The Last English Poachers Read Online Free Page A

sure I ain’t carrying nothing. Then he laughs.
    ‘Have to walk home then, won’t you?’
    I wheels the bike until I’m out of sight, then puts the chain back on and comes back after dark for the pheasant. And it was a pure joy to get one over on them keepers and I’d
whistle and sing about it, like my father was always doing. I asked him once, ‘Why you always whistling and singing?’
    ‘I’m happy, ain’t I.’
    And that was his nature; he was a happy man. But he could never stray far over the poaching line; because he ran a butcher’s shop he depended on the gentry and the farmers and the people
who worked on the land, and he couldn’t afford to go agin’ them too much. He had to tug his forelock to ’em like the rest of the village. But I didn’t, and I got hooked on
it – the poaching. It grew on me like a new skin and I couldn’t sleep at night for the urge to be out there in the wild openness. I loved it – the skill of it, the joy of it, the
excitement of it.
    That ain’t to say my father was a yes-man, he weren’t. He was a very gentle man – until someone upset him, then he could mix it with the best of ’em. And he always warned
me about the monkey-men I’d meet going through life, even if I never took much notice of him at the time.
    He kept ferrets – three Jills and a Hob – and he taught me to hunt with them using hemp purse nets. We’d put the nets over the entrances to rabbit warrens and send the ferrets
in. The nets’d close on a draw cord when the rabbits bolted into ’em to get away from the ferrets. We’d set up long nets to cut across where we thought the rabbits would bolt if
they got through the purse nets and the animals would get tangled in the loose bagging. The old man would bring his whippets with us and they’d run down any rabbits that escaped the nets.
Sometimes the ferrets would kill rabbits underground. When that happened, we’d have to listen with our ears to the ground to hear where they was doing the killing, then we’d dig down
with a ditching spade.
    We ate what we needed and my father sold the rest in his shop. The pluck was fed to the dogs and the ferrets, and the skins were sold off to be cured and tanned and used for hats and the collars
of coats. Those we caught live were used for spot coursing, to give the dogs a run and keep them up for it – and it ain’t cruel, if that’s what you think, because a greyhound will
kill a rabbit quickly, a lot quicker than it rotting away for months from some man-made disease.
    I learned how to set hingles for hares and rabbits, with a noose made of copper wire attached by a cord to a stake driven firmly into the ground. A pricker stick would hold the noose about six
inches off the ground for a hare and four fingers for a rabbit. Another stick would be bent over the hingle to make the animal lower its head. Hares run, so the position of the snare weren’t
never a big fuss, but rabbits hop and there’s daps in the run. The wire had to be set about three inches above the dap, so the forepaws went under the wire and the head went through, breaking
the neck for a quick kill. Them who didn’t know how often set the snares wrong and the forepaws went through and the rabbit was caught round the stomach and it tore all the fur and flesh off
itself trying to get free.
    I’d run down my snares in the daytime, in case they was spotted. I’d take the wires off the pricker sticks and hide them in the grass and I’d reset ’em of an evening. But
having to visit the snares twice a day was dangerous – double the chance of getting caught. As well as that, if I got a kill, a fox, stoat or badger might take it before I got to collect it.
Predators like that would always be out hunting in the dark and would take one or two of my rabbits. So I had to go round a couple of times during the night, take out what I’d caught and
reset the wire.
    I could even catch a quatting hare by hand. I was so stealthy I’d