The Gamekeeper at Home. Richard Jefferies

      The woods are lovely in the sunshine of summer; they are full of charm when the leaves are bursting forth in spring or turning brown with the early autumn frosts; but in wet weather in the winter they are the most wretched places conceivable in which to stroll about. The dead fern and the long grass are soaked with rain, and cling round the ankles with depressing tenacity. Every now and then the feet sink into soddened masses of decaying leaves—a good deal, too, of the soil itself is soft and peaty, being formed from the decomposed vegetation of years; while the boughs against which the passer-by must push fly back and send a cold shower down the neck. In fog as well as in rain the trees drip continuously; the boughs condense the mist and it falls in large drops—a puff of wind brings down a tropical shower.

      In warm moist weather the damp steam that floats in the atmosphere is the reverse of pleasant. But a thaw is the worst of all, when the snow congealed on the branches and against the trunks on the windward side, slips and comes down in slushy, icy fragments, and the south-west or south-east wind, laden with chilling moisture, penetrates to the very marrow. Even Robin Hood is recorded to have said that he could stand all kinds of weather with impunity, except the wind which accompanies a thaw. Wet grass has a special faculty for saturating leather. The very boots with which you may wade into a stream up to your ankles in perfect comfort are powerless to keep out the dew or raindrops on the grass-blades. The path of the keeper is by no means always strewn with flowers.

      Probably the number of keepers has much increased of recent years, since the flood-tide of commercial prosperity set in. Every successful merchant naturally purchases an estate in the country, and as naturally desires to see some game upon it. This necessitates a keeper and his staff. Then game itself—meaning live game—has become a marketable commodity, bought and sold very much as one might buy a standing crop of wheat.

      Owners of land, whose properties are hardly extensive enough to enable them to live in the state which is understood by the expression “country seat,” frequently now resort to certain expedients to increase their incomes. They maintain a head of game large in comparison with the acreage: of course this must be attended to by a resident keeper; and they add to the original mansion various attractive extra buildings—i.e. a billiard-room, conservatories, and a range of modern stabling. The object, of course, is to let the house, the home farm, and the shooting for the season; including facilities for following the hunt. The proprietor is consequently only at home in the latter part of the spring and in the summer—sometimes not even then.

      Again, there are large properties, copyhold, or held under long leases from corporate bodies, the tenants having the right to shoot. Instead of exercising the power themselves, they let the shooting. It consists mainly of partridges, hares, and rabbits; and one of their men looks after the game, combining the keeping a general watch with other duties. Professional men and gentlemen of independent income residing in county towns frequently take shooting of this kind. The farmers who farm their own land often make money of their game in the same way.

      Gentlemen, too, combine and lease the shooting over wide areas, and of course find it necessary to employ keepers to look after their interests. The upper class of tradesmen in county and provincial towns where any facilities exist now sometimes form a private club or party and rent the shooting over several farms, having a joint-stock interest in one or more keepers. Poor land which used to be of very little value has, by the planting of covers and copses and the erection of a cottage for the keeper and a small “box” for temporary occupation, in many cases been found to pay well if easily accessible from towns. Game, in short, was never so much sought after as at present; and the profession of gamekeeping is in no danger of falling into decay from lack of demand for the skill in woodcraft it implies.