fishermen on the east coast of Scotland is not only to be estimated by the fish
they take or the nets they destroy, for they keep the valuable fish constantly on the'
move and prevent them from coming into shallow water. An old male Seal is
often the attendant curse of some particular station and becomes so artful in
taking the fish from the nets and evading all modes of capture that the stake-men
become wild with exasperation. These men seldom have rifles at hand, so they
resort to every artifice to compass the destruction of the Seal. At the mouth
of the Naver in Sutherland many Seals were killed some years ago by baiting for
the animals with salmon poisoned with strychnine; this inhuman practice has
been successful elsewhere on the east coast. I have often been asked, especially
by the Tents Muir men in my shore shooting days, to come and shoot particular
Seals, and have more than once sat for hours watching for their black heads with
my eight-bore loaded with buckshot, but they seldom came within shot of this
clumsy weapon, and only when I got the powerful and accurate Mannlicher to
work did I kill one or two, and then only once recovered the carcase, which was
stranded at the following tide. As soon as the first big move of the fish takes
place into the mouths of the rivers, a considerable number of Seals follow them,
whilst the rest migrate north; and I have seen a boat fishing with a drift net
for salmon opposite Broughty Ferry Castle surrounded by no fewer than ten or
twelve Seals, who seemed as busy with the fish as the men themselves. Apropos
of the cleverness with which Seals avoid nets placed for their capture Mr. Alfred
Gathorne Hardy, himself a keen sportsman and lover of nature, kindly sends me
the. following note: ‘ In Colonsay the Common Seals used to be much netted
(for their oil) in the narrow rivers left by the tide between Colonsay and Oransay.
My informant who had often taken part in the business tells me that the great
difficulty against making a successful capture was that the old Seals nearly always
headed off the youngsters from going into the nets, however carefully they were
set.’ In Orkney and Shetland it used to be a common practice to net Seals in
the small tidal rivers, but this has now fallen into disuse. Shetland men have told
me similar tales about the cunning of the old Seals, how they will chase young
Seals away from the nets and will themselves leap over the nets like grey mullet.1
The capture of the Common Seal by means of twine-nets has been in use for
centuries in the Gulf of Bothnia, northern Norway, the Caspian Sea, and Lake
Baikal. To-day the Seal net, is still largely in use from September till the ice
closes in, in Norway, Bothnia, Newfoundland, and Labrador, and good accounts
1 S t John in his Wild Sports o f the Highlands, pp. 262-263, gives an interesting account of netting Seals.