The Last English Poachers (30 page)

When the communists were around in Eastern Europe, they stopped the shooting of wolves and bears, so there’s a good population of them there today, and I’ve seen them all, up close
– wolves and wildcats and bears and European bison. I’ve no wish to shoot them – what for? I couldn’t take them home to eat them! It’s just a chance to be part of
their environment, living for a short time the way they do – being close to nature and the essence of what it is to be a real human being, not a whining artificial imposter. I never take a
guide with me because I have tracking knowledge. I know how to find animals. I have that instinct: where they prefer to lay up to get out of the cold; where they water; where they go to find what
they need to survive. I’m usually days from civilisation, in hundreds of square miles of forest. Sometimes I camp out and other times I use cabanas, which are mountain huts where I can get a
bunk and a bite to eat.

Once, back in 2008, I’m out in the Byelavyezhskaya Forest, which spills over from eastern Poland into western Belarus. It’s one of the largest areas of primeval mixed woodland in
Europe, with pine and beech and oak and alder and spruce growing over an area of nearly five hundred square miles. I don’t stick to the National Park with its guided field trips – too
many idiots with mobile phones taking pictures and shouting to each other and crashing about like a bunch of demented bears, so no animal will come near them. I get off the beaten track and onto
more rugged terrain, away from the trails altogether. On this trip, I want to get up close to the wisent [bison] and watch them graze in the clearings and on the hay meadows at the fringes of the
forest. They stay in the trees in summer and it’s easier to come across them at this time of year, in early winter.

It’s an embryonic experience, wandering through the November trees with no one near me for miles, and knowing I’m surrounded by wild animals like elk and lynx and wolf, even if I
can’t always see them. I can smell snow in the air, coming from the northern regions of this little spinning-top world, where my father once hunted with an Eskimo. I move along the border
between Poland and Belarus, through country that’s as close as any to how it was when the woods were inhabited by Vistulans and Kryvians and Steppe Nomads and a man could understand who he
was – before it all got clouded and confused. I want to see the bison before I go home and I hope the experience will keep me going until I can come back again.

I like being out here alone in the wild and I’m drawn south, kept company by buzzards and black woodpeckers and long-eared owls. The leaves of the deciduous trees are falling all around me
and the forest floor’s a carpet of russet colours. I set up my tent close to a clearing, as night’s beginning to fall and I want to get a small careful fire going so I can cook my beans
and sausage and make a mug of strong tea. The clearing’s large; there are signs of bison around and I hope I’ll be able to see them tomorrow. I relax in the gloaming, lying quietly in
the seclusion of the forest and the comfort of my own company.

Next morning I’m up early and in cover at the edge of the tree line. Then I see them, emerging cautiously into the open: a small herd – a couple of young bulls and about half-a-dozen
cows and some calves, maybe a year or two old. The mature adult bulls tend to stay solitary for most of the year and only rejoin the herd during the mating season in August and September. I’m
watching them for a while and it’s a majestic sight, when I notice that something else is watching them too – a grey wolf. It’s an adult male of about a hundred pounds in weight
and maybe forty inches tall at the shoulder. I’m downwind, so he can’t scent me. Then I see some movement and another wolf becomes visible, and another, and another. It’s a pack
– on the hunt. The bison sense the danger somehow and stampede off across the clearing. The wolves don’t follow, just watch them go, and I think they’ll probably circle round
through the trees and try to catch the wisent by surprise and maybe bring down a calf.

Later in the day I pack up my gear and trek further south, hoping to come across an elk or a bear or a wildcat. Tomorrow’s my last day and then I have to head home to England. The weather
turns colder and snow starts to fall as I pitch my tent and make camp that night. I think about the wolves as I sit by the fire. They’re rarely seen and I’ve been very lucky to
encounter them like that today. I wasn’t afraid because, as far as I know, there ain’t a single case of a human being killed by a healthy wolf. But they’ve always been labelled as
vicious and bloodthirsty and they’ve been hunted and trapped and poisoned to the point of extinction for hundreds of years, based on religious superstition and irrational fear. They’re
the ancestors of all dogs, no matter what shape or size, even the greyhound and the fox. They’re intelligent, tactical hunters that work together to bring down prey, even though they’re
all different, with their own personality. The strength of the pack’s in each individual wolf, and the strength of each individual wolf is in the pack. The wolf’s emotions and behaviour
patterns are similar to ours – affection and loyalty and jealousy and anger – and they communicate through sound and smell and body gestures. Just like us. But howling’s the thing
that mystifies and frightens most people, especially when more than one wolf’s doing the howling – like now.

That night I sleep restlessly, being woken at regular intervals by the sound of the wolves. They seem very close, but I know they could be as far as five or six miles away. I get up at dawn and
emerge from the tent to find there’s been a heavy snowfall during the night and the early morning takes on a strange sort of luminescence, reflected in the drifted snow. Overhead, the
sky’s clearing and still alive with stars, with the ghost of a moon gradually giving way to the day. The enchanted half-light sparkles like dancing fireflies, filling the place with an air of
unreality, like in some child’s fairy-tale. I feel strange and stand transfixed, head raised and arms outstretched, and it seems like all that matters is here – nothing’s gone
before and nothing needs to follow. I walk towards a tree to relieve myself and, suddenly, I’m flying through the air and land with a breath-blasting thump on the steep side of a ravine. I
begin to roll – over and over and over and over, bouncing off snow-hidden boulders and young saplings and crashing through thorns and undergrowth. I seem to roll forever, until I finally
black out and everything fades to soothing darkness.

When I open my eyes again, I can’t see anything, just a kind of whiteness. I wipe a thick covering of snow from my face and see that it’s still day, with a blizzard falling so hard I
can’t make out the boundary between land and sky, nor can I see further than a couple of feet in front of me. There’s a searing pain in my head and I put my hand up to find congealed
blood on my left temple. I try to stand, which I’m able to do only after several shaky attempts but, as far as I can tell, no bones are broken. I feel feverish and completely disorientated
and I’m shaking from head to toe. The ravine wall’s too steep to climb back up for my gear and I won’t last long without my coat and hat. I can’t see the sky to know which
direction’s east, or west, or north, or south, and I don’t know how far I am from a trail. Then I hear the wolf howls again, and I decide to follow them.

I move off slowly and, after a while, it begins to grow dark and I know night’s approaching. I swallow some snow to slake my dried-up and blood-encrusted mouth. Although I’m an
experienced woodsman and have survived in some very rough terrains, I know this ain’t good. Without hard-weather clothes and a sense of direction, I might not make it. The night, when it
comes, will finish me off for sure if I don’t find cover. But I keep following the wolf howls – it seems to be the only alternative I have. I must go west, back into Poland, but my legs
won’t stand no more and I find myself back on the ground. I crawl through snowy undergrowth, pushing myself forward. Time’s passing and the sickly light from the sun’s fading.
Then I hear water close by. I crawl towards the gentle lapping and the smell of the river until I can see it: some tributary of the River Bug that runs through this region – maybe the Lesnaya
or even the Narev? There’s a boat moored about a hundred yards along the bank and I get myself into it and cover myself over with a heavy tarpaulin. Darkness comes and I’m exhausted and
I fall into a fretful sleep.

I wake to a rocking motion and, when I stick my head out from under the tarpaulin, I can see the boat’s come adrift during the night and I’m moving along a fast-flowing stretch of
water. The snow’s stopped and I can make out from the position of the sun that I’m heading west, which is where I want to go. There’s no oars or paddles in the boat, so I
can’t control it, as the tributary opens up into a bigger river, and it ain’t long before I have company on the water.

‘Help!’

I’m close to civilisation and some villagers take control of my boat and bring it ashore. They can see I’m sick, with some kind of virus, and maybe that’s what disturbed me in
the tent and disorientated me when I came outside. They lift me out of the boat and I’m taken to a local hospital. I can’t understand what anyone’s saying to me – until a
doctor comes who speaks English.

‘You got forest fever.’

‘What’s that?’

He tells me it’s caused by the bite of a mosquito that’s unique to the area I was trekking in. The effects are flu-like and can cause mild hallucinations. It ain’t a serious
condition if it don’t develop into malaria, and it wears off after a couple of days. I was more at risk from hypothermia and I was very lucky to find cover in that boat.

I’ve been back to the forests of Eastern Europe several times since. But I never found out who owned that boat – or if the wolf howls led me to it.

Speaking of boats, I’ve been out fishing on the Danube Delta for carp and perch and roach and eels. There’s freshwater sturgeon there too, and many other kinds of fish I don’t
even know the names of. And three hundred and twenty species of wild birds – pelicans and herons and egrets and cormorants and all kinds of exotic ducks and geese and the water’s lovely
and so clear you could drink it. Animals inhabit the banks on either side – otter and mink and raccoon and wild boar and fox and wolf – and there’s times, I must admit, when I
wish I had a gun with me, so I could take home some rare meat to the family.

The Lofoton Islands is an archipelago off the coast of Nordland, in Norway. They’re inside the Arctic Circle and lately I’ve been going up there following the killer whales. I
don’t go with any tour operator, just under my own steam, like with all the other places I go to. I fly up to Bødo Airport, then sail out on the trawlers. The killer whales come after
the herring that spill out of the trawler nets and I go out on a Zodiac speedboat and come right up alongside them to take pictures. All these things I do just because they’re there to be
done. I see a picture of something or read about it in a book, then I want to go and do it. And I get there however I can – by plane or boat or motorbike or horse-and-cart or whatever. I hope
to keep on doing these things for as long as I can – till I’m at least ninety.

Along with the poaching, of course.

And they say that evolution and the genetic code have brought the world along to the state it’s in today. How far have we come? Or are we still as savage as when we first fell from the
tertiary tree – with a hatchet in our hand?

20

They say there’s big money to be made on the internet these days. Danger is, some smart bugger might identify your password and intercept your stash before you retire to
your rocking chair. Or else the military laboratories might accidentally unleash some deadly disease or the God-botherers might find the key to nuclear technology and blow us all to bits. It only
takes some disillusioned scientist who’s hit the skids to post the formula on Facebook. This planet’s an unsteady place now, what with the super-rich frightening the moronic classes
into believing the world’s in danger of being overrun by reason. And it’s hard to say if good will triumph over evil or vice versa – I mean, who knows, these days, which is
which?

Just to recap a bit on what we’ve been saying in this book and sum it all up: until the 1980s, when you had land with a titled person on it, like the big estates around here, all the farms
and houses were full of estate men. All under the lord’s boot – all cap-tippers to the lord. Tenant farmers and anyone in an estate cottage, paying estate rent, owed their allegiance to
the earls and dukes. The main preoccupation on those estates was the shooting. The toffs thought more of their sport than they did of people. They had millions of pounds’ worth of houses and
land and farm buildings and crops and tractors, but the thing they valued most was their game – and poaching it was what stung them the most. However, they always had this army of cap-tippers
to come after you and grass you up to the police and try to beat the shit out of you. And that was the ‘us-against-them’ game we played all our lives, and are still playing to some
extent.