depends largely upon the rapidity of their movements and upon good generalship.
Poachers never do their work in easy confidence. The possibility of a surprise is always present to their minds. Even if the drive is a complete success, the return home bristles with dangers. The dodges by which they seek to circumvent their enemies are multifold. In some instances professional poachers hire themselves out as farm hinds, and this applies especially to districts in which the labourers live in bothies attached to the farmhouses. In an instance which came under my notice recently, two Glasgow poachers hired themselves out as ploughmen on a lowland farm. The farmer thought that he was fortunate in his servants, for they worked industriously all the day. He little imagined that they spent the small hours in ranging the fields with long nets in search of ground game. As a matter of fact, they killed great quantities of hares, which were duly smuggled to the nearest gamedealers' shops, both in baskets and in brown paper parcels. Nor did they desist until the keepers began to suspect where the blame lay for the disappearance of their hares. When the poachers at length found themselves in danger they quietly decamped, feeling no doubt well pleased with their rural earnings.
