hat is called by
the Germans "kessel-jagd" or kettle-hunt. For this hunt the head
keeper would collect a number of beaters, as many as a hundred,
from the neighboring towns and villages, mostly small boys and
old men. On the great, flat plain the keeper would send out his
beaters to the right and the left, walking in a straight line at
about twenty-yard intervals. After each side had gone perhaps
half a mile they would then turn at right angles, walk a mile,
and then turn at right angles until the two lines met, so that
perhaps a square mile of territory would be enclosed by the
beaters with the ten to fifteen men with guns at intervals in the
line. When the square had been formed the head keeper blew a
blast on his bugle and all turned and walked slowly towards the
centre and the hares were shot as they attempted to break through
the line.

On one day just before I left Germany, I and members of the
Embassy shot more than two hundred hares on one of these hunts.
The German hare is an enormous animal with dark meat, almost
impossible to distinguish from venison.

After these hare drives, besides, of course, paying the beaters
their regular wages, I used to hold a lottery, giving a number of
these hares as prizes or distributing hares to the magnates of
the village, such as the pastor, the school teacher, the
policeman and the postmaster.

When we were shooting in the summer and autumn the peasants were
working in the fields and one had to be very careful in shooting
roebuck with a high-powered rifle. It is customary to hunt
roebuck on these flat plains from a carriage. In this way a
bullet, travelling at a downward angle, if the buck is missed,
strikes the ground within a short distance. If one were to shoot
lying down, kneeling or standing, the danger to peasants in the
fields would be very great. The pheasants were sometimes shot
over dogs, but usually as the beaters drove small woods. A
pheasant driven and flying high makes a difficult mark. One
getting up before the dogs is almost too easy a shot.

We shot the rabbits by using ferrets, little animals like weasels
wearing little muzzles and bells upon their necks. In the woods
where the rabbits had their holes four or five ferrets would be
put in the rabbits' holes and it was quite difficult to shoot
rabbits as they came out like lightning, dodging among the trees.
In the early spring the "birkhahns" were shot, a variety of black
and white grouse. There were