The use of spring-loaded traps ‘in an elevated position’ to catch birds has been illegal in the UK since 1904, not that any legislation will prevent certain types of gamekeeper from persecuting raptors in order to protect pheasants being reared and fattened for the shoot. Nor will it deter a certain type of landowner, who may issue a warning to a gamekeeper should he see a bird of prey flying in his piece of sky, or a fox or a stoat roaming around, which warning, if it does not have the desired result, could lead to the gamekeeper being sacked.
No landowner would admit to this, so the gamekeeper takes all the risk of being caught, but it’s all happening on private land. The keeper may feel free and safe to shoot, trap or poison any animal, and may well go through his whole career without any irritating do-gooders interfering with ancient practices.
‘Do-gooders’ was how my young couple were being seen in the village, after asking in the pub about this gamekeeper, Mr Bagshaw, and dead tawny owls. Classed as townies, off-comers, putting their noses into local affairs they didn’t understand, they were told to mind their own business. There were no threats, as there might have been on a major country estate, when a compromised gamekeeper may not have been averse to throwing a lump of poisoned meat into a do-gooder’s garden where a pet dog might get it. Even so, there was an unwelcoming, unfriendly feeling that the couple felt they would have to live down, while also feeling they must do something about this keeper.
There were public footpaths that took them near the pheasant pens, and they’d found more traps and more dead owls. By inspecting the bodies, they could see that the keeper, on finding a bird alive, would bash its head against a tree. He’d then hang it up, ostensibly as a warning to other predators although nobody believed that such a warning would have the slightest effect. It was more of a trophy display, like the keepers of old who used to hang their hunters on a line, sometimes called a gibbet line, where their employers could see how well they were doing at eliminating everything that threatened their sport, from otters to weasels, from buzzards to kestrels.
The really odd thing, the couple felt, was the over-all decline in wildlife, as if this part of the National Park had become a no-go area for everything except people and pheasants. I explained how this could have happened: that if the gamekeeper was prosecuting all the birds and animals that could harm his pheasants – kestrels, sparrowhawks, foxes, badgers, weasels, stoats, even hedgehogs – the unspoken message would go round and, while the mice and the voles would be happier, the predators would disappear.
The couple had phoned the police but nothing had happened. In earlier times you might have expected the village bobby to have had a quiet word – don’t overstep the line, nod’s as good as a wink – but there were no village bobbies any more and the North Yorkshire Constabulary had no resources to spare to keep tabs on a semi-retired gamekeeper. Phoning me, the couple felt they had gone as far as they could without being drummed out of the village. I guaranteed their anonymity, saying I would not need their testimony because I would gather all the evidence myself. They were much relieved. Then I sat down and realised I didn’t have the slightest idea about how to go about fulfilling my promise.
No good phoning the police, obviously. No good phoning colleagues as they’d be just as bemused as I was. Although I had heard of inspectors targeting song-bird trappers, I didn’t know who or where. So, I thought, in the best traditions of Miss Marple, I would take my dog for a walk around that village, through the woods, and along the footpaths, and take note of everything I saw, no matter how insignificant. I took the magnetic signs off the van and set out.
I got very little out of that first trip apart from a distinct impression that this was a rather closed community, as you often find in remote rural areas – or used to find, should I say. Hardly anywhere can be classed as remote these days. In the pub, saying nothing that could give a hint why I was there, I was an object of mild North Yorkshire curiosity, given much the same treatment as, say, a Martian or a Sioux chieftain would have had, causing no more than the smallest ripple on the pond of village life.
On the way home I decided on a plan of action. A second secret trip was required, to follow the rest of the footpaths that I’d missed and find the pheasant pens and the pole traps. I’d then make a third trip, also arriving in the early-morning darkness, hide in the bushes, and wait. Meanwhile, I’d visit the Army and Navy stores to get some camouflage clothing. There were no small video recorders then, and I didn’t have a decent camera, so my spying equipment consisted of my birdwatching binoculars. I had no notion then of proper concealment techniques, or how to avoid leaving traces of my movements. I had no plan about what to do should my quarry turn up with a 12-bore, and likewise no plan about how to confront him, unarmed I hoped, or what to do if he ran for it.
From phone conversations with the young couple I was able to plot the locations of the pens on the OS map and check them out on my second visit. I wanted to see what other traps there might be, such as gins for foxes, poisoned eggs for stoats and weasels, and what precautions our man had taken against poachers. We were in late spring, so the birds would be of a nice small size for the gourmet restaurant trade, or they might be lifted wholesale and taken to another shoot.
On my next weekend off, I left home in the early hours, with a somewhat sketchy explanation to Carol of what I was doing, but I hadn’t left early enough. Dawn was breaking when I got there, so I just had time to pinpoint one of the pens before broad daylight made discovery too likely.
A fortnight later, weekend off again, I left soon after midnight and had plenty of time to scout around. ‘Scout’ was the right word, really, as I was trying to imagine what Tonto would have done if the Lone Ranger had wanted him to find a trail. Many gamekeepers pass this way, Kemosabe, I said to myself as I prowled around with my little torch with the red filter, trying to improve my night vision by using only one eye at a time, which I’d read somewhere was what the gunners did in the bombers during the war. Anyway, I found the second pen, and a pole that had been used with a trap but which had no trap set just then, and no other traps or defensive measures.
On the one hand I’d found some evidence, real evidence. On the other, I had no way of linking it to anyone in particular, and I’d had my first experience of how frustrating such work can be, occupying many hours, always with the tensions of secrecy, and so often coming away with nothing.
Nothing would not do, so I resolved to return again. Another two weeks of normal duties went by. I cooked up another vague story for Carol to explain why I was leaving the house at midnight on a Saturday. I don’t suppose she believed it but she would have known that whatever I was up to, it would be to do with my obsession with animals, to which everything else came second.
I got to the village in plenty of time, parked up, walked the two miles in to my target area, and checked out the first pen. Nothing there, so on to the second pen, where I found a trap set on the previously empty pole with nothing in it. I did a wider circuit, hoping. Then I saw it. About fifty yards away, a dim shadow in my red torchlight, there was a pole with something hanging down.
Heart bumping, I went up close. Now I could see it was an owl, not moving. And now was the moment of decision. I had to do something, I knew that, but what? I couldn’t keep coming back here every other weekend until some sort of a miracle occurred. Whatever was going to be the result of this, my first secret investigation of crime, it was down to me to make it happen.
The keeper would surely come to look at his trap, but would it be this morning? There was no option. I hid in among some brambles and waited. Soon I discovered another truth about this sort of work, in a wood, in the dark, alone, with no back-up. It’s spooky, cold, eerie, unnerving and decidedly stressful if you’re not used to it. Without giving it that technical name, I was doing covert surveillance, and there’s another characteristic of that: you don’t know how slowly time can pass until you’ve crouched on your own, in a bush on a cold night, waiting for the dawn.
I still didn’t really know what I would do if my man appeared, with or without a shotgun, with or without a large, violent companion. All senses were on full alert, while the body was sending messages about the chill and the cramps brought about by staying in the same position for a long time. I hadn’t thought about wearing thermals under my cotton camouflage gear, nor of bringing a flask of hot coffee, nor had I realised that breathing out into the still, cold air, just as the sun was touching the horizon, made a cloud of steam that anyone could see. I’d have been less discoverable waving a flag. I had no mask or scarf to put over my mouth, so all I could do was use my hand as a deflector.
Three hours later I was about to give up. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, I was aching all over, and someone was heading my way. A small hunched figure of a man appeared, scruffily dressed in an old wax jacket and a trilby hat, walking with a hefty stick. If this was an eccentric millionaire, he was making a very good job of looking more or less destitute. Mr Bagshaw it had to be.
He went up to the pole trap, fumbled inside his jacket and took out a hessian sack that he put on the ground. I thought, I’m watching this, and he’s not even bothering to look around, but why would he? He had no need to worry. He was in the middle of the woods, on private land and, as far as he was concerned, on private business, a long way from the nearest nosy parker.
As he disconnected the trap from the pole, the owl, dangling down, flapped its wings. God Almighty, it was still alive! With racing mind and no strategy at all, I jumped out of the undergrowth and shouted ‘RSPCA!’
A smarter chap than this one would have said ‘Oh, jolly good, glad to see you. Just on a walk through the woods and, do you know, came across this trap. Poor thing. They’re illegal, aren’t they?’
Instead, he stood there, almost fainting with shock and surprise, his jaw dropped as far as it would go. I walked up to him, brandishing my ID card like someone from a TV cop programme, sprung the owl from its trap and stuffed it inside my jacket. I didn’t have a lot of hope for it but I always had to try. I checked inside the sack: dead tawny owl.
I’d learned from my dealings with other kinds of animal abusers that you must always take the high ground and stick to it. Authority, dominance, self-assurance – all these must be apparent from your behaviour and demeanour, so I wasted no time with this fellow. However, I couldn’t quite manage the full formality of speech that I would have liked.
‘Mr Bagshaw, I am arresting you on suspicion of causing the death of a protected species, and of using traps that you’re not allowed to. You are not obliged to say anything, but if you do say anything, I’ll write it down. Now, we’ll go back to yours.’
He led the way. His ruddy complexion had paled to grey and he walked like a condemned man to the scaffold. I had the sack, with the trap and the dead owl, so the evidence was there in plenty. The owl inside my jacket wasn’t moving and I was anxious to start doing something for it. I would keep the interview to a minimum and come back again later.
His little cottage on the edge of the woods was typical. Unobtrusive, badly maintained on the outside, and full of gamekeepers’ treasures within – fox masks on the wall, all sorts of trophies and old pictures, a stuffed badger, fox-skin hearthrug, more old pictures including some rather nice early hunting prints, a bunch of fox brushes, a stuffed sparrowhawk.
We sat at the kitchen table. I told him that I knew he had been killing tawny owls with pole traps and he admitted it. He was a gamekeeper, charged with looking after pheasant poults, and he’d had trouble with owls taking them. The boss had told him he’d better not lose many more or he’d be singing for his wages – and his job next year. He knew it was illegal, but what was he suppose to do?
I told him I’d be back to take a full statement, and headed off to my van in a state of mild euphoria. The irony did not escape me that the excitement and satisfaction I was feeling was all to do with the thrill of the hunt, the exhilaration of the chase and the kill, only the animal I had been hunting knew why, and had earned his punishment.
My owl seemed beyond help but I put it in a small basket in the passenger footwell of the van and turned the heater on full. I was hardly halfway home before it was showing me how wrong I’d been, and so my first stop became the vet’s. This owl has a broken leg and concussion, he said, but you can collect it in the morning.
After several cups of tea and a fried egg sandwich, and a brief explanation to Carol, I rang the young couple. They were overjoyed, as I was. Only Carol seemed less than enthusiastic.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said.
‘You’ve got the bug,’ she replied. ‘I can see it. Being an ordinary RSPCA inspector isn’t going to be enough any more. James bloody Bond more like.’
Carol had a point but it would be a while before her prophesy came true.
I went back to see Bagshaw. He admitted everything and signed my notebook to that effect. I had a trap, and a dead tawny owl with broken leg and fractured skull.
All the papers went off to headquarters and I waited eagerly for the court case to be set up but it wasn’t going to happen. Because Bagshaw was seventy-four years old, it was decided that it was not in the public interest to put him through court. Instead he was issued with a formal warning. I tried to persuade HQ otherwise but failed. Still, it had been a good job if you stood back and looked.
The young couple kept me informed about the woods around their village. The shoot had been closed down. Mr Bagshaw was seen only at the shop and the pub. And the wildlife was flourishing again. All the birds and mammals were back as if peace had been declared. My tawny owl was shown to be blind in one eye and, although its leg was set and mended, it couldn’t go back to the wild. I gave it to a local enthusiast I knew well, and he kept it in his aviary where it lived a long and relatively happy life.
As for me, well, Carol was right of course. I had got the bug. Over the next few years I mounted quite a few covert investigations, learning something new from every one. Eventually I became the first full-time undercover investigator of animal crime in the world – but that’s another story altogether.
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An Alligator in the Bathroom...And Other Stories Page 16