he will deprive the stoat of his captive? Perhaps; Yes; No, I don't
think so, because one hunts by night, the other by day, he will answer,
but you see that the question troubles him. One keeper, off his guard,
promptly answered, "I've no doubt of it; I can always bring a fox to me
by imitating the cry of a rabbit hunted by a stoat." But he did not say
what his object was in attracting the fox.

I say that the keeper was off his guard in this instance, because the
fiction that foxes were preserved on the estate was kept up, though as a
fact they were systematically destroyed by the keepers. As the
pheasant-breeding craze appears to increase rather than diminish,
notwithstanding the disastrous effect it has had in alienating the
people from their lords and masters, the conflict of interest between
fox-hunter and pheasant-breeder will tend to become more and more acute,
and the probable end will be that fox-hunting will have to go. A
melancholy outlook to those who love the country and old country sports,
and who do not regard pheasant-shooting as now followed as sport at all.
It is a delusion of the landlords that the country people think most
highly of the great pheasant-preserver who has two or three big shoots
in a season, during which vast numbers of birds are slaughtered--every
bird "costing a guinea," as the saying is. It brings money into the
country, he or his apologist tells you, and provides employment for the
village poor in October and November, when there is little doing. He
does not know the truth of the matter. A certain number of the poorer
people of the village are employed as beaters for the big shoots at a
shilling a day or so, and occasionally a labourer, going to or from his
work, finds a pheasant's nest and informs the keeper and receives some
slight reward. If he "keeps his eyes open" and shows himself anxious at
all times to serve the keeper he will sometimes get a rabbit for his
Sunday dinner.