1017 THE POACHING DOGS THE POACHING DOGS
It is wrong to think of poachers just as peasants hunting illegally. A great deal of illegal hunting, especially in Tudor times, was conducted by the gentry themselves. In his well-researched book Hunters and Poachers of 1993, Roger Manning writes: “Poaching was becoming a national pastime in Tudor and early Stuart England. Poachers came from a wide variety of backgrounds. Those from the landed and propertied classes – peers, gentlemen, merchants and yeomanry – organized themselves into poaching fraternities.” In Sussex for example, between 1500 and 1640, 15% of all poachers were peers and gentry, despite being only 5% of the total population of that time. Historically, poaching could be conducted on a very large scale. One poaching gang, hunting in the New Forest in the 1620s was over 50 strong. The infamous Russell gang of 1619 ranged over four counties, carrying away 327 red and fallow deer, 1,000 hare, 1,400 rabbits, 5,000 pheasants and 1,000 partridges. In 1640, in Yorkshire, a poaching gang around 40 strong killed over 40 deer in Wortley Park. This is poaching on an industrial scale! Poachers who were caught were often severely punished. William Clark (alias 'Slenderman') was the last man to suffer the death penalty at Lincoln Castle after a local gamekeeper died of injuries sustained during a nightly poaching encounter. Clark’s lurcher is preserved at the castle to this day. Despite the violence often used by poaching gangs in past centuries and the defiant illegal hunting of many poachers of the recent past, the humble lurcher now has a place in the nation’s heart. Dogs may nowadays act mainly as companions but we should acknowledge their value as a pot-filler for man in hard times. Many years ago, I used to visit a gypsy encampment a few miles from my boyhood home. They had a talented lurcher renowned as a hunting dog for miles around. This dog would be sent out at last light to collect perching game birds or catch a rabbit, which it would then hide in a hedgerow, to be retrieved unseen during darkness. How hard to catch such a canine poacher, whatever the legality involved. But without a capable dog, the poacher is severely restricted. There is nothing new or novel about poachers’ dogs. In his Of English Dogs of 1576, Dr Caius refers to lurchers as Canis Furax, the ‘thievish dog’, to the tumbler, Canis Vertagus, as well as differentiating between the Greyhound (Leporarius) and the gazehound (Agaseus), stressing that the ‘thievish dog’ was also called the ‘Night Cur’, “because he hunteth in the dark”. The wildfowling tumbler lives on, with decoy dogs nowadays being used for legal wildfowling, mainly in Holland. The field tumblers however lost their use with the advent of firearms but the oldest and most famous poacher's dog, the lurcher, has become a legitimate companion dog. Known confusingly as ‘staghounds’ both in Australia and North America, the early colonists there soon valued their pot-filling skills. We may have reduced the need for such a dog, but we have learned to value their wide-ranging skills. They were bred and reared in a hard school and their mere survival deserves our support. Their whole future as a hunting dog of mixed blood can only be kept alive by real countrymen.
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