The Last English Poachers Read Online Free Page B

pretend not to see it, then snatch it up by the loose skin on its side and back and break its neck. I could catch a
pheasant with a slip snare, which was similar to a hingle. I’d set the snare and start tapping further down the hedge. When the pheasant went to its run, it got caught in the snare and the
lot went up and left the bird dangling in the air.
    As I grew older, I learned my own lessons – like, never to drink alcohol and poach at the same time. Never to take on something that didn’t seem right. Always to work alone –
until Brian was old enough to come out with me. I learned to have contempt for landowners and their lackeys and to believe I had as much right to the wild game of this country as any lord or
freemason or vicar or magistrate or billionaire businessman. And I became a bit of a wild boy, roaming the land with my dog and my catapult and ferrets, catching rabbits and hares and pheasants and
white-fronted geese and widgeon and duck and anything that moved and could be eaten. What we couldn’t eat got put into my father’s little butcher shop and sold to the passing
pilgrims.
    Of course, the people who owned the land and the estates and who thought they owned the wild animals as well didn’t take kindly to me and I was often on the receiving end of a beating from
a warden or a gamekeeper. If it was a man they caught, they might not try it on and just take his name and address and set the law on him, but a boy like me was good for a hiding instead of the
courthouse and I sometimes came back home bleeding and bruised.
    I had to go to school, too, and keep going till I got an education. But I hated every day of it and I regret ever going to school at all. I went to the local Primary and a nearby Grammar after
that, but I mitched from there regularly and I was always taking off across the fields whenever I could get away without anyone seeing me. Maybe if I’d took to the learning a bit better, I
might’ve been something different – gone to work in the cider factory or been a farmer’s boy or a drayman like my grandfather. But I never wanted to be nothing other than what I
became – a professional poacher!
    I didn’t just stick to the land. I poached fish with gaffs and four-pronged spears. My father taught me how to make the spears by cutting a tall straight sapling that
weren’t too thick. Then he’d split one end with a knife, carefully, just tapping the blade so the split didn’t run the full length of the wood. He’d make another split
across the first ’un, so the end of the sapling was divided into four. At that point, he’d lash some jute twine around the wood, about eighteen inches from the split end, to make sure
the splits didn’t travel down the shaft as he cut ’em right up to the lashing. I’d find two twigs for him that were a couple of inches longer than the width of the sapling and
he’d slide them up as close to the lashing as possible, spreading out the four prongs. Then he’d lash the twigs into place with more jute twine. All that was left to be done was to
sharpen the end of each prong and you had your spear. If a keeper came along, you could just throw it away because it cost nothing but a bit of time, and you could fetch it back or make another
’un later.
    I took the fish from the private streams and lakes for miles around. I mean, how can a man say a fish is his, as it swims upstream from one estate to another? Or, if one bank is on private land
and the other’s on public land? It’s codswallop. I’d use night lines and funnel nets and even tickle the trout. If you knew the water well enough, like I did, you’d find
where the fish rested, under rocks and out of the current. I’d lie face down and lower an arm into the stream – slowly, very slowly. I’d let my fingers brush up agin’ the
trout’s side. The fish would move away at first, but my fingers would follow it until it got used to the brushing sensation. Then I’d work along