What The Gamekeepers Say: Part Two.

Today and tomorrow we are publishing the views of two ex-gamekeepers. We have made some minor edits to the language and punctuation but the essence of what they have to say has not been altered.

I have worked as a gamekeeper on a number of estates. The safest ones are those with a number of keepers because if something goes wrong it is hard to pin the blame on an individual and that means no prosecution.

The big estates organise themselves so that beats and duties overlap and as long as no one talks no one carries the can. The instructions are always the same. If questioned by the police decline to speak except in the presence of your lawyer and then give “no comment “answers. If you stick to that you are fairly safe. The lawyers are good and know how to deal with the police. They are far better than the prosecution lawyers and they earn their money.

It is generally accepted that some parts of the job will involve doing things that might not be legal but you are carefully trained in how to carry them out and if you stick to the game plan you should be safe. Methods change from time to time so that when there is a big fuss about stuff being trapped you move to poison. When that becomes too risky you change to shooting and so on. It confuses the cops and enables owners and their reps to say that “poisoning is declining” or “cases of trapping have gone down”. The numbers overall don’t change but by shifting technique it means you can point to a decline in a particular method.

The biggest risk just now is birds that are satellite tagged. There is a big push from shooting organisations and owners to have tag information made available in real time. Once you know a tagged bird is in your area you can make sure that nothing happens that is likely to get the police crawling over the estate. When it has moved on normal business can be resumed.  The same thing applies to single use licenses. If you can get a license to shoot a single buzzard then unless you are tracked 24/7 you are fairly safe. If you are seen shooting a bird you can claim it’s your single buzzard. As a countryman your word is likely to be accepted above that of a walker unless the corpse is found. As long as you only shoot single birds at a time you are home and dry.

With estates and shooting organisations working together you are virtually fireproof UNLESS you work solo. If you do and someone spots something that they don’t like you are likely to get raided.  In England that means your “no comment” answers can be used against you. The lucky guys in Scotland don’t have that risk. Even so if you keep your mouth shut and the cops don’t find any serious evidence you might not go to court. I knew a bloke who was seen by a walker shooting a bird that he shouldn’t have. By the time the cops arrived the body was gone and he claimed he had shot a pigeon. As the walker had no experience of bird ID and there was no dead buzzard no action was taken. There are guys and organisations on side on social media who will do everything they can to muddy the waters and that helps too.

Unfortunately the owners aren’t always happy about the cops poking around and the antis making a big fuss on social media. Then you tend to get the blame and you can lose your job, house and car in the blink of an eye. In the army the bosses and the other ranks tend to stick together but in civvy street that doesn’t happen so much.

My advice to anyone thinking of becoming a keeper is to remember that s**t rolls downhill and you will be at the bottom. When everything is going right you are a great bloke but when the cops arrive you are a ‘bad apple’ and they’ll dump you.

Tomorrow we will be publishing the blog of another ex-gamekeeper who agreed to give us his rather different views. We will be commenting on both these blogs on Friday.