THE CONFESSIONS OF A POACHER.* THE poacher is not usually
considered to be a picturesque individual ; indeed, his appearance, as a rule, is very much against him ; he generally looks a ruffian, and very often is one. This view of the poacher is due to the fact that the true poacher is vary seldom seen by the public eye; it is the "moocher " who gives shape to the general fancy, the shuffling, furtive-eyed creature, always ready Sor a job, fairly useful with his hands, and bearing over all the stamp of the scamp, and whose personality
suggests the formula, "Guilty of felonious intent." The true poacher, the professional poacher—that is to say, the man who lives in a game country, and has no visible means of subsistence—and is regarded as such by a negative reasoning almost as conclusive as actual proofs, though sometimes morose and ill-tempered, is not always an unprepossessing character. The poacher, whose " Confessions " are here set forth, is, if we are to believe him and Mr. Watson, all that the imagination, the poet, and the artist could desire. Of hand- some exterior,—he was known as the " gentleman-poacher " on the rare occasions which necessitated his presence before the .Bench,—he always poached "on the square," kept, in fact, close-times to a few days, and seems, on the whole, to have been let off with light sentences. However, we are somewhat uneasy about this plausible poacher ; his existence may be a fact, but a deeply tinged halo of unreality surrounds him, and his sincerity is occasionally doubtful. For this result, the poacher is not to blame perhaps, but Mr. Watson. The manner of editing the reminiscences—one can only call them half-hearted confessions—is certainly not a success. The style would lead one to suppose that the poacher's confessions have been written into a book. There was to be expected a certain amount of repetition, a tendency to wander, and an inconsistency which, though not knowing the man as well as lfr. Watson does, we will not call by a harder name. These would be the natural consequences of reminiscences im- parted conversationally, especially by an old poacher, and prompted by leading questions. The poacher, however thorough might be his knowledge of and feeling for the beauty of Nature, would not expeess himself in Mr. Watson's language, but go straight to the point. Again and again we are unconsciously reminded that it is not the poacher who is speaking, but Mr. Watson ; and if we cannot place our finger on a certain passage and say, "That is the editor," none the less do we get that indistinctness of effect and confusion -which are the natural result of two people talking at once. It is as if the reader stood listening at one end of a telephone, and Mr. Watson and the poacher spoke into it at the other, relating the same story, keeping together fairly well, but pro- elucing a somewhat strange effect, owing to the greater fluency of Mr. Watson and the occasional " doubles " of the poacher. This is a great pity. In their separate departments of writing and poaching, both must be allowed to be good, even expert, but the two arts are so distinct that they cannot well be combined. The poacher belongs to a peculiar profession, the practice of which, more scientific than artistic, no one but himself can properly understand. He has thus an undeniable right to speak for himself, to express himself after his own fashion ; in fact, he should have been allowed a free hand to tell his own story in his own way. Of course the literal reminiscences of a poacher would be too short, too full of repetitions, unless aided by questioning. It was neces- sary to make a book, and the poacher had to be padded and put into periods ; for it requires tact to manage him, he being a silent person, and more given to deeds than words. His own words would have had a value of their own, and we cannot call this poacher representative, because we do not hear them. We will not remark on the incident of the poacher's standing on London Bridge in the early morning and feeling the realism of the misquoted line, "0 God ! the very houses seemed to * Tk, Canfissi061, Of i Ponclier, Miami by John Watoon, F.L.O. Illustrated by James Wok,. Lonaon: Tbo Leadenhall Press. 1890.
sleep," further than to say it. may be true, but it does not sound so.
Mr. Watson's poacher lives in the neighbourhood of the moors, and has lived near the sea ; indeed, his wild-fowling recollections have much more freshness about them than the more inland ones. This is due in. part to the fragrance of the sea-air, and the slaughterous and predatory tinge which comes - over the narrative ; perhaps there is more of the poacher and less of the editor. Shore-fowling and fowling on the "salt" is mostly done by nets, so that the fowler is dependent more on circumstances than skill. Still, it must be wonderfully attractive ; there is something of gambling in it, and the takes are occasionally enormous. Wary and wild as shore- fowl are, their habit of flying low and in bunches, and their inability to rise quickly, place them at the mercy of the nets. The trick of treading soft ground till it shines like water, is an instance of the ease with which one may deceive birds ; the sense of scent, to be sure, is of very little use to them. Our friend, it appears, devoted himself to "feather," "fur," and fish impartially. He seems somewhat uncertain as to whether he preferred partridges, pheasants, or grouse among feathers. The danger and uncertainty of pheasant-poaching is com- pensated by the helplessness and value of the bird; grouse- poaching, as regards the probabilities of capture, is perhaps the safest ; and partridge-poaching has become of late years the least remunerative. The wandering habits of the pheasant make it a particularly difficult bird to protect, and its emotional tendencies in the direction of food—in fact, its greediness—ensures its capture. An excessively cruel method was employed by our poacher for killing pheasants,—soaked peas had a hole drilled in them and a bristle inserted; the birds swallowed them, and of course choked to death. This is, indeed, the distinction between the sportsman and the poacher. The poacher declares that the sportsman is at heart no better than himself ; but, as has been said, it is the denial of all law to the game that separates them sharply,—the one may kill, the other must, and with him the end justifies the means. The poacher is a great hypocrite ; he defends himself on moral grounds, yet when a poacher in a trial herein mentioned, is told it is a question of property, not of morality, he declares that " it's a queer kind of pro- perty that's yours in the field, mine on the turnpike, and a third man's over the next fence." Being, in fact. wrong from both points of view, the poacher declares he is guiltless from either. His manner of livelihood is a protest against the Game Laws, he says ; yet a preserved country is thrice the value to him of an unpreserved one. Forsooth he is a monstrous rascal! He cries down the very laws which support him, which could hardly have been better arranged, even by a committee of his own species, for his con- venience, and for the weeding-out of unskilful followers of his exacting craft. Mr. Watson's poacher complains that in consequence of the Ground-Game Act, hare-poaching is no longer a profitable pursuit. One can sympathise with the man ; it bears hardly on him, this Act which gives to the tenant what he has more right to than anybody else. Our poacher, on the subject of snares, states two fists to be the proper height for the noose ; is not this low ? Another authority gives a fist and a span. The setting of snares for the bounding hare, as our poacher hints, requires a great deal of observa- tion, and his actual capture, by snare or when driven into a net by dogs, often represents to the poacher a great deal more than its marketable value, so noisy is the poor beast. The hare having no burrow, and never daring to trust to its colour (it starts away from its " form " at once), has a hard time of it. The foolish thing will stare at a hat placed on the ground almost shaking with terror, while the owner makes a circuit, and descends suddenly on it from behind. Even in the winter, when it lies covered by the snow, its scent coming up through the air-hole betrays it to the dogs. It is indeed a wonder that an adverse fate, the keen poacher, and the small tenant have not wiped the hare clean away. Mr. Watson's poacher lays claim to ingenuity in making capital out of the quarrelsomeness of cock-pheasants, by arming a game-cook with steel spurs ; but this is certainly not new. Burning sulphur under the roosting birds is also a most effective trick,—indeed, pheasants are proof against nothing. Noosed while roosting, noosed while feeding, and noosed even as they run back into the wood,—stupefied, choked, dazzled, they can be drugged and overcome whilst quarrelling in their cups. Like men, they are poor, silly, feckless things, and a prey to a hundred clever and clumsy dodges.
Fish-poaching is perhaps the most profitable in some re- spects, because less attention is paid, generally speaking, to close-times by the public, and consequently by the poacher. In dry weather, when the pools are crammed with fish, the whole life of a stream may be swept away ; and the waste is always wholesale, for more is killed than can possibly be carried, and when chased, nothing can be carried at all if the poacher is to escape,—and our poacher confesses to having left tons of fish behind. It was on a fishing expedition that he was fairly "cornered." Having eluded the water:bailiffs and made a good take, he got within a few yards of home and was then chased ; he reached home first, but only to find the door locked. He faced it out, he tells us, and found he had made a grievous miscalculation ; and the fishing-season having been shortened by a fortnight, our friend was in possession of 129 salmon and trout during the close-season. It gives one a gloomy satisfaction to know that after this atrocious mas- sacre, he went to "hard" for nine months. Mr. Watson's poacher says nothing about snaring fish, though this is a delicate art, and requires patience and skill in handling the noose; it is, indeed, too uncertain and too near the sports- manlike, and belongs rather to the amateur than the profes- sional poacher. The backbone of the art of poaching is the science of snaring, and to attain perfection the most wide, patient, and minute observation is necessary; else how could such an apparently useless, futile, and unattractive thing as a noose become so deadly P What says Pope ?—
" With hairy springes we the birds betray, Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey ; " The skilled poacher could snare with ease a Maltese Jew embodied in the shyest of birds. It must have struck observant people how exhaustive a watchfulness some newly appointed gamekeepers reveal ; they will discuss the move- ments of a covey or a bird for an hour. The success of the poacher, it will be argued, were it not for the countrywomen and carriers' carts, would be doubtful ; as for the lurcher, without that embodiment of human and animal cunning, he could scarcely exist. Our poacher's business was ruined for one year because the squire bought his best dogs. He paid a fancy price for them ; but they were a cheap bargain.
Comparisons are odious, but the temptation to compare the poacher of these " Confessions " with the poacher of Jefferies is irresistible. Mr. Watson has a keen love of the beautiful in Nature, and a most happy power of expression ; but he does not show quite the same intuitive knowledge of, and intimate acquaintance with, wild men and their ways.
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