Medieval Hunting (16 page)

For the lone hunter, out to fill the pot and have some rare sport, concealment and camouflage were vitally important to success. The European forest was a vast store of potential food, to be harvested using every possible advantage. Wearing green in the Greenwood, like the legendary outlaws and heroes of the peasants, Robin Hood, Little John and Gamelyn, made practical sense.
³²
The illustration of undoing and breaking-up the hart in the Manuscrit français 616 version of
Livre de chasse
shows ten hunters, but of different rank. The three nobles are dressed in bright red or pink whereas the seven hunt servants are in green hunting dress, including three with green knee-stockings.
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In fact, green was the livery colour not only of professional hunt servants but also of the employed forestry officials, the so-called Yeomen of the Forest. In the fifteenth-century Robin Hood rhymes, Robin and his Merry Men are portrayed as such yeomen who fled to live in the Greenwood wearing their occupational uniforms.
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What else did they have to wear? It is natural that they were described by the Robin Hood poets as being in green; the audience, whether gentle or common, would immediately understand, and indeed probably expect, such a point of reference in the description of yeomen foresters.

In
The Parlement of the Thre Ages
, Youth is portrayed as a gentle hunter, but ‘He was gerede alle in grene'.
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and is referred to as ‘the gome alle in grene'.
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The dreamer-poet represents himself as a lawless hunter, a literate game-thief and dreamer without status.
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He carefully camouflages himself with foliage before stalking the deer ‘Both my body and my bowe I buskede with leues',
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and then hides beside a tree (his tryst?) and waits for a hart to appear. The use of natural foliage as camouflage is vividly represented in a miniature in
Livre de chasse
; the hunter is stalking deer using a
charnette
or stalking-cart. Hunter, horse, cart and attendant groom are all camouflaged with leaves and branches.
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The point here is not the status of the hunter, but rather that Fébus was showing that camouflage was a recognised technique of concealment which enabled hunters to approach game closely in order to maximise the success of a shot. Fébus also writes of approaching game (deer) using a stalking-cow, described as ‘une toile qui semble a un buef'. However, the miniature in the Manuscrit français 616 version of
Livre de chasse
shows a stalking-horse in which two assistants are concealed,
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akin to the traditional English pantomime horse! Manning remarks that stalking-horses were often used by hunters of all classes to approach deer which only feared two-footed predators.
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The references in
The Parlement of the Thre Ages
to gentle but lawless hunters wearing green and using leaves to aid concealment indicate that these techniques were probably well known, if not universal, and employed in the field by hunters of different status but for the same reason. The use of natural materials in the art of concealment and camouflage must go back thousands of years to the earliest hunters, as must the use of dummies in approaching wild quarry. The ultimate aim of any hunter was to be as effective as possible, particularly if fresh meat was the main objective. For the rural lower orders brought up in the countryside, concealment and camouflage would have been second nature, valuable skills taught by their elders and passed on by word of mouth and practical example.

Undoubtedly, at the appropriate time, such as when out stalking deer, nobles wore green clothing and perhaps natural camouflage; commonalty hunters did so because green was their occupational livery or because they possessed nothing else. Thus what constituted ‘correct' dress out hunting depended upon who was hunting and for what purpose. The basic problem for the upper classes was whether to dress for status or practicality and, of course, aristocratic
veneurs
had this pleasant choice whereas common hunters did not. Thus, we cannot judge status purely on dress code, although it can be a significant indicator, depending upon the context of hunting which is described or illustrated. The one factor which is clear is that the aristocratic authors of the most informative late medieval hunting texts agree that green was the correct colour to wear for ‘true' hunters. However, as John Cummins comments, there appears little consistency in the colouring of hunting garments in medieval illustrations, although there can be some consistency within one manuscript, such as between mounted hunters and assistants on foot.
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The unknown factor is that illustrations may not always have reflected practice in the hunting field, the reason being that illuminated pictures in manuscripts had decorative and status purposes as well as a purely instructive function.

Quarry hunted by the commonalty included virtually every living bird and animal but it all had the same factor in common – edibility. Wolves and foxes, to be killed without mercy and indiscriminately, were the exceptions.
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Vulpicide was considered as a favour to the community, not as a sin.
⁴⁴
Here, gentle and humble hunters' interests collided. Nobles hunted wolves and foxes on horseback
par force
but these beasts were also hunted on foot by common men as they were predators and yielded a valuable pelt. A marginal picture in
The Luttrell Psalter
shows such a huntsman about to let slip his brace of greyhounds at Reynard.
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Bears (hunted in the wild on the continent but in England the product of bear-baiting), badgers and squirrels made good eating. Red deer, being royal game, were rigorously protected as were fallow deer and, perhaps to a lesser extent, roe deer. Hares, although the favourite quarry of English gentle
veneurs
, were also hunted by humble persons using different methods to the upper classes. A chapter in
Roy Modus
explains how to hunt the hare with running hounds, a common enough method today, while a later chapter tells of the poor man who has only a
reseul
, a pocket or bag net, and how he is to capture hares in the fields and vineyards.
⁴⁶
The Master of Game
comments that ‘any poor gentleman with a couple of greyhounds or a few
raches
[small hounds running by scent] could have a good run with the hare, even though he might not possess a horse'.
⁴⁷

Note that this hunter although presented as ‘poor', was still a ‘gentleman' so his real social status remains ambiguous; or does it? Perhaps Edward is conceding that there were poor hunters who pursued noble game but, naturally, they were still gentlemen. William Baillie-Grohman comments in
The Master of Game
that the writings of the French
veneurs
illustrate how rich and poor pursued the hare, if not always by the fairest methods.
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He also relates that Gace de la Buigne tells how small farmers would assemble with their hounds, some forty of different breeds and sizes, and hunt hares with great enjoyment and success.
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These French farmers were using whatever resources they had between them, to hunt the hare in a manner which was a humbler version of hare hunting by a trencher-fed pack from an aristocratic hunt establishment. Their methodology was loosely based on gentle hunting but they lacked the wherewithal and education to pursue it ‘correctly'. However, their enjoyment was probably just as intense as that of their aristocratic neighbours. François Villon in writing his will,
The Testament
, comments satirically on two friends, down-at-heel gentlemen, who are also difficult to classify socially:

As for Merbeuf and Louviers,/ I leave them neither bull nor cow/ for they're no stockmen. More truly they/ are men to carry hawks (now, now,/ don't think this is a joke!) to bow/ and stoop on partridges and plover,/ without a failure anyhow-/ at Madam Machecoue's and under cover.
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Gaston Fébus gives instructions for pot-hunting but at the same time makes it clear he does not approve of such methods for the sportsman ‘Also one can take hares in divers methods with cords, for which I would that they who take hares thus should have them [the cords] round their own necks.'
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However, as a social indicator, the evidence for the practice of netting game is mixed. Two pictures in
Livre de chasse
show two commonalty methods of taking hares. ‘Hare driving with bells' is a cunning technique in which a long-net is stretched between a wood and the field where the hares are feeding. The hunters hold a rope which has bells attached to it and as they walk towards the wood across the field, the bells ring, driving the hares into the long-net. In netting ‘hares in their muses', the nets are stretched across runs habitually taken by hares at the crossing of rural roads. Hunters with spears are hiding nearby to despatch the hares when they become entangled in the nets.
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This method of taking hares also appears in
Roy Modus
.
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Both these methods are simple and effective, as well as requiring a minimum of equipment, making them ideal for rustic hunters.

Nets of various types and snares were commonly used by practical hunters to take most forms of game, birds and animals. Gaston Fébus was familiar with nets and netting both large and small game. An illustration in
Livre de chasse
shows the manufacture of snares, running nooses and nets from rope, together with an explanation of method entitled ‘Si devise comment on doit fere et lassier toutes manieres de las'. Other illustrations demonstrate the methods of netting deer, wild boar and wolves with large nets and rabbits with small nets.
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The lively
base de page
miniature for April in the Calendar of MS Egerton 1146 is of a mounted hunter with hounds chasing a stag and hind into a large net stretched between two trees.
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These illustrations show the blurring of upper- and lower-class methodology. Who netted what and when? As regards deer and other large game, the answer seems to be ‘everybody' when the occasion demanded fresh meat, a continuing problem for all classes in the Middle Ages. As in France and England, some German manuals exhibit élitist bias on methodology. For example, the
Jagd der Minne
includes a contrast between the sportsmanlike hunting methods of the
Minnejäger
, a member of the lower nobility, and those of the
Becken-jeger
, the bad huntsman, who employs nets and snares during the chase.
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This latter practice was presumably used to purposely bring the hunt to an abrupt but more predictable conclusion than the open chase. However, not all contemporary evidence inclines to this view and the use of nets and snares in the German medieval chase was not always considered unsporting. Indeed, some literary passages describe both stags and hinds being netted and trapped during the chase.
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As with wearing green, it is clear that the practice of using nets is not indicative of commonalty hunting as netting was socially widespread. This very effective method of taking all types of game from deer to rabbits was a well-established practice which continued for centuries. Roger Manning comments ‘Hunting with toils or nets was a very common practice in the Tudor period among all classes from kings to peasants.' Even Queen Elizabeth hunted in this manner at Theobalds in the 1590s.
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Certainly, as we have seen, the nobility used large fixed nets to ensnare big game, particularly deer and wild boar, yet there is persuasive evidence that commoners probably used netting as an everyday method more than nobles. It appears scale of net was important; smaller nets were cheaper to buy or manufacture and were easily concealed and dismantled on clandestine outings. This is not to say that small-scale netting by commonalty hunters was easier, less ingenious or lacking in skill, probably the contrary. An illustration in
Roy Modus
shows a clever rigid-framed trap for catching squirrels. One animal is already inside the trap, greedily eating the bait, while a second descends from a nearby tree to claim his share. A worried peasant waits some distance away to pull the cord which will close the trap entrance.
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A line drawing in
Queen Mary's Psalter
shows a peasant netting a small covey of partridge using a net several feet long stretched across a tapering wooden frame. Two ropes are attached to the wider end, suggesting the structure may have been thrown or, more likely, is being pulled by the hunter.
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Roy Modus
shows two peasants each holding a large framed net over sitting larks while a third rings a bell to put the birds up into the nets.
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Another type of net was the
cokeshote
or
cockshut
, a large net suspended between two long poles and employed to catch, or shut in, flying woodcock.
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The device was held upright and clapped shut by the hunter when the bird flew into the netting. The woodcock's habit of flighting out from their woodland day roosts along an identical flight path at the same time each evening to feed, made the bird an easy prey to stealthy, observant hunters skilled in woodcraft. The
Percy Bailiff's Rolls
of the fifteenth century record a reference to purchasing five
cokshotes
for this purpose ‘Et de 1s. receptis de redditu V cokshotes sic dimissorum diuersis tenentibus per forestarium ididem.' In this case, the cockshotes were purchased for the local Forest establishment, but these simple aerial trapping structures were easily made by any skilled countryman. This ancient practice of taking woodcock is commemorated in the place-name Cockshut Wood, a small wood situated on the east shore of Derwent Water, near Keswick, in the Lake District. Cockshuts were not used at ‘roding', the spring/summer courtship flight by dominant males at dawn and dusk.
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The alternative to using a cockshote can be seen in a charming, though patently ludicrous, illustration in
Roy Modus
. The method is jokingly described by Modus as
a la folletoere
(a bit of nonsense) and involves the hunter dressing up as a woodcock, including a long nosepiece like a beak, approaching the bemused bird on his knees, then snaring the quarry around the neck with a horsehair noose tied to a rod.
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This was surely the ultimate in optimistic camouflage techniques!