As
Their Range Is Limited, Though They Have Here A Forest Of Some Extent As
Well As The Park To Roam Over, They Cannot Always Obtain Enough In
Winter.
In frost, when the grass will not grow, or when snow is on the
ground, that which they can find is supplemented with hay.
They are, in
fact, foddered exactly the same as cattle. In some of the smaller parks
they are driven into inclosures and fed altogether. This is not the case
here. Perhaps it was through the foggers, as the labourers are called who
fodder cattle and carry out the hay in the morning and evening, that deer
poachers of old discovered that they could approach the deer by carrying
a bundle of sweet-smelling hay, which overcame the scent of the body and
baffled the buck's keen nostrils till the thief was within shot. The
foggers, being about so very early in the morning, - they are out at the
dawn, - have found out a good many game secrets in their time. If the deer
were outside the forest at any hour it was sure to be when the dew was on
the grass, and thus they noticed that with the hay truss on their heads
they could walk up quite close occasionally. Foggers know all the game on
the places where they work; there is not a hare or a rabbit, a pheasant
or a partridge, whose ways are not plain to them. There are no stories
now of stags a century old (three would go back to Queen Elizabeth); they
have gone, like other traditions of the forest, before steam and
breechloader.
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