by Bob
I could even catch a quatting hare by hand. I was so stealthy I’d pretend not to see it, then snatch it up by the loose skin on its side and back and break its neck. I could catch a pheasant with a slip snare, which was similar to a hingle. I’d set the snare and start tapping further down the hedge. When the pheasant went to its run, it got caught in the snare and the lot went up and left the bird dangling in the air.
As I grew older, I learned my own lessons – like, never to drink alcohol and poach at the same time. Never to take on something that didn’t seem right. Always to work alone – until Brian was old enough to come out with me. I learned to have contempt for landowners and their lackeys and to believe I had as much right to the wild game of this country as any lord or freemason or vicar or magistrate or billionaire businessman. And I became a bit of a wild boy, roaming the land with my dog and my catapult and ferrets, catching rabbits and hares and pheasants and white-fronted geese and widgeon and duck and anything that moved and could be eaten. What we couldn’t eat got put into my father’s little butcher shop and sold to the passing pilgrims.
Of course, the people who owned the land and the estates and who thought they owned the wild animals as well didn’t take kindly to me and I was often on the receiving end of a beating from a warden or a gamekeeper. If it was a man they caught, they might not try it on and just take his name and address and set the law on him, but a boy like me was good for a hiding instead of the courthouse and I sometimes came back home bleeding and bruised.
I had to go to school, too, and keep going till I got an education. But I hated every day of it and I regret ever going to school at all. I went to the local Primary and a nearby Grammar after that, but I mitched from there regularly and I was always taking off across the fields whenever I could get away without anyone seeing me. Maybe if I’d took to the learning a bit better, I might’ve been something different – gone to work in the cider factory or been a farmer’s boy or a drayman like my grandfather. But I never wanted to be nothing other than what I became – a professional poacher!
I didn’t just stick to the land. I poached fish with gaffs and four-pronged spears. My father taught me how to make the spears by cutting a tall straight sapling that weren’t too thick. Then he’d split one end with a knife, carefully, just tapping the blade so the split didn’t run the full length of the wood. He’d make another split across the first ’un, so the end of the sapling was divided into four. At that point, he’d lash some jute twine around the wood, about eighteen inches from the split end, to make sure the splits didn’t travel down the shaft as he cut ’em right up to the lashing. I’d find two twigs for him that were a couple of inches longer than the width of the sapling and he’d slide them up as close to the lashing as possible, spreading out the four prongs. Then he’d lash the twigs into place with more jute twine. All that was left to be done was to sharpen the end of each prong and you had your spear. If a keeper came along, you could just throw it away because it cost nothing but a bit of time, and you could fetch it back or make another ’un later.
I took the fish from the private streams and lakes for miles around. I mean, how can a man say a fish is his, as it swims upstream from one estate to another? Or, if one bank is on private land and the other’s on public land? It’s codswallop. I’d use night lines and funnel nets and even tickle the trout. If you knew the water well enough, like I did, you’d find where the fish rested, under rocks and out of the current. I’d lie face down and lower an arm into the stream – slowly, very slowly. I’d let my fingers brush up agin’ the trout’s side. The fish would move away at first, but my fingers would follow it until it got used to the brushing sensation. Then I’d work along its body to the gills, the only place a big trout can be gripped without it slipping away. I’d hook it out and it was mine!
Catching salmon by hand was a bit more difficult. I’d operate in shallow water on dark nights, wading upstream with a handheld torch and a hessian bag over my shoulder. I’d flash the torch into the salmon’s lie and the curious fish would rise towards the light. I’d have to be quick and grab it by the gills and heave it into the bag.
I was ten years old when my Uncle Ted died. He left me his gun and seventeen cartridges and I went to the post office and got a licence for ten shillings. It was a .410 shotgun, a small gun which used to fire a little two-inch cartridge with not much lead, so’s not to do too much damage to the meat when you shot a pheasant in the head with it. With a three-inch cartridge, the .410 can shoot nearly as far as a 12-bore and it don’t make a lot of noise, neither, not like the bigger bore guns, so it’s less likely to be heard by a prowling gamekeeper. A 12-bore would put a big hole in an elephant’s head and they’re favoured by the keepers, but not by us poachers.
Once I had the gun I could go lamping of a night for pheasants, using a handheld torch with an easy beam. I’d shoot the quarry and the spaniel would fetch ’em back to me and I’d reward him with a biscuit. Pheasants roost facing the wind, so’s not to get their feathers ruffled the wrong way. I’d move downwind through the wood and see ’em silhouetted agin’ the sky. After shooting them, I’d try to collect all the feathers where they dropped, so the keepers never even knew I’d been there.
I learned how to use the weather – on wet, dark, windy nights it was always better to work the open country; on still, clear nights I took to the woods. A short duck’s frost in the morning was dangerous, because footprints showed up clear for a while – and you couldn’t set snares nor use ferrets in the snow – and it was easy to get lost in a mist and hard to spot a roosting pheasant, but it muffled the report of the gun. All these things I learned as I made my way through my early little life.
There were skills to be practised too; you has to have a good eye to be a poacher. You must be able to see game at a distance, camouflaged in a field or hidden behind trees or blending in with the bushes. And be a good shot, and a good bluffer. If I was out with my gun in daylight I’d always keep to the public ways, like paths or lanes. As long as I had a licence, I was legal to carry the gun and, if I saw a bird, I’d take a shot at it and come back for it after dark. That way, if I was suddenly come upon, I’d be carrying nothing and, no matter how suspicious I looked, there was bugger all a keeper or a landowner or a farmer could do. So you can see, in the early days I grew up setting snares and traps and hunting with ferrets and dogs, but once I got my first gun, I always preferred it to anything else, as it was the easiest way to get game.
I remember one time going down to a private stretch of water on the Earl of Ducie’s land. It’s about two in the morning and I’m wearing nothing but a pair of plimsolls and old shorts and carrying my .410 shotgun. I hides myself quietly until I hears the quacking of the ducks I know is there, then I slip waist-deep into the water. I wade along through the reeds and rushes, keeping out of sight as much as possible, because ducks can see in the dark and they has good eyes. I know I’ll only get one shot in and it’ll have to be a good ’un. I come across a whole paddling of them – maybe seven or eight. I’m so close the shot kills three of them and the rest fly away, feathers everywhere. I get the three dead ’uns and make a run for it, in case the shot brings the keepers, even at this hour of the night.
When I gets to the road, I sees one of the ducks that flew away running about between the hedges, wounded. So I catches it and puts it out of its misery. I goes down a quiet lane and hides the four dead birds and the gun and slopes back to the water, to see if there’s any more ‘runners’. Many a poacher’s been caught chasing a runner and it’s better to leave ’em, but I hates to see an animal suffer, or a bird for that matter. There’s nobody about – the keepers is too lazy to get out of their warm beds, even if they hear the shot. So I search the rushes and the area about, but there ain’t no more wounded birds. I goes back and collects my bag. Four ducks with the one shot; not bad for a night’s work.
I’m only fourteen.
And so, as a boy, I hunted and poached and beat out for long-netters al
l over the countryside around my village, which was in a rural diocese that was surrounded by land belonging to the lords and earls of England: the estates of the Earl of Ducie and the Duke of Beaufort and the Earl of Berkeley and Lord Moreton and the Codrington Estate – whose family were slave-traders in the West Indies – and the Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetland Reserve, and around Dursley, which means ‘Deer’s Lay’, and was owned by the Seymour family, descendants of Sir John Seymour, who was a nephew of Jane Seymour, who married Henry VIII. There was also Badminton and Gatcombe and Sherbourne and many other places besides. I wore a long coat with deep poachers’ pockets, until later when I traded a few pheasants for postbags, and I used my .410 bolt-action shotgun and my greyhound and spaniel. I was never convicted of a crime in all my days as a poacher, apart from being fined a fiver once, and I never will be now. They tried to do me many times, but I was always too clever for ’em and one step ahead.
Some things I never had much to do with, like fox-hunting and badger-baiting. Hunting a fox was alright if you killed the animal cleanly. It was the poncey bastards on the horses I had a problem with – the ‘get out of my way’ types; the saddle-bumpers who weren’t satisfied with the chase, and who had to dig the fox out when it went to ground and let their pack dogs tear it apart. That wasn’t for me. So I never got involved. And, anyway, hunting foxes was for the toffs – they’d go round the houses and show the old people their dogs and horses, when it was legal. I’d watch ’em prancing about in their get-up and tooting their silly horns and stuff. It was supposed to be symbolic or something, but I never did like that word – especially the bolic bit.
Badger-baiting ain’t nothing more than pointless bloodshed. Alright, people ate badgers years ago, when it was legal to kill ’em; they called ’em ‘pigs’ and had badger roasts and they called the meat ‘ham’, but that ain’t nothing to do with badger-digging and -baiting and no one eats ’em now. I never used gin traps neither, because they can catch an animal and hold it by its feet instead of killing it outright.
I learned respect for the countryside and for all the wild things that roamed through it and flew over it and it made me into a man. What my father taught me I taught to my sons, and there’s more they learned for themselves, just like I did. And all those skills that’s been handed down will be lost when the last of the old-fashioned poachers hangs up their guns and turns their dogs into docile housepets.
Bob’s father, Robert Tovey, 1920s
Bob, circa 1942
3
Bob – The Navy
When I turned sixteen, I joined the Navy. My father was agin’ it, because he knew it wouldn’t suit me, but there was a history of Navy in the family – my grandfather, George Neal, went down with the HMS Monmouth when it was sunk during the battle of Coronel in 1914. I thought the Navy would lead to a life of freedom, travelling the world, so I signed on as a junior stoker at Victoria Street in Bristol and was sent to HMS Raleigh Basic Training Facility at Torpoint in Cornwall. But I never did like authority in any shape or form – always agin’ orders and officers and the high holy born-again freemasons and all their fundamental friends and pointy-hatted partners, on account of them being a dangerous shower of shit-stirrers and nuisance-causers. So I was always going to be in trouble for one thing or another, right from the start.
After basic training, I was assigned to HMS Sluys, a battle-class destroyer in reserve – that’s where I learned all about being a stoker and finished my training. But my feet was itching to be off and I couldn’t wait to be given a posting so I could get going round the world to see all the sights and sleep under all the stars. My first real ship was HMS Pickle, a minesweeper based at Harwich, and I was drafted to her when I knew what I was supposed to be doing. Some sailor asked me if I had a rubber when I first came aboard and I thought he was talking about a French letter. Now, I’d heard a bit about buggery and stuff like that going on in the Navy and I was worried. The big burlys could see I was shaking in my shoes and they all had a good laugh, because a ‘rubber’ was a pound note in Navy slang and a half-sheet was a ten-bob note, and nothing at all to do with sodomy or shirt-lifting.
But I had to start growing up, fast. I might have been Bob Tovey the poacher in my village, but nobody knew that in the Navy, and nobody cared. I was given a bucket, and that was for washing myself and my clothes. We slept in hammocks and I thought that was the bee’s knees because I was always upright, no matter how the ship rolled. We had to lash ’em up in the morning and put ’em away and, on the first morning after I got up, I went to the mess hall and made myself a bacon sandwich. The next thing I knows, some bloke hits me and knocks me out. There was this big Scouse stoker called Tommo, and he helped me up and told me it was because I didn’t wash before I went to get the grub. He told me I had to be very clean onboard ship – before I got in my hammock I had to wash myself and my clothes and take ’em to the boiler room to dry. I had to wash again after I got up, before breakfast, and it was all because of living and eating in such close quarters – to prevent illness and infections. If you didn’t keep yourself clean, you got walloped. I was to find out the importance of this when I served on the Ark Royal, later on. Anyway, Tommo took me under his wing and I soon learned the ropes. It was a rough place, down in the stokehold, and it wasn’t long before I got into a fight with another stoker. I can’t even remember what the argument was all about, but they were a short-tempered crew and it didn’t take much to spark off a row. I was lucky to have Tommo on my side, but nobody totally looks after you in the Navy, so I still had to learn how to look after myself. I grew up in the Navy – I was a boy going in, but I was a man coming out.
HMS Pickle went down to Portsmouth for repairs first, before going to sea. Repairing a ship throws the compass off; even if you put three rivets in a bulkhead, it’ll offset some bloody thing. So, when the work was done, we had to steam round and round in the Solent till I nearly got dizzy from the circling. This was to get the compass right and, once it was reset, we sailed up to Invergordon, in the Cromarty Firth on the west coast of Scotland. When we got up there, Tommo told me to get my wash-bucket and take it across to the dockyard canteen and fill it with beer – which I did. The two of us took it down to the stoke-hold and kept dipping our glasses into the bucket until I got so drunk I couldn’t see for several hours. But Tommo kept drinking until all the beer was gone. And that’s how I learned to be a heavy boozer.
In the Navy.
My first real voyage was across the Norwegian Sea to Tromsø in Norway, over 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The weather was rough going over and I was sick as a spaniel and spewed yards from the afterdeck, with my legs wobbling like jelly and my guts as green as my gullet. I was alright after we got to Tromsø and, from there, we traversed up and down the fjords in lovely calm waters – all the way round northern Norway, through the Arctic Ocean to Vardo in the Barents Sea. Our mission was supposed to be fishery protection, but we were really keeping an eye on what the Russians were getting up to.
And it was as cold as a gamekeeper’s heart, even down in the stoke-hold. Now, some people would think it would be nice and warm down there, but we was over the Arctic Circle, remember, and it was freezing because there were big fans all the time blowing on the furnaces. And the minesweeper was only a little ship, so it was rough again every time we came down a fjord and went back out into open sea. But I survived.
On the way out of Tromsø, we passed the island of Hakoya, where the Tirpitz, the biggest battleship built in Germany during the Second World War, was sunk by Lancaster bombers dropping Tallboy bombs on her in 1944. We sailed close to where she was being broken up by a joint Norwegian and German salvage operation and it was something to see, for a country lad like me.
You might be saying this has nothing to do with poaching, but the Norwegian fjords are very deep, so we could sail close to the land as we went up and down them. I noticed that the areas beyond the shoreline were covered with birch and pine forests and, I thought to
myself, there must be plenty of game in there, just waiting to be trapped. And there was – mountain hares and willow grouse and moose and all sorts of other animals.
Now, the grub on board ship weren’t much to get giddy about, so I thought if I could only get over there I could bag a few birds and we could have a treat for once. So when we anchored off the island of Seiland I decided to do a bit of poaching. We promised the watch we’d bring something back for him and lowered a lifeboat in the middle of the night and me and Tommo rowed across to the island. I’d already made some wire snares and we took bits of bacon and porridge oats as bait, hoping to catch some game during the course of the night-time.
Seiland is mostly uninhabited, apart from a few remote areas, and I might have known my way round the English West Country, but I didn’t know my way round this place. I decided, not knowing the terrain and where the animals run, it might be better to set the snares near water. So we searched till we found a small stream and, once the wires were in place, we moved away downwind to wait. Tommo had a bottle of Norwegian hjemmebrent, which is a local moonshine made from potatoes and sugar and is said to be strong enough to stun a moose. And that don’t surprise me, seeing as back then Norway was said to have one of the highest rates of alcoholism in the world. We drank it to keep out the cold while we were waiting and, sometime later, I heard a sound like I ain’t never heard before. It was a soft howling, not like a dog, but more like a yodelling coyote – low and muted.