the gate, almost invariably turns them back. Of course these traces are necessarily left if the snare be set on the _near_ side of the gate or fence, and then they refuse to take it even when hard pressed. Where poaching is prevalent and hares abundant, the keepers net every one on the estate, for it is well known to those versed in woodcraft that an escaped hare once netted can never be taken a second time in the same manner. The human scent left at gaps and gateways by ploughmen and shepherds the wary poacher will obliterate by driving sheep over the spot before he begins operations. On the sides of the fells and uplands hares are difficult to kill. This can only be accomplished by swift dogs, which are taken _above_ the game; puss is made to run down hill, when, from her peculiar formation, she goes at a disadvantage.