The Last English Poachers (21 page)

14

There’s a lot of rainbow trout in the streams around our village and up towards Kingswood. Sometimes I’d shoot them in the shallows with a .22 air rifle –
smaller fish, maybe two or three pound in weight. In even shallower water, on a night with a lamp, I’d use the .410 to get bigger fish – maybe three- or four-pounders or more. I’d
travel miles to get them, mostly on private farms, but also at Damery, where there’s lovely clear water, and on the Berkeley Estate. They don’t like me poaching their fish because they
have fishing clubs paying them for the privilege. But how can a fish that swims up and down a stream belong to someone who owns the land either side of that stream? It’s like saying, ‘I
own that water while it’s flowing through my land.’ How bloody presumptuous is that? I could catch a couple of hundred rainbow and brown trout over a short period of time, and it makes
no difference to me what side of the river bank I’m on – the right side or the wrong side.

But I don’t do so much trout fishing these days, apart from what I need for the family. People don’t want them now – wild-caught fish, they prefer their fish filleted and from
a supermarket, with the head off, or battered and deep fried. They’re no good to me if they’re more than I need to eat and I can’t sell them. Why kill them in the first place if I
can’t do either?

But it’s nice sometimes to be on the bank of a river, where you can hide awhile from the brute swagger of the world – with the moon pulling its reflection over the water and the
scent of the earth rising up and the air dew-fresh around you. You can let your mind off its level-headed leash for a scamper – until the fish bite and you call it back into
concentration.

There ain’t many brown trout about now, but plenty of rainbows, and if you don’t want to hang about, another way to poach fish is to kill a rabbit, slit its guts a bit and fix it to
a branch overhanging the water. In the spring and summer, when it’s warm, it don’t take long for the blow to hatch on the carcass and the maggots drop into the water. The maggots draw
in the trout and they come there constantly for a regular supply of food. Once they’re used to feeding there, I take the rabbit away and replace it with night lines baited with maggots or
worms. In shallow water I use single-hook night lines – a length of fishing line attached to a six-inch peg driven into the ground at the side of the stream. The flow of the water will take
the lines in to the side, where the fish are lurking. In deeper water I use a line with five or six hooks on and a stone or brick tied to the end as an anchor. All the hooks are at different depths
and I catch loads of trout that way.

Other times I use a funnel trap – a net of about eight or nine feet in length with a round ring at one end, a foot or two in diameter. About a yard from the end there’s another
smaller funnel hole. I set it in the stream; the trout go in the large hole and swim down through the smaller hole, but can’t get back out again. They all get caught in the last yard or so of
netting – it’s a bit like the pheasant funnel trap, only with a net and for fish. I left one behind one evening when I had to do a runner. I was on a 250-acre farm up near the
Sherbourne Estate, where the farmer was hiring out fishing rights to clubs and individuals to use a stretch of the River Leach that ran through his land.

Now, these so-called legitimate fishermen are only too happy to be unofficial wardens of the river when it comes to poachers like me – they have to pay a fee for what they catch. I
don’t. Anyway, this particular evening I’ve been doing the rabbit trick on a remote stretch of water where none of the fair-weather fisher men were coming, because they tried it and
didn’t get no trout there. After a week of eating the maggots that were falling from my rabbit carcass, the fish were queuing up to feed there and it was time for me to take the rotting coney
down and throw in some night lines.

It’s starting to get dark and I’m just setting up the lines, watching the river run away, as if it knows something I don’t. Chuckling to itself as it flows, with little
cross-currents and bits of broken water and backwashes and whirlpools – when I’m approached by four of these fellas carrying rods and reels and baskets and landing nets and little stool
things to sit on. The fish’ve stopped biting in their favourite spots because I’m luring them away, and they’re looking for a fresh place to park their fat bums.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Same as you, fishing.’

‘Have you got a permit?’

‘Don’t need a permit.’

‘He’s a poacher . . . look at that dead rabbit!’

All four of them make a move on me and I stand my ground, to see which will be the bravest. The one who asked for my permit’s in front of the others, and I throw the stinking rabbit at him
and it hits him across the mush. He starts to heave, like he’s going to throw up. The one behind him rushes at me and I sidestep him and he goes into the river, which is only waist-high. The
other two back off, but there’s no use setting night lines here now, because they’ll only go for the farmer and he’ll call the police and all my work with the rabbit’s gone
to waste and the fish’ve had a free feed.

But I’m not going to go away empty-handed, so I move upstream about half a mile to set up the funnel net I’m carrying in my bag. It’s not dark yet and, after a while, I can
hear the sound of angry voices coming from round a bend in the riverbank that’s shielded by young sally trees.

‘Shit!’

They come into sight before I can get the net out of the water and packed away in my bag. It’s the four fishermen, one of them dripping wet, with a couple of young farmhands and the farmer
himself on a horse, brandishing a big stick. But no police. They’re probably thinking the seven of them can deal with this themselves and give me a good hiding, which they won’t be able
to do if the coppers are about.

‘There he is!’

They come at me and I have to leave the net where it is and do a runner. The fishermen and farmhands can’t catch me, but I know I’m not going to be able to outrun the horse.

After about a hundred yards, it’s almost upon me and I feel a whack of the farmer’s stick across my shoulders. I keep running and the horse comes alongside me and the farmer turns it
in on me and I’m forced by its flanks down the bank and into the water. I wade across and come up onto the other bank and I think the bugger will be satisfied with giving me a swimming lesson
and go back laughing to his fee-paying friends and tell them how he dealt with the dirty poacher. But he doesn’t. The horse is already in the water and coming after me. This bloke wants
blood.

I weigh up my options and decide that running on ain’t going to be good. He’ll only catch me up again and, considering the mood he’s in, he’ll probably ride the horse
over me – trample me into the ground for my mischief-making. The bank on this side of the river’s steep and he’s at his most vulnerable coming up it. The horse is neighing and
struggling on the muddy slope and the farmer’s hitting the animal with his stick to drive him up. There’s a load of teazles growing along the bank, so I pluck one and stick it up the
horse’s nose. The animal’s already agitated and now it rears up and sends the farmer tumbling off its back and into the river.

The others have caught up now and are on the opposite side. The farmhands go into the water to fish their master out and the anglers are throwing stones at me. The farmer’s furious.

‘Get after him!’

Without the weight of the shit-kicker on its back, the horse is able to come up the bank on my side of the river and I grab hold of its bridle. They’re all wading across now, all seven of
them. The horse is still skittish, but the skill I learned as a boy, riding my father’s horse over the cricket pitch, comes into its own and I get the animal under control and swing myself up
into the saddle and gallop away across the open land and into the safety of some coverts.

It’s dark by now and I know they’ll never catch me, so I dismount the horse and turn it round and whack it on the quarters, to send it cantering back towards the river. I mean, I
don’t want to be hung for a horse thief as well as a fish filcherer, and I’ve lost my funnel net into the bargain. But these things happen from time to time and the world’s an
uneven place, with many ups and downs. And certainly ain’t round!

Speaking of nets, I was doing a bit of beating for a keeper up Great Shefford way, who wanted to net some hares. While I was there, I noticed they had a lot of partridge on a shoot next to the
long fields we were working, so I thought I’d have some of them. Partridge will fly, then drop down and run. So I got to know the direction they favoured to run in and set up a 200-yard long
net at the end of the field. I set it very baggy, very loose at the bottom, then I drove the field down towards the long net. The partridge quickly got tangled up in the baggy nets and I caught
fifteen of them live and put them in boxes. I released them on land where I had permission to hunt and brought them on.

It’s just a different way of catching partridge, other than with a clap net that we mentioned before. It’s just a different poaching trick – I’m not saying someone
reading this book’s going to run out and start long-netting partridge but, if you are reading, it means you’re interested – for one reason or another. And everyone should have
something in their life – something out of the ordinary. Otherwise it’s gone quicker than a quail’s heartbeat and you wish you had it all over again so you could do something
different.

I’ve lamped for partridge too, as well as long- and drag- and clap-netted them – on a night with a .410. You can lamp anything, really, not just pheasant and partridge and rabbits
and hares – woodcock will come up the beam at times too. I caught forty-five woodcock of a night out lamping. Or you can catch them in mist-nets – a fine-mesh net I put at different
heights on poles. Mist-nets are used by the scientific community for catching birds and bats for banding and other research projects. They’re made of nylon and suspended between two poles,
like a big volleyball net. When they’re set up properly they’re invisible and the mesh size can vary according to what you’re trying to catch. Of an evening, just before it gets
dark, woodcock will come out of the trees and start flying around. If you’re prepared to wait for a few hours, you can get them in the mist-nets. They don’t fly high, just over the
hedges, so you got to set the nets just right. Or, if you’re impatient and you’re quiet enough, you can get a shot at them instead.

Woodcock are lovely to eat. Beautiful – nearly as nice as collared dove. And it’s one of the best things in life to be able to hunt and cook your own food, to rely on your skill and
not the supermarkets. It’s almost enough to make me want to send an anonymous donation to the Society for Retired and Starving Gamekeepers – provided they sign a statement admitting to
their sins against civil liberties.

Bob’s already told you about the different ways to lamp. Now, when I’m out lamping for rabbits or hares, I walk the dogs up the outside of the beam. Greyhounds get very clever; they
go up the edge of the lamp beam and in, taking hares and rabbits straight out of the quat. And Bob taught me how to get them to retrieve as well. Greyhounds ain’t natural retrievers, like
spaniels; they got to be taught. But once I take the rabbit or hare off of them when I’m training them, I give them a biscuit as a reward. After a while, they get used to me having the kill
and not them – they know it’s not theirs. This and all the other skills is what I mean in Chapter Six about learning all I needed to know without a formal education. If I’d gone
to school, proper like, I might have ended up as something else – maybe an opinion-pollster, or a pickled-onion packer, or a private pension peddler, instead of being a self-proclaimed
authority on the greyhound and the gun.

Skills like long-netting pheasant in woods where there’s plenty of them about. I make a little ride, cutting a place where I can run the net through. It’s got to be done clever, not
like cutting a hundred yards of bushes out of a wood that’s going to be obvious and draw the attention of keepers and the like. Just clear an area at the end of winter or early spring and
keep it clean, but not too obvious, so that when I set my long net up, it’s not going to get tangled with branches and stuff. I set the net up nice and baggy, early in the season – end
of September or maybe October, when there’s lots of pheasants feeding together in one place, and they’re tamer. Then I get back out and beat it up with sticks and collect all the birds
that get tangled in the net. But it’s not so easy once they get wild and wary.

Sometimes I long-net hares at night. I know the fields and where they like running and how they want to escape. I set up my nets and drive them and I get some – a few but not many. During
the day, I can get lots – I got beaters driving them to the nets and flankers to keep them in. Of a night it’s different. I haven’t got much control. It’s dark and they can
see where they’re going, but I can’t see them to drive them towards the net, and a lot of them get away out the flanks. I only do it in the dark if I haven’t got permission
– if I’m poaching. I’ve even set long nets in the rides for deer – in the woods. Then I beat them out and I can catch one or two roe that way.

There’s other tricks too – a crossbow’s a handy thing if you’re poaching near the pens, early in the season when the pheasants are tamish – before they’ve
been shot at a lot and beaten out of the woods. Once they’ve been constantly driven over guns, they start getting wise to it all and won’t be so easy to take. You hide and, when they
come out to get a feed, you can get them with the crossbow. It’s quiet and won’t alert the keepers, so close to the pens. You can take the bow part off and put it in one pocket and the
stock part in another pocket. You can use bolts that are pointed and go through the bird, or square-headed ones that don’t. My crossbow has a hundred and seventy-five pound bowstring pull and
I need a goatsfoot to cock it. But the downside of the crossbow is, you can lose a lot of bolts and sometimes that’s not economical, because the bolts can cost you more than you’d get
for the pheasant these days. Still, diversity, they say, is the spice of life and otherwise I might just have to build myself a raft out of empty soup cans and float away to the Fijian Islands.