The Last English Poachers (13 page)

Understand?

You also needed to be nominated to run a dog in the Waterloo Cup by one of the sixty-four nominators, who were all bloody freemasons and the like. We got a dog called ‘Solo Concorde’
in once because we netted the hares for them, but it had to go in under someone else’s name, someone who was associated with the club, because they didn’t want it known that the likes
of us was allowed to run a dog in such an elite competition as the Waterloo Cup. And, even after getting the dog in, we wasn’t treated fairly. You see, the slipper can favour one dog over the
other – if he’s got lord so-and-so’s dog up agin’ mine, he can twist my dog round so the lord’s can get an advantage and be first to turn the hare and get four points.
Or a short slip will favour a dog with early pace and a long slip will favour a bigger dog that takes a while to get into its stride.

Our dog was up agin’ an Irish bitch in the first course and she was the third favourite to win the competition. But the course was flagged ‘undecided’ because the judge deemed
that the Irish dog was unsighted and didn’t see the hare. It was a Newmarket hare that ran and ran and ran for a mile and a half, back through the beaters, and our dog’s tongue was
round his bollocks and Brian had to get him out of a ditch. The Irish bitch was buggered too, but the masons was probably glad about that, her being third favourite for the cup, and they
wouldn’t want her winning any more than our dog. Being undecided, the course had to be re-run, and our dog won it the second time out. But he was knackered, and in the next course –
agin’ a dog that’d had one twenty-second run after a local hare and was fresh – he had no chance and was out! There was all sorts of dirty tricks to lessen an ordinary man’s
chances of winning anything – that’s if he could get his dog in in the first place.

In the end I got fed up with the discrimination so I organised my own course – the Yeovil and Sherborne Coursing Club. I was secretary and Brian was a steward. We’d get permission
from landowners to hold a meet on suitable ground and the course would be inspected to make sure it was safe and that the hares would get fair play. There’s a lot of work involved in open
coursing; you got to get the beats and the right conditions for slipping and keep dogs from fighting; it takes a long time. It’s an all-day sport. The meet would start at about 9:00 a.m. and
the first brace of dogs would be in the slips by 9:30 a.m. I released a lot of hares where we’d be coursing the following season, giving them time to settle into their new surroundings, so
there was always plenty for the meets and they was easy to run out. We usually held eight-dog stakes, with four pairs of greyhounds. The winner of the first pair met the winner of the second pair
in the semi-final and the two winners of those met in the final. That meant a dog had three runs in the day. Pickers-up would go out onto the field to retrieve the dogs after a course and, if the
hare was caught, it was their duty to make sure the animal was dead.

Then it got banned in 2005 and that was the end of a way of life for many people in the countryside. There’s nothing left of it now. A trainer friend of mine died recently and he left me a
bronze hare – that’s the only trophy I kept from the coursing days. All the silver cups from Yeovil and Sherborne were sold off at auction and the money divided among the few members
left. Because it wasn’t about cups and trophies, it was about being out with the dog – being equal partner with the dog – sensing its excitement, blood up, adrenaline flowing,
quarry in sight. Whether it was dog agin’ hare or dog agin’ dog that was the joy of it, the sport of it, the meaning of what it was all about. If you don’t understand that, you
don’t understand dogs. And even if it hadn’t been made illegal there ain’t enough people in the countryside left who knows what they’re doing now, enough to be used as good
beaters and flankers no more.

I has mixed feelings about hare coursing being banned. In one way, it provided a livelihood for many country people, not just us poachers and hare-netters, and it was a sight to behold – a
little six- or seven-pound hare outsmarting two eighty-pound dogs, for the most part. In another way, when hares was brought in and not given enough time to settle in the area, two eighty-pound
greyhounds chasing a six- or seven-pound hare that don’t know where it’s going ain’t really my idea of sport. One greyhound after a local hare or rabbit is fair and brilliant to
watch for a man like me – just like one dog after a fox. I’m not saying it was right to ban hare coursing but, in the end, too many hares were being netted and put down too late –
a week before the meeting or even the night before, like we was instructed to do by them who’d hired us.

One way or the other, we really got no say in whether this is banned or that’s banned. They tell us we live in a democracy and they give us the impression we has a say but, in reality, we
got no say in nothing. The decisions are already made. Half a million people marched through London protesting agin’ the banning of hunting with dogs, but nobody took any notice of them.
Everything has to be politically correct these days, and that correctness is put upon the many by the few who shouts the loudest. There was a time when you could go to the pub and stand your gun in
the corner while you was having a pint. If you did that now the pub would be surrounded by an armed-response unit and somebody would get shot, not by your shotgun, but by some trigger-happy
policeman.

As far as coursing’s concerned, I don’t give a damn about any ban. If I wants to go across a field and get a run after a hare, I’ll do it! As for the banning of competition
coursing, I can take it with a pinch of salt because there’s nothing I can do about it – and it makes our drag track more popular.

But park coursing’s still economic in Ireland where, like I explained, hares is kept in pens and trained to run up a field and use the escape at the end of it. They don’t have the
same class system over there and ordinary men can get a run for their dogs and the coursing’s fairer. It’s a big industry in Ireland and the government there is afraid to ban it. But
English coursers like us can’t afford to run our dogs over there – all the expense of getting across, only to get stitched up by the Irish, like they was often stitched up over here.
And open coursing was always a better sport, even if it was controlled by the bloody freemasons!

It’s gone now and it’ll never be coming back. And I’m still out there, when I can be, running my dogs – in spite of all the laws.

9

I read somewhere recently that several senior police officers are being questioned in connection with corruption in the force. Hard to believe! And the tabloids tell us
there’s a sharp increase in serious crime and all the prisons are full to overflowing, and they can’t fit no more in. We’ll have to build special camps to keep them corralled,
penned in like the pheasants on the shooting estates. Or else send them over to one of the Central Asian ’Stans for rehabilitation, where they still use the old methods. And that’s not
accounting for the psychos at large on the city streets and in the government, and begging babies and multicultural misfits and and all sorts of unrecognisable others, leading to further strife on
top of the established turmoil. Murders and molestations after dark – pimps and procurers and perverts of the very worst kind. You’d think the cops and courts would have enough to deal
with, wouldn’t you, without bothering with the likes of me and Bob?

I’m poaching over on Tortworth one night when I’m about fifteen. I leave my pushbike well hidden and make my way up to some woods. I shoot a dozen or so rabbits on the way and gut
them and leg them and hang them in some nut bushes to collect on the way back. The wood’s small and there’s a full moon and it’s easy to see the pheasants up in the trees. I start
shooting them with my bolt-action .410 shotgun and I stash them in the postbag I have over my left shoulder. I’ve already shot thirteen and the bag’s full and heavy. I shoot the
fourteenth and it drops down out of sight. I unbolt the gun and put another cartridge in before going to retrieve the bird, then I hear some rustling in the bushes. Maybe the bird ain’t dead,
I think, so I turn my torch on and shine it in the direction of the sound. But it’s not the pheasant; there’s a black Labrador standing there with the dead bird in its mouth. I growl at
it: ‘You bugger, you got my pheasant!’

I put the gun up to shoot the dog, then I hear a shout:

‘Stop where you are!’

It’s the Earl of Ducie and his son, Lord Moreton.

‘Bollocks!’

I turn to run – straight into a big thorn bush. I’m all scratched to buggery round my face and arms and I can hear them coming into the wood. It’s not a very big wood and I get
back out of the bush and run round the side – not the way I came in, but onto a ploughed field. I came in across meadows, but I’m forced now to try and get away across the ploughed
earth, carrying a gun and thirteen pheasants in a bag down one side and wearing hobnailed boots. I switch the gun to my left hand for balance. Luckily it’s not real boggy plough and I run as
fast as I can, trying to get to the road. Ducie drives a Land Rover with no lights down a track, trying to get in front of me, while Moreton chases behind, but not gaining any ground.

I get to the road before the Land Rover, but I know I won’t be able to outrun it – and they can hear my boots clip-clopping on the tarmacked surface, so I have to find a hiding place
soon. I come across the entrance to another field and see a cow trough, which is fairly full. I chuck the bag of pheasants under the trough and climb into the cold muddy water with the gun. I know
if they come into the field, the dog’ll sniff out the birds and I’ll be caught, but it’s my only option right now. The Land Rover pulls up at the gateway and Ducie looks out
across the field, but can’t see me nowhere. He waits for Moreton, who’s coming on foot, to catch up. The dog’s inside the motor.

‘Where did the bastard go?’

‘Down that way.’

Moreton gets into the Land Rover and they drive off down the road. I climb back out of the cow trough, dripping wet, and retrieve the pheasants. Then I go back to the woods because my
pushbike’s hidden in a ditch close to the road where I went in.

As I’m getting the pushbike out of its hiding place, a vehicle pulls up, lights blazing. I think it’s the ponce-faces come back again.

‘Are you alright?’

‘Piss off!’

I jump onto the bike and pedal away for all I’m worth. A bit down the road I look back to see if they’re following, but it ain’t the earl and his son who’s pulled up,
it’s an old bloke and a woman. They thought I’d been run off the road and only stopped to see if I needed help. And I smile and think to myself, maybe human nature has something to be
said for it after all. I got pneumonia a few months later. I couldn’t breathe and collapsed and passed out. My lungs filled up with fluid and there was no air getting into them. That’s
why pneumonia’s called ‘old man’s friend’, your lungs fill up and you die in your sleep. I was taken to hospital and given strong antibiotics and I was laid up for three
weeks. I’m not saying the water trough gave me the pneumonia, but it might have.

There’s a big stream near Damery, which is about halfway between Bristol and Gloucester and, two days later, I’m up there on my pushbike again on the way to Michaelwood, because I
know there’s a lot of game there. I’m above the stream now and I shoot two mallard ducks with the one shot. I retrieve them from the stream myself because the water’s not that
deep, maybe knee-high, and I hide them in a hedge to be collected on the way back, just like I did with the rabbits before. I get back on the bike and carry on another two miles to where
Michaelwood’s on the left and Furze Ground Wood’s on the other side. Then I hide the bike and go off to shoot pheasants. Unbeknown to me, the keeper’s driving round and sees a bit
of the pushbike, because I never hid it well enough.

I come out of the wood with ten pheasants in my postman’s bag, put the gun in its sleeve and tie it to the crossbar. I’m cycling down the lane when this Ford Escort van forces me off
the road and into the ditch. I know it’s keepers, so I get my gun out of the sleeve and run across the field with it and the pheasants, towards a barn. The police have already been called and
I see them driving up to the barn, so I hide the gun and the birds. I got the coppers in front of me and the keepers behind, so I’m blocked off and I get nabbed.

Three coppers grab hold of me.

‘What you up to?’

‘Out for a run.’

‘In Wellingtons?’

‘Cross-country run.’

They have no sense of humour and the keepers’ dog finds the gun and pheasants. I get taken to Dursley police station and they tell me to take my boots off before they lock me up. When I
do, four cartridges fall out of one of my socks.

‘You always take shotgun cartridges out for a run?’

‘I stick them up my bum for a sprint finish.’

‘How many more you got?’