The Last English Poachers (8 page)

Later that night we go over onto the earl’s Tortworth Estate again – lamping this time – and we’re moving quietly through some fields of maize towards a wood called The
Withybeds, because it’s full of withy trees. There’s been a lot of rain lately, so the maize is too wet to be harvested and we have to go through it to get to the wood, where we know
there are pheasants roosting. The earl takes a great interest in the management of his estate, particularly his woodlands, and spends a lot of money on game preservation. Anti-poaching laws are
rigorously enforced and, more often than not, the magistrate you’re facing is the very man whose land you’re hunting. But, the stricter the penalties for poaching, the more determined
we are to outwit them and the cleverer us poachers become.

We’ve come out on bicycles tonight, not in the car, with the gun tied to the crossbar. Bikes are quieter than cars and easy to hide in a ditch or hedge. Every place that’s keepered
well is looking for a parked-up motor someplace suspicious and that’s when you get clobbered. But if the gamekeepers find the bikes, they’ll either wait for us to come back or slash the
tyres – which is something we’d do if we found bicycles or cars belonging to other poachers who came into our area. If we get other people coming onto land around here, it can make it
worse for us. For instance, if we’ve taken pheasants out of a wood, we’ll leave it alone for a while and let it quieten down. If you got other people poaching there as well, they may be
careless and leave drops – feathers on the ground where the birds dropped – so the keepers are watching, watching, watching the whole time. And our worst enemies are the bum-lickers
who’ll ring the police on us when we’re out of a night – people who’re frightened to do it themselves and begrudge us doing it, who ain’t afraid. Legal shooters will
do it too, who have the money to pay for a bit of shooting. They might get one or two birds in a season where they can legally shoot, but we go anywhere we want and get hundreds of birds in a
season. They’ll grass us up if they see us. Jealous spineless buggers. That’s why I hate them all, just like Bob does – cap-tippers and shit-kickers and saddle-bumpers and lords
and ladies and bishops and big wigs and ponces that are no good for getting off their bums, except to scratch them.

I’m still a boy and Bob’s teaching me the ways of the poacher – like how to avoid traps set by the keepers. Things like a line stretched across a ride with
fish-hooks hanging every eighteen inches, to tangle you up or catch you in the face – or a camouflaged pitfall, or a thick branch crossing a marshy ditch sawn most of the way through. But Bob
knows the land better than any gamekeeper and we can leap across and avoid such traps and the chasers sometimes forget about them and get caught themselves. And we laugh while we’re making
our easy getaway. It’s always been a battle like that, for as long as some people have owned land and others haven’t. Sometimes a battle of wits, and sometimes life or death. The
estates of Beaufort and Berkeley and Tortworth all border each other and they used to unite to protect each other’s game. In the nineteenth century, people went poaching in big groups for
protection and the keepers were always mob-handed as well. Labour was cheap, so a landowner could have ten or twenty keepers, compared to one or two now, and it was very violent, with people
getting clubbed and stabbed and shot. Bob tells me stories sometimes, that he’s heard from his father and his father’s heard from his father before him, going back into the dim and
distant past, about men being hanged in the courtyard of Berkeley Castle just for poaching a few rabbits.

One such tale comes into my young mind now, as we move through the dark night, and it gives me a strange sense of foreboding, because it happened on the very land we’re walking. The year
is 1816 and a poacher is killed by a forester’s spring-gun in these woods, then belonging to Lord Ducie, the present earl’s great-grandfather. A spring-gun’s another man-trap
– a shotgun rigged to fire when a string is tripped that ‘springs’ the trigger, so that anyone stumbling over it discharges the gun. The killing angers other poachers in the area
so much that a group of them come up here to confront a gang of foresters belonging to Lord Ducie and Colonel Berkeley. In the fight that follows, an assistant keeper’s shot dead and five
others are badly injured. The poachers have their faces blackened, so nobody can recognise them, but that don’t stop the head keeper from saying he knew one of them to be a young man called
John Allen. The coroner issues a verdict of wilful murder against all the poachers who were in the woods that night, but no such verdict against the forester who set the spring-gun. Colonel
Berkeley and some of his men go to John Allen’s house and arrest him. Allen gives himself up without a fight, saying he’s innocent of any crime, but the colonel strikes him to the
ground with a cudgel.

During the days that follow fifteen men are rounded up to be sent for trial, even though no one can identify any of them for sure. Four of them manage to escape – two to America, one to
the West Indies, and one to Ireland. The trial of the other eleven is held at the Lent Assizes in Gloucester and lasts three days. The prisoners are all found guilty, even though there’s no
hard evidence against any of them. John Allen and another man called John Penny are hanged at Gloucester Gaol and the other nine transported for life to Van Diemen’s Land in one of the
harshest parts of Australia. Most people at the time believe this to be a grave miscarriage of justice, but Colonel Berkeley and Lord Ducie don’t care much about that – the colonel even
has a painting made, showing the ‘heroic’ foresters clashing with the ‘evil’ poachers, and he hangs it in the breakfast room at Berkeley Castle. Some of the men convicted
are young, almost as young as I am now, but neither the law nor the lords care about such things. A poacher’s neither a boy nor a man – he’s just a dirty poacher. As far as I
know, John Allen’s buried in the churchyard of the village of Stone, near the Little Avon River.

Thoughts like this come crossing my mind and I know the earl will be hopping mad for us getting one over on him earlier. So if he or his men come upon us, it’ll go hard on us and
we’ll most likely be laid up in hospital for a few days. And there’ll be no point bringing charges for assault because the village police have nothing better to do than to arrest us
poachers and bring us in front of the magistrates. So, if we get caught and beat up, which is likely because Bob has a temper and won’t back down from no man, if we complain about it
we’ll get charged with poaching and brought to court and the keepers will get off scot-free and the police will get a pat on the back and a nice warm feeling that they’ve done something
to please the lord.

We’re carrying two postbags apiece, one over each shoulder. Bob gets them from the postman for a couple of rabbits. They’re canvas-made and big and deep and as good as the deep
pockets in a poacher’s coat. And you can hide them easy if you have to make a run for it. As we come out of the fields of maize and make our way into the woods, I hear an unusual sound, like
a deep meowing – a sound like a feral cat makes, only more of a growl – hollow, low-pitched. I touch Bob’s shoulder and whisper.

‘Did you hear that?’

‘Aye.’

‘What is it?’

‘Don’t know.’

We move forward quietly, to where the pheasants are roosting. They’re up in some blackthorn bushes and Bob shines his small torch up there. That’s all he needs. A powerful
lamp’s like a searchlight in the sky and can be seen for miles, so all he needs is this small torch to find them. We have no dog with us tonight and, when he shoots a bird, I have to retrieve
it from the bushes. I got to be careful and not get ripped and torn by the thorns and not to cry out if I do. The .410’s a small shotgun and only makes a little noise, not like a 12-bore or a
big 10-bore used for wildfowling, so we’re hoping we won’t be heard until we have our bag and are away. I’ve already been out here before it got dark, finding where the birds are
roosting. I marked the spots with scrunched-up bits of paper – something a gamekeeper won’t notice as a marker. Now Bob knows the trees and bushes the pheasants are in and he can shoot
them quick and be away before anyone’s the wiser.

I’m retrieving the birds, but it’s dark and I run straight into a blackberry bush and get tangled up in it. Bob puts down the gun and helps me out by cutting the bushes away with his
knife. It’s another lesson I’ve learned: to be careful and not be too quick to rush in. The four postbags are full with about two-dozen pheasant and it’s time to make our way back
to the bicycles. Woods are different in the dark than they are during the day; it’s easy to get disorientated and lose your way. But Bob’s an excellent poacher and he has a great sense
of direction, just like an animal, and he’s always able to find his way home. I follow close behind him and we come out of the trees and back into the field of maize, close to a small pond.
There’s something about this night – something eerie. It’s unnaturally quiet. Normally the nocturnal noises would be all around us: the hoot of an owl, the bark of a fox, the
churr of a badger, the night-time call of a sedge warbler, the clicking and buzzing of insects. But tonight there’s nothing in the maize field. And I don’t like it.

We move forward, slowly. Bob’s cautious as well, although he says nothing. I can feel his apprehension, the way his eyes are watchful. There may be a gamekeeper lying in wait, or several
gamekeepers, who’ll attack us and beat us to the ground. So we proceed carefully, stealthily, surrounded by the silent maize field. Suddenly there’s the sound again – growling,
guttural. It’s a most unusual sound, not like anything I’ve ever heard before. The pond has thorn trees round it and we take cover there. Bob crouches and signals for me to do the same.
I whisper to him, almost inaudibly.

‘Fox?’

‘That ain’t no fox.’

Bob starts to squeak the animal in, if it is an animal, making a sound like a dying rabbit. We wait. Something’s moving towards us through the uncut maize. Bob squeaks it closer. And
closer. We only have the little single-shot .410, with a two-inch cartridge, which is alright for the pheasants but not for anything bigger. When it’s almost upon us, he shines his torch into
its eyes – eyes that are big and round, shining back. But it’s not a fox; it’s a black panther, as big as an Alsatian dog! It frightens the wits out of us and we take out to run,
through the maize and out into a ploughed field. We’re both wearing hob-nailers and the ploughed earth’s thick on the bottoms of the boots, making it hard to move fast.

After some distance of running, I look over my shoulder, but the panther ain’t following us. We slow down, breathing heavily; the postbags full of pheasants weighing like lead from our
shoulders. Bob speaks through his fast, steamy breath.

‘It must’ve got just as big a fright as us.’

‘I expect so.’

‘Fancy coming through a field of maize, thinking you’re going to find an injured rabbit.’

‘And instead . . .’

‘Instead you find two poachers who jump up shouting and waving their arms.’

We both laugh and look round to get our bearings. We’ve run away from the bikes instead of towards them and now we must make our way back. But we don’t believe the panther will come
near us again.

We have to get back to the bikes by a roundabout way, as running from the panther has taken us off course. Bob’s in front and I’m behind him. Suddenly he’s not there any more
and I wonder what’s happened to him. Then I see some bubbles on the ground and water churning and gurgling. He’s gone down in a trap dug by the keepers, water up to his chin. The
postbags have filled up and they’re dragging him down further. He can’t get the straps from around his neck. I throw off my own postbags and go to help him, firstly by shoving over a
broken tree branch for him to hold on to. Then I take out my knife and cut the straps to his postbags, so they sink down into the water and Bob’s able to haul himself out, with my help.
We’ve lost half our pheasants, but at least he ain’t drowned. It’s cold and we need to get back to the bikes quickly and be away, which we do.

Now, I’ve always held a dislike for cats, big or small, feral or tame. They’re a useless animal. They kill just for the sake of it – skylark chicks, when they’re coming
out of the long grass, feathered, before they can fly properly and are lying out in the short grass getting the sun on them. That’s when the cats will have them. I soon put paid to that by
shooting them with Bob’s gun and chucking them in a ditch where a fox will find them and eat them. A lot of townie people who’ve moved into the village have cats and they might not
appreciate me killing their little moggies, but I hate the things; they’re horrible buggers, killing just for fun, not out of necessity, and I’ll shoot them any chance I get. Sometimes
I catch them in cage traps that I’ve set for a fox or a badger. If that happens, I’ll kill them and chuck them in the ditch, so it looks like they’ve been hit by a car.

There’s several other sightings of the big black panther in the area after that and Mrs Cox, a farmer’s wife, is overheard saying to her son, ‘I hope you don’t think
I’m mad, but I seen a wildcat going across the fields.’

‘A wild cat?’

‘No, a wildcat.’

And there’s scratches on a fowl-house door that looks like they were made with six-inch nails, with such force that they move the fowl-house two or three feet along. There’s quite a
few acres of maize round The Withybeds, so it’s safe in there, the panther. Probably has a lair, living on rabbits or muntjac; maybe escaped from a wildlife park or released by some idiot who
keeps such an animal as a pet.

After the maize gets cut, the panther disappears and is never seen again.