The Last English Poachers (18 page)

Anyway, to finish this chapter, hares are delicate creatures when it comes to their immunity and they can get syphilis and other infections too, and we got to be careful when we’re
relocating ’em so’s not to spread disease around the whole country. If I nets diseased hares, I kills ’em and burns the carcasses. Us Toveys has long been the number one hare
netters in Britain. We don’t do it for money, just expenses and a bit on top. The beaters and helpers gets paid £40 a day and we gets a couple of hundred quid. We do it because
it’s part of our way of life. We enjoys it. But the bad winter of 1981/82 in our local area crooked the hares round there and they never recovered after that. And shooting and disease and
roadkills and the protection of natural predators has reduced the population further. One day, they’ll probably be gone altogether and that’ll be a real shame – because the hare
is, in my opinion, one of the finest animals to ever grace the English countryside. We kept a book of how many hares we netted over the past forty odd years. The last entry in that book is 2012
– 10March: fifty live hares at Ballington.

Nothing after that.

Not many wants the hares so much no more.

12

I hear the Saudis have beheaded around seventy people over the past year, and not a word about it on the television or in the newspapers. I’m glad me and Bob never went
near the place with our long nets – probably be made into shish kebabs by now. Apart from that, the news is of the need to manufacture more bombs for the blowing to bits of women and children
and the making of the rich even more obscene than they already are. But it’s always been like that – them who has ain’t never satisfied and always want more – and more and
more. Everything we hear is just the static of want; want this and want that – want, want, want. All the time’s spent wanting and not really living – listening to the want static.
And what they want is only good while they ain’t got it. As soon as they get it, it loses its value and they want something else.

I’ve known a few gamekeepers in my time and maybe one or two have even been alright. But most were bullies who thought they were hard cases, with the law behind them. I’ve never been
afraid of any of them, mind, but discretion is the better part of valour and it was always best to keep away from them if I could. To me, a gamekeeper’s like a prison screw or a copper or a
prosecutor, and I don’t know how anyone goes and does a job like that. Self-righteous buggers who never look inside themselves to see their own little flaws and failures as they pass
subjective judgements on those who, in their ignorant and misguided minds, they consider to be wrongdoers. And them all up for every fiddle and fraud they can get away with in the name of their
shifty professions. Let him who is without – eh! Anyway, I’ve tried to avoid them for the most part and let them get on with their dubious jobs – long as they let me get on with
mine.

I suppose you could say, if it wasn’t for the rich landowners there’d be no game at all, because the farmers would have exterminated every wild thing that threatened their livestock
or their crops. That might be fair comment, but it’s just the arrogance of it all – the sanctimonious elitism of it – that gets me. The dukes and earls thinking they own
everything and treating people, especially poachers, like dogs – and it’s them I like to get at more than anyone, the aristocrats and self-appointed controllers of the countryside.
It’s the sheer belligerence of those people I hate – types who believe they have rights that were given to them by nobody but themselves.

When I was young, I used to deliberately run my dogs up on Earl Ducie and Lord Moreton’s estate farm, knowing full well they’d come out and chase me and I’d do a runner to a
footpath and be able to tell them to ‘piss off’ when I got onto public land. Once on a right-of-way or bridle path, I could stop running because I was safe.

‘Keep off my land!’

‘Wasn’t on your land.’

‘I saw you.’

‘Did you take a photograph?’

‘I know you, Tovey.’

‘You don’t know me at all.’

Even if they did see me, I could deny it. They knew it was me, but they couldn’t prove it. Although, if they got me into a magistrate’s court, with the help of the police and the
prosecution service, my word would never be taken before theirs.

The Earl of Ducie was waiting for me round the lanes once, after I’d been coursing the dogs by the farm. Old Ducie would always come out after me personally – with others, of course,
and rarely on his own. It was like he got some perverted pleasure out of chasing people like me, who he considered to be vermin – less than a rabbit or a fox or a rat, and he’d have
shot me dead if it were back in the olden times when he could’ve got away with it.

‘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.