GREEN UNPLEASANT LAND

I hope this book is broadly positive in describing the pleasure that comes from noticing and interacting with wildlife. This chapter is a little different. It’s not so upbeat, and it rather goes against the idea that the countryside is always a beneficial, restor­ative kind of place.

If you spend a lot of time in the countryside, and especially ifyou enjoy exploring offthe beaten track, away from well-managed nature reserves, you’ll stumble upon a different kind of interaction between humans and wildlife from time to time. Whether you regard this as unpleasant will depend on your philosophy. Perhaps you are a supporter of country sports. I do try hard to keep an open mind, but I’m not a big fan and certainly not a participant. I’d rather not get too close to the action. Sometimes, though, avoidance is not an option. Even when you are minding your own business at home, sometimes the action comes to you. That’s where I’ll start.

A few years ago, in late summer, the new day started with the sound of gunfire. As I lay in bed and my senses gradually sharpened, I decided it must be a shotgun. Intermittent explosions, with either one shot or two in quick succession, and then a gap. Two shots indicated that the target had been missed first time and the second barrel was required. The gap was for reloading and waiting for another target to appear within range.

Our home at the time was an isolated farmhouse in the Cambridgeshire Fens, surrounded by arable land. The field on the far side of a channel of water running past the house had been growing oilseed rape until the recent harvest. Now it was a wide expanse of stubble. Most of the pods of tiny, jet-black seeds had been carted away in trailers, but some remained in the stubble, and they had not gone unnoticed.

The lone shooter had concealed himself in a small cloth hide near the field edge. Over his head, Woodpigeons were passing across - flying out from their overnight roost in search of food, eyes optimistically scanning the ground below. Woodpigeons are highly social birds. They move about in flocks and are drawn to feeding sites by the presence of others of their own kind; this is a signal that food is available and the location (supposedly) safe. Such behaviour is exploited by hunters. Plastic ‘decoy’ pigeons are set out to encourage birds flying over to drop down to feed. Judging by the number of shots ringing out, the deception had been working well.

It was mildly irritating to be woken up by gunshots, but things were about to get worse. Another shot, and then a Woodpigeon flopped down into the garden, bouncing a little on the turf. It was the first of several. The birds not killed outright carried on flying and instinctively tried to reach safety. Our garden, with its handful of mature trees, was the only cover for miles around, so that’s where they headed. With their wings shattered by lead they crashed rather than landed, before flapping weakly along the ground towards the hedge - the instinct for survival intact, if not full use of their wings.

It was left to me to deal with these birds. The shooter hadn’t wanted to give the game away by emerging from his hide and, in any case, he was on the other side of the water. Having dispatched the two birds I’d managed to catch by swinging their heads hard against a tree trunk (the only option I could think of), I drove around to the far side of the drain to have a word. The stubble around his hide was littered with the dead and the dying. He cleared them up as we talked, irritated that his sport had been interrupted but nevertheless all but filling his car boot with pigeons.

My gripe was not so much about the rights and wrongs of pigeon control. Here the pigeons were gleaning unwanted waste, but they can cause major damage to growing crops. It’s just that killing wildlife is not really my thing. I didn’t enjoy such close proximity to the action, and I especially disliked having to chase dying birds around my own garden in order to deliver the coup de grace. I pictured the likely scene had my young children been there to see this; I could imagine their stricken faces as crippled, bloodstained wildlife started to plummet from the skies.

Much the same scenario can play out regularly if you live close to a Pheasant shoot. Simon Barnes wrote about it in his book On The Marsh. He lives in rural Norfolk, and every Saturday through the shooting season he and his son Eddie are on high alert for the sound of gunfire. Their horses get distressed when shooting starts in the adjacent field. So they must be brought back to their stable, ideally before the shooting begins, to be comforted through the barrage of gunfire and the gentler thud of Pheasant on grass.

The killing of Pheasants for sport is so widespread that even if you don’t live near a shoot there’s a good chance of encoun­tering the fallout when out and about in the landscape. Occasionally our Cocker Spaniel finds a wounded Pheasant on a walk, hunkering down in the hedge, able to flap limply across the ground but incapable of flight. These birds are simply waiting for death having managed to elude the retrieving dogs on shoot day. If I’m able to catch up with them, I put them out of their misery. It’s the decent thing to do but, once again, it’s not much fun.

Our dog also regularly locates piles of dead Pheasants dumped along the local lanes. I’d rarely noticed this phenomenon before becoming a dog owner, because the bodies are frequently well concealed by vegetation. But Teazel picks up the scent and dives into the nettles and rank grass to investigate. Countless hundreds of carcasses are dumped in this way locally, full of lead shot, unappealing (and unsafe) as food - nothing more than the unwanted spoils of a session of target shooting.

Shooting Woodpigeons and Pheasants is perfectly legal, although, to borrow a shooting expression, it’s considered ‘poor form’ to shoot so close to a garden. But our old home also provided opportunities to watch illegal activities. Hare coursing is common in the Fens. I saw it dozens of times over the years and the large, open fields surrounding the house were well suited to this activity. Come the autumn, when the harvest was done and the Brown Hare became visible once again, I couldn’t help but start to look out for the men with their short leads and long dogs.

Hare coursers walk the fields, their dogs under close control. If a Hare is seen the dogs are quickly slipped from their restraints and the chase begins. The enjoyment (so I’m told) is in the skill of the dogs, the competition between them, and finding out whether or not they can match the speed and agility of our fastest land mammal. Often they can. Large sums of money are apparently wagered on the outcome.

Hare coursing is taken seriously by the Cambridgeshire police rural crime team. I must have phoned them twenty times or more over the years and more often than not they sent cars to attend. Sometimes several police vehicles appeared within a few minutes, blue lights flashing, sending the criminals scrambling to recover their dogs and get back to their vehicles. I had a good vantage point from my study window upstairs and watched some spectacular car chases unfold along the local lanes and byways, and sometimes, in desperation, across the stubble fields.

On one occasion several men scattered on foot in order to avoid police as they fanned out across a field. Mirroring the wounded Woodpigeons, one ended up seeking the only cover on offer. As I came out into the garden there he was, crouched underneath the Leylandii hedge flanking our lawn, his back against our fence and his dog sat calmly next to him. Wary of repercussions, I didn’t want to give him away in an obvious manner. So unseen, I walked quietly out of the gate and gestic­ulated at the nearest uniform, silently attracting his attention; then, almost whispering, I guided him to the spot.

Since we moved to Devon, we’ve seen no more hare coursing, and rather few Hares, but there is no escaping the age-old battle between dog and wild mammal. The quarry of interest in this area is red rather than brown: the Red Fox and Red Deer. The Hunting Act of 2004, in theory banning hunting with dogs, has, it seems, yet to cut through. Loopholes are exploited, but mainly, the legislation is simply ignored. Our house is only a mile or so from the Tiverton Staghounds’ Kennels. When the wind is in the right direction, we can hear the baying of hounds at feeding time or when they are about to set out on a hunt. During the autumn deer rut it’s possible to hear stags roaring and hounds wailing from their kennels at the same time. It makes me wonder if the deer or dogs ever make the connection as their voices float out across the fields. Judging by the apparently relaxed behaviour of the deer I’ve observed, it would appear not.

Fox hunting is also common locally, and casual encounters with a hunt of one kind or another are a near weekly occurrence from late summer through to the spring. The police response offers the starkest of contrasts with hare coursing. At first, I phoned them with information about illegal activity, as I’d done many times in the Fens.

The hunts do have some support locally, especially among landowners and, more widely, among older people. But opinion is sharply divided. Based on my unscientific straw poll of local people, when the subject comes up, opposition heavily outweighs support, even in this highly rural area. Many people are horrified that it continues so long after it was banned, and more appalled still that it is almost always ignored by the police. Every so often a new video emerges of a stag being chased into someone’s garden, or a Fox being swallowed up by a pack of hounds. The odd cat goes missing, livestock are spooked (or worse) and a Border Terrier cross was killed a few years ago in our nearest village. The staghounds came into the dog owner’s garden, the pack mentality kicking in when the pet dog sought to defend its patch. It stood no chance, despite the best efforts of the owner to intervene. Substantial hush money, complete with non-disclosure agreement, was offered and in this case refused, so perhaps this happens more often than we might think. A court case followed but the judge dismissed it, noting, somewhat insensitively you might think, that ‘dogs will be dogs’.

I have great respect for the police and the difficult job they do. I was thoroughly impressed by the way the Cambridgeshire rural crime team tried to clamp down on hare coursing. But I have a little less respect for the force than I once did. Hunting in Devon is a criminal activity that is highly organised and highly visible. It takes place frequently amid much fanfare. It is the subject of recent legislation to ban it, and is widely opposed by the public. Yet a tacit agreement seems to have been reached between hunts and police that their activities can proceed with minimal, if any, threat of enforcement. The police appear to have picked a side, happy to accept the obvious pretence that hounds are following a laid trail rather than chasing wildlife. Knock on the door of any rural house in mid-Devon and, hunt supporter or not, the occupant will be able to tell you what really happens. Good intelligence would not be hard to come by if only the will was there to gather it.

Is the difference between approaches to fox hunting and hare coursing the fact that one tends to involve wealthy, influential people and the other is more often a pastime for those at the other end of the wealth spectrum? I’d like to think that can’t possibly be true. But, based on my own experiences, I struggle to see any other plausible explanation.

We have not yet had a hunt come through our garden, though that’s mainly because our track has a gate and the garden is stock fenced to keep out the cows. But we’ve seen the huge stag hounds come lolloping across the adjacent fields several times, and once I saw a Fox run across the same field with the hounds not too far behind. That was one of the first incidents I witnessed and, full of righteous indignation, I immediately phoned the police. No cars, or helicopters, were dispatched.

Local people who love wildlife and enjoy living close to it are worn down by these illegal activities, taking place week in, week out. Their views are easy to ignore. They have no voice, or at least not one that seems to count for very much. They endure the sights and sounds of organised crime on their doorstep because there is no other choice. But the local countryside is tainted as a result, its restorative power diminished, and faith in the workings of our law enforcement bodies sorely tested.

There are other things you may come across, and wish you hadn’t, if you are keen on wildlife and don’t especially enjoy seeing it killed. If you stray from nature reserves and footpaths (and sometimes if you don’t) you’re likely to witness the varied approaches for tackling creatures deemed problematic for gamebirds, agriculture or species of conservation concern. There are snares for Foxes, tunnel traps for Stoats, and cleverly designed cages to catch Carrion Crows, Magpies and even Badgers. If you live near a grouse moor and make use of the suggestion from earlier in this book to follow a stream, you may see a trap every fifty metres or so. Logs are placed over the water to provide handy crossing points, and in the middle of each sits a trap, ensuring that Stoats and other small predators do not reach the other side.

Badgers enjoy full legal protection but exceptions are made in order to limit the spread of bovine tuberculosis to cattle. We learnt recently that our local countryside has been included in one of the cull zones that now cover large parts of the country. In these places, licences are issued allowing up to 80% of an area’s Badgers to be killed, by trapping or shooting. Now, every time I walk past one of the local setts, I wonder whether it will still be active, or if I might find one of the cages used in the cull, baited with peanuts. It has deterred me from going out to watch the animals in the evening because seeing them would only add to the sense of loss if they were subsequently killed off.

I read recently about an elderly woman, living alone after the death of her husband and restricted to her home in Somerset during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She has been feeding the local Badgers in her garden for years and has come to know many of them individually through their behaviour and distinctive facial patterns. She takes great pleasure in looking out for them each evening. Or at least that’s how things were. She too lives in a cull zone and has now lost ‘her’ Badgers. Another human casualty of the cull - and a further diminishment of the joy and solace that wildlife can bring.

The killing of wildlife as a pastime, or because it impacts on other things, is a contentious and complex subject. I’m not saying we should necessarily stop doing it, but surely the full impacts on everyone in society must be taken into account. I often hear that because we live in a free country it’s up to individuals to make up their own mind and act accordingly. And yet, in our densely populated landscapes, the choices made by individuals do not play out in isolation; they affect other people, sometimes in ways that impinge on their freedom to enjoy wildlife and time spent outdoors.

I’m reminded of an experience described by Richard Mabey, one that influenced his decision to finally speak out about the rights of non-hunters after years of staying out of the debate. He was guiding a party of primary schoolchildren around a National Nature Reserve in Norfolk, only to have the day ruined when a hail of gunfire resulted in ‘a lake covered with dead and wounded birds, and a group of frightened and distressed children, bewildered at what right these men had to kill birds on a nature reserve and take away their freedom to enjoy birds peaceably’. An experience wrecked by noise, death and wounding, with who knows what long-term consequences. Then there is the old lady in Somerset, sat alone of an evening, looking out into the stillness of her empty garden.