The Last English Poachers (32 page)
Read The Last English Poachers Online
Authors: Bob and Brian Tovey
It started when that old trollop Thatcher brought in the Right to Buy scheme. Everyone wanted to own their own council house – they had to go to work to pay the mortgage and became bought
men. And women. Owned. In debt. Enslaved. Under the whip of the so-called entrepreneurs. Then Thatcher’s mates cut wages and increased working hours and everyone had to get two or three jobs
to keep on affording the mortgage until, finally, they had to sell their houses to the people who live here now, and move off somewhere cheaper. So now there’s nowhere for local people to
live in these villages.
The people here now deliver Peter and Petra to school in Range Rovers and race round the lanes in Mercs and BMWs – anxious, uptight, jittery people, oblivious to country ways. The
aristocrats were a bit like that years ago, aloof and arrogant, but they knew about the countryside and respected it. These people think they’re the new aristocracy and us Toveys are a little
island in our little house, surrounded by sharks – property values and shiny cars and tinny accents and shrillness. All swimming round us, hoping to swallow us up. We don’t fit in any
more in a place where we’ve fitted in for hundreds of years. There’s no room for us in an upwardly mobile society with values that ain’t ours.
We were always different and people never knew how to deal with us. They were wary of what we represented – afraid of our freedom, our disregard for authority. It was dangerous, like the
very lore of the countryside was dangerous, unpredictable. Steeped in the ancient and the strange and the essence of all things natural.
Bob has a stuffed white hare in a case that he caught while long-netting on an estate at Andover, belonging to Eagle Star Insurance. There’s an old West Country legend that tells of a
witch who took the form of a white hare and went out at night looking for the souls of broken-hearted maidens who couldn’t rest and who haunted their unfaithful lovers. If that’s true,
then he has that witch here in our house, safe inside a glass case. Ha ha!
And, at one time, there was a white fox in the area and I saw it once when I was out near Lutheridge Farm. I was in the middle of a field and all these magpies were making a hell of a racket. I
looked across and caught a fleeting glimpse, before it disappeared. I tried to squeak it back into sight, but it didn’t respond, and it reminded me of the old stories about the white
fox-woman of folklore who was beautiful, but skittish and dangerous and not easily tamed.
Fire and frost in your eyes
Are you woman, are you wise?
Wild and sly, hunt by guile
Tooth and claw, falsely smile
Mouth blood-red, for your prey
Slow to love, quick to slay.
And that’s the countryside for me, how it used to be – wild and seductive. The feel of the giving ground under my feet and the wind on my face and the sky above and
the trees and the meadows and the streams and the lakes and the light and dark of it all. And the animals – mostly the animals, with which I feel such an affinity – just a millimetre
above on the genetic scale. They kill each other to survive and I kill them. I’m top of the food chain. But it was never all about killing. Life has to be given a chance to breed and recover.
We put down rabbits and relocate hares and bring on gamebirds and wildfowl. We look after our environment. So, I suppose we’re conservationists in our own way.
I have no son to pass this passion down to. And if I did, what would he say to me in these days of creeping disillusionment?
‘Who said you had the right to make me?’
So, when my father dies, and I die after him, we’ll be gone forever. And I think of these words I read once:
The rain across the woodland
Is playing with the night
And if it ain’t wrong
It must be right!
Bob with pheasant
Albino
– A deer with no pigment in its skin or hair
Balance of the day
– Remains of the day
Bagging
– Loose netting
Bang railer
– A dog that likes to run on the rails – on a greyhound track
BB
– Big ball lead shot
Beaters
– People who drive hares in for open coursing
Bee nettles
– White nettle (plant)
Blind-eyes
– Hogweed (plant)
Cage trap
– A baited cage, used for catching vermin
Chal
– Gypsy word for boy or child
Chitlin
– Guts (of a pig)
Chopsy
– Mouthy – gobby – too much to say
Clap net
– A spring-loaded net
Clobhead
– An idiot
Coney
– Slang for rabbit
Covey
– small flock
Creeping jinny
– Moneywort (plant)
Dap
– A tuft of grass that isn’t worn down, where rabbits jump
Deckhead
– The underside of a ship’s deck (naval)
Dibby
– Merry or drunk
Didicoy
– A Gypsy, but not a true Romany
Ditching spade
– A tool used for digging down into rabbit burrows
Drag-coursing
– Running two greyhounds after a lure on a straight course
Drag-net
– Net about twenty-five yards wide and four yards deep, with a line coming off each of the front corners – it gets dragged along over
stubble and grass and short kale to trap game
Droppers
– Live rabbits, used for spot-(drop)coursing
Duckerer
– A Gypsy fortune teller
Duck frost
– A light, early frost
Fallow
– pale brown / reddish (deer)
Fenn trap
– Spring-loaded mechanical trap – modern substitute for gin trap (now banned)
Flankers
– People used to control hares in open coursing
Flapping track
– An independent, unlicensed greyhound track
Foreshore
– The part of a shore between the water and cultivated land
Form
– Where a hare or rabbit quats (lies down in the grass)
Funnel net
– A net with a wide circular opening at one end, tapering off, to trap fish
Gaff
– A hook for landing fish
Gavage
– Method (instrument) used for force-feeding animals
Gin trap
– A mechanical trap with jaws and teeth for trapping a variety of animals
Goatsfoot
– Device used for cocking a crossbow
Gone to bricks
– Gypsies who live in houses and don’t travel any more
Gralloch
– The entrails of a dead deer
Grunty
– A tough guy, or someone who thinks he is
Hazel
– To rest, relax
Hedge-mumper
– Nosy parker
Hind
– A female deer
Hingle
– A snare made of wire and attached to a stake in the ground
Hob
– A male ferret
Hotchi
– Gypsy word for hedgehog
Jill
– A female ferret
Joe-cockys
– Boasters and Braggers
Jug / Jugging
– Roost / Roosting
Landing net
– A net used for landing fish, once hooked
Long nets
– Adjustable nets that are four to five feet high and a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards long, used for netting hares and rabbits (and
other game as well)
Lure
– A manmade imitation (rabbit/hare), sometimes covered with fur and with a squeaker inside
Lurgy
– Slang word for disease or fever
Mist net
– Fine-mesh net, suspended between two poles
Mitched
– Bunked off school
Molly
– Moorhen
Monkey-men
– Con men
Myxomatosis
– An infectious viral disease affecting rabbits
Night line
– A baited fishing line, left overnight
Nut stick
– A straight stick from a hazel tree
Open coursing
– Running two greyhounds after a hare on open ground, where the hare has to be driven in by beaters
Paddling
– Flock (of ducks)
Park coursing
– Running two greyhounds after a hare in an enclosed park or field with an escape at the end for the hare
Pastores
– Bull shepherds (Pamplona)
Pluck
– The heart, liver and lungs of a dead animal
Pompey
– Naval slang for prison
Pricker stick
– Stick used for holding the noose of a hingle (snare) off the ground
Priest
– Short club, weighted with lead
Purse net
– A net with a draw-string, used when ferreting for rabbits
Quarry
– An animal being hunted
Quat / Quatting
– Lying down in the grass (a rabbit or hare)
Quean
– A female cat
Roost / Roosting
– Birds settling down for the night – a place where they do this
Sally tree
– Acacia (resembling a willow)
Shackles
– U-shaped metal links, closed by a bolt (naval)
Shy
– A hide, where the slipper waits with the dogs in greyhound coursing
Slipper
– Someone who slips the greyhounds in hare or drag coursing
Slip snare
– Similar to a hingle
Spot coursing
– Dropping a live rabbit on a spot and giving it a head start before letting a greyhound or lurcher after it (also called
drop-coursing)
Spring-gun
– A mantrap, used by gamekeepers to ambush poachers
Spur
– Bone or metal protrusion on the ankle of a fighting cock
St Stephen’s Day
– Boxing Day
Stud-tailed
– Feline Acne
Tup
– An awkward person or thing
Umiak
– Eskimo canoe
Widgeon
– A dabbling duck with reddish brown and grey plumage
Withy trees
– Willow
Wisent
– European bison
Yawney
– A fool
Ya-Ya
– Toff
Yoikes
– Tally-ho brigade
Bob Tovey, poacher
Please note all animals need to be skinned (or plucked) and cleaned before cooking
Hare – Lightly Fried
Place whole hare in large pot on top of cooker.
Bring to the boil.
Turn down to simmer.
Place lemon, cut into four pieces, into pot.
Cook until meat falls off the bones.
Take hare out of pot and place on a plate or dish.
Remove all the meat from the bones and place in frying pan with just a little oil.
Fry on low heat until browned.
Serve with creamed or jacket potatoes, carrots and onions (or alternative vegetables).
Roast Pheasant
Place pheasant in roasting dish.
Place whole onion or apple inside bird to keep moist.
Place streaky bacon over breast and legs and sprinkle with pepper.
Pour oil over pheasant and allow to run into roasting dish.
Stuffing can be prepared separately in a dish or placed inside bird (my preference is separately).
Cover pheasant with foil.
Place in pre-heated oven, then turn down to 150–170°C (elec).
Baste well while cooking until meat is well done.
Remove bacon and foil to allow pheasant to brown – turn off oven while browning.
Serve with potatoes and choice of vegetables.
