Hazel Joe..I wonder where the birdies is?

[Traditionalist]

Joe never went after "big" game, the largest animal he took was a fox. He left deer strictly alone. He never stole anything either, and it never entered his head to take a sheep or any farm animal, not even a chicken. He was well aware that many considered what he did stealing, but he did not share their opinions.

Sitting on the terrace, making up a couple of springer nets, as we needed some mallard feathers, we talked for a little while about where the ducks were to be found.

There were in fact numerous places in the area where ducks could be found, but the vast majority of these "belonged" to somebody, or were at least partly domesticated. In any case, setting traps or nets would doubtless have resulted in numerous complications.

"Wild animals is nobody?s property lad". Joe told me quite emphatically, and not for the first time.  "Some folk think they  own all manner o?things, but t? truth is, they own hardly owt of what they think they own. Animals what lives in the wilds is everybody?s", he said, and bent another stake into a hoop, before saying, "We?ll have a brew", thus concluding the topic for the nonce.

I got up and went into the caravan to make the tea.

That evening saw us walking carefully out onto the salt marshes, in a most peculiar straight-legged, flat footed, fashion. Very carefully tied to our boots were long oval shaped hazel frames about double the size and shape of large tennis racquets. These were criss-cross bound with fine branches and baling twine, which was firmly attached to the frames, and wound up our lower legs, looking for all the world like  puttees. They would also have been very efficient snow-shoes, and the pictures I have since seen of such things confirms this.

There was no snow, but there were large expanses of soft dark treacherous mud, broken only by patches of grass and various other plants, stretches of water surrounded by reeds or grass, long rivulets,  and occasional sandy banks. The marshes are very dangerous places, there are many tales of men simply disappearing into the mud. I have no idea how many might have indeed disappeared, or if indeed any did. Despite my researches in this direction, I was later unable to find a single case of anybody actually being sucked into the mud at this particular spot, but I have no doubt at all that it was possible. It happens in other places, and there are cases documented.

Probably the main reason why no cases were documented here, is that nobody was foolish enough to try walking out onto the treacherous mud!

Quite uncharacteristically, Joe had drilled me on a number of things regarding the salt marshes, before we ever went anywhere near them.  They were public land, and so anybody could theoretically go there, and there were one or two wild-fowlers who occasionally shot there.  These all used punts, which are flat bottomed wooden boats, and poled these along the open ditches and rivulets which criss-crossed the mud. All who did this had dogs for retrieving birds, and would never have tried to set foot on the mud themselves.

Joe had also instructed me on how to walk wearing the mud-shoes. We had practised a little on the grass near the caravan, before he was satisfied. Basically it was a flat footed shuffle. One foot was pushed in front of the other, after tipping the foot slightly, so that the front rim of the "shoe" was elevated, without actually lifting the shoe from the ground.

We had also practised a little on the first fringes of the mud-flats, before he was satisfied with my progress. During the practice he had given me a number of instructions and tips as well, far more than he usually did.  One had to keep moving at all costs while on the mud. Avoid bright green grass, this signifies new growth, and such grass has very tenuous roots which give no support. If one was obliged to stop, then only at an obvious tussock of strong old growth grass, or a clump of reeds. If one fell, or started to sink in too quickly, lie flat, and "swim" out to a tussock or similar. Or wait for help.

Once again contrary to popular opinion, one is not "sucked down" by mud, one sinks into it relatively slowly. The sink rate is increased if one struggles. If one simply lies down on the mud, even very "liquid" mud, one simply floats. Simply distributing one?s weight on the surface is enough to stop one sinking. Which of course is the same principle on which the "mud-shoes" are based.

I have no idea whether the same applies to quicksand, and I have no particular desire to try it, but I suspect not, as quicksand has different properties to mud, at least according to what I have read about it. At the time, I knew nothing at all about it, and simply followed Joe?s obviously expert directions.

This was obviously quite a dangerous undertaking, which of course made it all the more exciting and attractive!

Moving slowly out at this extremely odd gait to a line of reeds at the edge of a stretch of water, we began setting up hoop nets at intervals along the edge of the reeds. These nets are usually used as "springer" nets. That is to say, the hoop of the net is attached to a cord or other mechanism, by which it may be pulled upright quickly, and down again flat.  The hoop of the net moves through 180 degrees, trapping anything on or under it at the time.  This mechanism of course requires a solid anchor for the net.

Unfortunately, it is more or less impossible to anchor anything at all in mud!   There are no trees on the mud-flats, and there are also no stones. They have all long since sunk in the mud. Attempting to attach anything firmly to reeds or similar plants is a complex and lengthy business, although it can be done in some ways. However, the only really practical alternative, in the case at hand, is to use stakes to set the net in the mud. The net frame is made of three long hazel sticks, bent into a hoop. The net is attached to the hoop, and about two feet of each side of the stakes is stuck into the mud.

Joe had already told me that he would have preferred to use his long (draw) net, but we would have needed a boat for this, and we did not have one.

In this case, we would have strung the net along the reed line, using the boat. Assuming also of course that the reed line one wishes to net is reachable by water. Not always the case on mud flats. Some stretches of water, especially the reed-lined ones, are often isolated from any rivulets or navigable ditches. As it was, we were obliged to improvise with the hoop nets. We each set ten nets along the reed line, and then set out again for the solid shore, where the marsh quite abruptly turned into solid ground. This particular form of locomotion is slow, and very tiring.  The march back took a long time, and my legs were aching by the time we reached the shore. As usual, Joe showed no signs of fatigue, or even mild discomfort, and we proceeded to remove our mud-shoes and leggings.

We made slow progress back to the caravan, as I was constantly obliged to stop and massage my lower legs, as I got constant cramps. The unusual and strenuous method of locomotion had caused some of my leg muscles to strike.

It was well dark by the time we reached the caravan, and as I flopped down on one of the old boxes at the entrance, Joe said "We?ll have a brew".  About to rise, and comply with his request, I was extremely surprised to hear him say, "Set thee down lad, ah?ll do it".

Gratefully, I subsided, and after a while he came out with two mugs of tea and a small pot. He handed me a mug, took a slurp of his tea, and then handed me the small pot.  "Rub that in lad" he said, and sat on one of the other boxes.

He got up again, and fetched the spirit lamp from the terrace, and I rolled my trousers up and my socks down, and opened the small blue screw-top jar.  It had once contained "Vick" a patent cold remedy which is apparently mainly glycerine and menthol, eucalyptus oil, and various other aromatics.  It contained nothing of the sort now.  It smelt faintly of garlic, and was a particularly nasty yellow looking colour.

I took a little on my fingers, and rubbed it into my right calf. The pain subsided immediately!  I did the same for the other leg.  Joe took the jar back into the caravan, sat and finished his tea. said "tha?ll be as reet as rain in t?mornin lad", and went back into the caravan again.  I sat for a little while finishing my own tea, and then got up gingerly to walk home.  I had no problems. No cramps, no pain at all.

I wrote for over an hour in my diary before I went to bed. 

The stuff left a yellowish stain on my bedsheets, and my lower legs were also a dull yellow colour when I got up at four the next morning.  I was late, and obliged to walk at a good pace to reach the caravan before dawn. Joe was waiting, we grabbed our gear, the mud-shoes and a couple of stout sticks, and set off for the marshes.  Joe tied up his own shoes, and then did mine. We retraced our steps of the previous evening, but a lot more slowly and quietly, and eventually reached the land side of the reed bed.

"Straight on lad, and make a row", he said, and marched straight into the reeds swinging his stick like a scythe.  I followed suit.

The commotion was considerable.  This was the first time I had been out on the marshes with him on an actual "trip", apart from setting the nets the previous day, although we had walked along the edge a few times, and I was not at all prepared for what occurred.  What seemed like thousands of birds rose all around us, there was such a honking and squawking and quacking and flapping and beating of wings that the noise was hardly bearable.  It seemed impossible that such a huge number of birds should have been in such a relatively small patch of reeds, especially as I had seen none at all there before. I had assumed that we would catch a couple of birds,we always caught something, but this was incredible!

Joe later told me that it was not unusual to catch a couple of hundred birds with a large draw net, but this required a party of men, and of course a boat. After a fairly short while, although it seemed to take ages at the time, the cacophony subsided somewhat, and Joe said "gather up lad".

Moving along our line of hoop nets, we proceeded to "gather up".  There were birds of all descriptions in the nets. Several types of duck, moorhens, Joe had a swan in one of his nets, two herons, geese, a couple of seagulls, and a few smaller birds. There was little time to tally, some birds escaped while we were walking up.  The technique was quite simple, if a little brutal. The net was knocked over and flattened using the stick. The stick was then used to brain the birds in the net, and one moved on to the next net.

When we reached the end of our line of nets, we simply walked back along the now flattened reeds, and gathered up the birds into large sacks, at the same time packing the nets.

Thus burdened, we set out once more for shore.

We had only caught a fraction of the birds we had started. Our nets were relatively small, less than six feet in diameter, and placed at intervals. Nevertheless we had ninety four birds!!!  I can only imagine what number of birds might be caught in such a spot using a draw net and a boat to cover the whole reed line. Probably several hundred.

As it was, we had a great deal to do.  Although these birds were caught mainly because we wanted the feathers, a goodly number of them were eaten.  For me this was one of the most successful trips I ever went on, and it increased my armoury of fly-dressing feathers enormously.

Heron, snipe, several sorts of duck, moorhens, waterhens, swan, geese, and one or two others.

Joe was well pleased with the haul. We went back to the caravan, placed our spoils on the terrace, where he immediately began sorting skinning and gutting, while I made the tea.

I fed the ferrets, and then watched as Joe skinned out a number of the birds with astonishing speed. For weeks afterwards, every time I turned up at the caravan, he had a skin, or a patch, or a packet of feathers of some sort for me.  We dressed thousands of flies from that haul of feathers.

There is no way I would advocate such methods nowadays, and indeed, the more or less wholesale slaughter of the birds sickened me rather more than somewhat at the time, but the beautiful, and in some cases already unobtainable feathers soothed my conscience at the time. The excitement of the hunt did the rest, and I said nothing.

Some of these feathers were used for tying some of Joe?s "secret" patterns. He had not had swan or heron for a while either, and he showed me a few patterns tied using these feathers. Some of the feathers were dyed using natural materials, and I also got a couple of recipes for dye from him. It took me a while to find out all the ingredients, as some of his descriptions were not common, indeed I still lack the correct modern descriptions of one or two ingredients for recipes he gave me. I know what they are and where to find them, but I don?t know a modern name for them. Despite poring over old books, especially on the subject of dyeing, with regard to fly-dressing materials specifically, and other material in general, I have still not found the descriptions. I may do some day.

Doubtless one or two of you who are reading this, assuming it is ever published, would be interested in a few of the fly-patterns. I will do a few drawings, and write up the recipes when I have the time. Perhaps I can even dress a few of the flies and photograph them.

As I have mentioned before, Joe wasted practically nothing. Some of the entrails were laid out on special traps not far from the caravan, and a number of large rats were caught.  These were also skinned and used for dubbing.  rat fur is really nice stuff for dubbing wet-flies. It is very similar to hare fur in many respects, but even softer, and more water-repellent. It is shorter of course.

Should anybody be considering attempting to obtain such things for personal use, many of the methods described are of course illegal now, at least in Europe, and animals like foxes, rats, or even humble hedgehogs, must be treated with great care. They may be infected with a variety of particularly nasty diseases, and unless you are absolutely sure of what you are doing, then you should leave well alone.

It is perhaps not so exciting to choose fly-dressing materials in a tackle-shop, or a mail-order catalogue, and certainly more expensive, but it is also a great deal safer! In a number of respects!!!

Even the possession of some feathers and skins will get you into big trouble nowadays, quite apart from any health or other risks involved. Some animal lovers have a great deal less love of their fellow man, than they do of many creatures, and if they see you cutting bits off even dead animals at the roadside, then you might be in for a nasty surprise. Even if you find something lying dead on the road, if you are not sure about it, then let it lie!

TL
MC