by Bob
‘Two lovely dogs you got there.’
‘Yes, they’ve caught dozens of your hares.’
‘I don’t want you on my land again.’
‘I got thirty or forty years on you. I’ll be poaching your pheasants after you’re dead.’
He is, and I am.
Back when foxhunting was legal, I came across a skulk of foxes that were worrying the ducks we kept in our big garden. I shot two of them and took them over to Beaufort Hunt Kennels at Badminton. Back then, the hunt fraternity thought as much of their foxes as they did their pheasants – it was all part of their hunting pageantry and elite heritage. So I thought I’d get on their highly bred nerves a bit. The gamekeepers up there were renowned for their heavy drinking and, as I approached, one of them came out of the clubhouse drunk and fell against the wall. All the better, I thought, they won’t be alert. I went across and hung one of the dead foxes on the wire kennel fence to drive the hounds mad, but the buggers in the clubhouse were so pissed they took no notice. So I went back over there, opened the door and threw the other dead fox in. There was uproar. They were falling over each other trying to get out to see who it was and, when they did, they could hear the dogs going mad at the other dead fox. I was dressed darkly, with a scarf over my face, so they couldn’t identify me. But I deliberately let them see me so they’d give chase – which they did. They staggered down the lanes after me, brandishing pickaxe handles, but I was fit and sober and knew where I was going, even in the dark, and they were never going to catch me.
Next morning, I got a phone call from my brother, Robert.
‘Someone was up the Beaufort Hunt last night with dead foxes.’
‘Was there?’
‘Yeah, they reckon it was them anti-hunt people. Coppers swarming all over the place.’
I started laughing.
‘Was it you?’
I said nothing.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’
I was always up for a prank like that, even as I got older. It was a trial of tenacity – a battle of wills – to see if I could outsmart them. They had all the resources of money and privilege and the law behind them; I had only my nerve and my skill as a poacher. When the foxhunting ban was coming into force, the saddle-bumpers wanted our support to try and stop it – the ban, that is – forgetting that they wouldn’t spit on the likes of us before then. We just stood back; it wasn’t our fight.
I went up onto Princess Anne’s Gatcombe Park Estate with the greyhounds, for a run after a hare. Because it was Princess Anne’s place, I knew security would be tighter than anywhere else. But, as I said, I liked testing my gamesmanship to be able to get away and it wasn’t long before a Land Rover was headed towards me. Now, the people in the Land Rover might be gamekeepers, or they might be MI5, but I’m not waiting around to find out. I do a runner into a small copse and hide in there. The Land Rover drives round looking for me, round and round everywhere, but they can’t find me. They hang about for ages before giving up the search, then they take an exit onto a little lane. When they’re gone, I use the same lane to make my escape and I’m chuckling to myself that I was able to avoid them so easily.
It’s getting on in the evening, almost dark, and I can hear pheasants jugging in the kale fields, which is a nice cover crop for game birds, just like buckwheat or mustard. If there’s no trees, pheasants will roost on the ground, especially in kale, and there’s a scarcity of trees in this area of the estate, where the kale fields are. So, I decide to come back and drag-net for them.
Bob’s already briefly mentioned drag-netting for partridge, and we have a drag-net that’s twenty-five yards wide and four yards deep. There’s a line coming off each of the front corners and, with a man either side, it gets dragged along over stubble and grass and short kale. The front of the net, where it’s being pulled along, needs to be kept about four feet off the ground – so you go forward, pulling against each other lightly, to keep it up. The mouth of the net’s taken over the pheasants and the part that’s coming behind, dragging on the ground, puts the birds up and they get caught. All you do at the front is drop the mouth of the net down and you got them underneath. I’ve dragged the fields below Hollyberry Wood on the Tortworth Estate up and down in the dark in October time, when the young birds are jugging on the ground. With drag-netting, you’re not using any lights or guns or anything else to give yourself away. All you need’s a little bit of moon overhead.
Gatcombe Park ain’t the kind of place where you can go in a motor and park it up somewhere. If you do, the registration will be taken and you’ll get traced and have to answer questions about what you were doing there and all that rigmarole. I let things settle down at Gatcombe for a week or two, then I get this woman to drop me and Bob off up there with the drag-net. It’s late in the evening and we wait till it gets dark, then drag-net over the kale fields where the birds are roosting. We drag two fields and get twenty-two birds and I go round, hitting them with a priest, which is a short club that can be kept in the pocket, with lead inside it for weight. We bag up the birds and the net and are heading back to where we’ve arranged to be picked up by the woman driver.
‘That was easy enough.’
‘I thought security would be tighter, but when I came up with the dogs, I was easily able to give them the slip.’
Next thing, the Land Rover’s coming towards us. This time, it has a powerful searchlight on the top and they’re scanning the fields for us – we must’ve been seen on CCTV or something. The light beam catches us and stays on us.
‘We better make a run for it.’
‘Into that copse where I hid from them before.’
But the beam follows us and now they know where we’re hiding, even if they can’t see us. We’re carrying twenty-two pheasants and a heavy drag-net, which we can’t run far with, so we decide to hang the lot up in a tree. I climb up and Bob hands the two postbags up to me and, after that, the bag with the dragnet. I hang the lot from a high branch with plenty of cover round it, so they won’t easily be seen from the ground. Then I jump back down. By now, the Land Rover’s at the edge of the copse and the light’s searching through the trees for us. A loudspeaker blares out:
‘Come out!’
We crouch down and keep quiet.
‘This is the police. Come out!’
We stay where we are.
Next thing, I can hear something moving towards us from the other side of the copse. I think they’ve sent in keepers from that side to flush us out into the searchlight and the hands of whoever’s shining it. This is becoming more of a test than I bargained for. It’s time to make a move. Now, I’m as fast and sure-footed over rough night-time terrain as any animal, but Bob’s getting on a bit and won’t be able to outrun a Land Rover with a searchlight. I signal to him that I’m going to make a break for it and draw them after me. He points to the tree. I leg him up into the lower branches and I know he’ll collect the net and postbags and make his way back to the rendezvous point when the coast’s clear.
I break cover and run straight into the searchlight, to make sure they see me.
‘There he goes!’
‘Get after him!’
I dodge and weave like a hare being turned by dogs, as I scarper across the open fields. The Land Rover might be faster than me, but it can’t turn and manoeuvre as quickly and I manage to keep ahead of it, darting in and out of the light beam so they’ll keep following me, away from the copse and Bob. I look back and see some others with torches emerging from the trees and there’s orders being shouted that carry across on the night air.
‘Stop, or we’ll shoot!’
I take no notice. A shotgun ain’t going to have my range and, anyway, none of them keepers can shoot straight. I hear a bang and something whistles over my head, obviously meant as a warning. But it’s not buckshot, it’s a bullet. This is serious – I’m being hunted and I’m a sitting duck out here if one of them has a night-sight on a high-powered rifle.
There�
�s a stone wall up ahead and I vault it easily and keep running. The Land Rover can’t follow, but the searchlight can and I need some cover quickly. Another bang and another bullet whistles close – closer than the first. The next one’ll hit me for sure. I see a hazel wood to my right and I run straight in and keep going. The next thing I know, I’ve fallen into Gatcombe Water and the flow’s carrying me along towards the sewage works.
I swim as hard as I can and get washed into a shallow stream that runs close to Avening Road and the B4014. Once I’m out on the road I’m safe, except that I’m soaked to the skin and it might be hard to explain that away. I trudge on for a few miles, keeping close to the hedges where I can hide if any vehicles come along – and I finally find a small roadside service station with a public telephone.
‘Can I make a call?’
‘Of course. What happened to you?’
‘Got caught in a shower.’
‘It hasn’t been raining.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘They throw all sorts of stuff out of aeroplanes these days.’
I call home, hoping Bob will be there and not sitting in some police cell. He is and I tell him where I am and he comes out to get me.
‘They didn’t see you up the tree, then.’
‘No.’
‘The birds?’
‘I got them, and the net.’
I don’t tell Bob about the bullets and he turns to me as we’re driving along.
‘They weren’t no gamekeepers.’
‘Who weren’t?’
‘Them who came through the copse.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Dunno, but they weren’t keepers.’
‘What would you have said if they’d seen you?’
‘That I was doing a bit of bird-watching.’
We laughed about that many times afterwards, but never did find out who it was chased me through Gatcombe Park.
We used to put crow-scarers in the woods. They’re like bangers. We set them up and ‘BANG!’ – they go off every few minutes on a timing fuse. ‘BANG!’ We put them in woods on an estate we’re poaching. If the keeper’s out and about on a night and he hears ‘BANG!’ – then a few minutes later, ‘BANG!’ – he thinks there’s somebody poaching in such-and-such a thicket. But we’ll be in another wood maybe a couple of miles away. We scatter the crow-scarers in twos and threes in different areas around the wood, several nights in succession, to draw a lot of attention. The keepers think there’s poachers coming there regular, like, for their pheasants. They’ll never know it’s just crow-scarers because there’s nothing left after they go off – just a bit of cardboard that drops down to the ground. So the keepers are out there waiting and waiting, maybe for a week, with nothing to show for their trouble. All the other woods are left unguarded and we’re there, taking the birds.
Once we’ve got what we came for, we can skip safely home in the spectre-light from the moon, hearing the night cries of this wild west country. And, as we walk across the purring land, I sometimes think it would be good to be able to fly like the birds above – shit down on top of the heads of all the hypocrites and soar over the rest of the poor fools, scuttling in their never ending struggle to be free – just like me.
I’m out ferreting on Tortworth Estate one day and approaching a rabbit burrow in a little rocky area that I’m going to start at. Then I hear this cawing noise. The further I go, the louder it gets.
‘What the hell is that?’
I come over the brow of a hill and, down about twenty yards away is a big crow-catcher. The keeper’s obviously doing some vermin control and this thing’s appeared overnight. It’s about twelve feet long and eight feet wide and six feet deep – a wooden framework with a door, covered in chicken wire. There’s funnels leading into it, wide on the outside and narrow on the inside, just like with the pheasant traps. They’re mostly on the top but the silly bugger’s only gone and put a few on the bottom as well. He’s chucked a load of bread in there and the crows and jackdaws are going in through the funnels to get it, but can’t get back out again. There’s about a dozen jackys and a couple of crows in there, all creating a hell of a racket. But, because he’s put some funnels down low, what’s happened is the noise of the other birds feeding has attracted pheasants and they’ve gone in as well and can’t get back out. I can see at least four of them in there now. It’s a poacher’s payday!
I carry on ferreting and get about a dozen rabbits, gut them and leg them and put them in the bag. Then I go back to the crow-catcher and see there’s another couple of pheasants in there now, making six in all. I open the door, which is just on a latch, and go in. The jackys and crows are all flying round my head and pecking at me while I try to corner the pheasants and wring their necks. Then I take them out and have them as well as the rabbits. The keeper will come at some time and kill the other birds that I’ve left in there, and never know I’ve been by.
I go back to the crow-catcher and raid it every day and, over the course of a couple of months, I get a total of sixty-two pheasants from it. Easy as pigeon pie. Thanks, mister gamekeeper. Until one day. The easiest way the keeper can get to the crow-catcher is to come up this field to a stile, twenty yards from the pen. He can’t drive to it so he has to come on foot. Anyway, I’m in there one day and just coming out with a brace of pheasants when I hear this shout:
‘Oi, you, what you doing there?’
Here’s the keeper coming over the stile and it’s lucky I’m coming out and not in the middle of the cawing jackys and crows, or I might not have heard him. I run and he gives chase and I leave the door of the crow-catcher open, so the birds are all flying out into his face as he passes. That gives me a good head start on him and he chases me for about three hundred yards and then gives up. I hide the pheasants in a wood and come out round the side and across the fields back home.
Later that night I return to get the pheasants and the crow-catcher’s gone. I do a bit of poaching while I’m out and I’m on my way home in the early hours, just when it’s getting light. I’m coming up through the churchyard when I see these three heads peeping out – two behind one of the big tombs and another behind the church wall. Now, I’m thinking whoever it is might be getting ready to jump out and mug me for my pheasants. There’s a standoff for a few minutes, with them watching me and me watching them. I get fed up with that and discharge my gun into the air. Well, you’ve never seen blokes run so fast in your life. Turned out later that they were three black fellas who’d come up from Bristol and broke into a shop in Wotton, but I didn’t know that at the time. They got chased and did a runner across the fields and ended up in the village churchyard and, while I thought they were going to jump me, they thought I was the local law, out searching for them with a shotgun. I never heard anything more about them and I don’t know where they ended up – probably down in the next county of Wiltshire.
But to finish off about us poachers versus the landowners – there’s enough violence in this world, without adding to it over a few rabbits and pheasants, ain’t there? What with left and right and black and white and all the in-betweens and ups and downs and ditherers. There’s children working their lives away in the slums and side-streets for the making of cheap rags and other rubbish, so we can say we’re civilised and we have this and we have that – and the air around us loud with the pleas of the abused and tormented and tortured, and the moon wearing earmuffs so’s not to hear the screams. Some people have enough problems with the polluters and politicians and their shadowmen superiors lurking behind every lie, without the smoke-screen of getting all psychotic over the catching and killing of a wild animal or two.
Which is in our nature to do.
You agree, don’t you?
Brian, Bob and Cora, Lower Woods, Wickwar, circa 2004
13
Brian – Prison
One time I had a small lorry that was registered in the name of a dead man. I used that truck to go nicking Cotswold ro
ofing tiles from cow barns and churches and old buildings on the big estates – tiles that were rare, hundreds of years old. They were worth money and I knew every old barn and building where they were to be found. I had a mate called ‘Cider Chris’; he put an ad in the paper advertising the tiles and he got a hundred replies. ’Course, he didn’t have any tiles to supply at that point; we had to go out and nick them.
Three of us were doing it over a period of about two years altogether – so long that there was hardly a roof left on an old building anywhere in south Gloucestershire. So many Cotswold tiles had gone missing that police and landowners were marking what was left with a special dye that would only show up under ultraviolet light. They were on such a lookout for anyone suspicious out of a night in a van or truck that they were pulling all sorts of people over – painters and plumbers and fly-tippers and bail-skippers. But not us, we were keeping out of their clutches.
It was our opinion that these old tiles would otherwise have blown off the crumbling buildings in a big wind and got broken. They were valued by weight and we were getting £300 a square – up to £1,500 a time. We sold them to reclamation yards, who sold them on for repairs to listed buildings and to rich people who wanted their houses to look like old-time castles. The tiles weathered over hundreds of years to get that unique colour and the new ones weren’t the same, so there was only a limited amount of them to be had. It was supply and demand – anything rare is worth money.
The lorry was legal to carry one-and-a-quarter tons and, every time we went out, we loaded six ton of tiles onto it. So you can see, there was always too much weight and it was difficult to drive. On this last night, we stripped down tiles from an old abandoned church that was in a hollow dip and we could hear the Duke of Beaufort’s dogs barking in the distance. It’s autumn time and raining hard and I have to drive along steep windy lanes to keep away from the main roads. I can’t get any speed up to climb this particular hill and the truck starts slipping. The only other way home is to go back and use the main A38. As I come to the end of the lane, a police car goes by. He carries on and I turn onto the A road and head in the other direction. But the patrol car spots us and thinks we looks dodgy, because it turns round and comes right up behind me and follows me for about two miles. I assume he’s putting the plate through the records and finding out the truck’s registered to a dead man.