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THE GAMEKEEPER

Hi, my name is Andy Malcolm and I have the best job in the world!

Do you remember “Monarch of The Glen” on TV? and “Golly” the gamekeeper?  Well that’s me.  Fortunately the similarity ends at the job title. However there is another similarity this series had with reality- they were struggling for survival!  Now the reason you’re reading this in the first place is that you have a love of Scotland’s wild places, right?  Well have you ever stopped to wonder just  how wild they are?

Most of the Scottish highlands are privately owned. These private estates are normally of several thousand acres each and behind the scenes there is a small army of gamekeepers who maintain buildings, vehicles, roads, tracks, paths, fences, drains, rivers, lochs, hills and moors.  It requires a lot of effort and a lot of money.

So where does the money come from?

In the past, it was generally accepted that if you were rich enough to own a chunk of Scotland you were rich enough to pay for its upkeep.  However these days more and more lairds need their estates to “Pay their own way” .......  not easy if your estate is nothing but rock, bog and wind-blasted moor from end to end.

However, there are two animals which can do very well in just the environment I’ve described - the Red Grouse and the Red Deer.  These two animals are the bread and butter of most Highland sporting estates.  But they both have their problems.

Which is where I come in.

The Red Grouse is, economically, the more important of the two.  On the estate I work for a week of grouse shooting for eight people brings in more money than six months of venison sales.  It is also a bird that cannot be artificially reared and therefore it is a vital part of my job to ensure that conditions are as right for grouse as I can get them. This means providing a mosaic of different heather lengths, through controlled burning, and keeping the predators that I am allowed to control to a minimum. These are:- fox, feral cat, mink, stoat, weasel, rat, carrion crow, hooded crow, magpie, herring gull, lesser black-backed gull and greater black-backed gull.

For the record, those predators protected by law include golden eagle, peregrine falcon, buzzard, hen harrier and wildcat and there are a host of smaller raptors and mammals that will take eggs or chicks given the chance - who’d be a grouse?!

Red deer have  the opposite “problem”. They have no predators. And this means that unless their numbers are controlled by us, they will quickly outgrow their environment. When this happens the heather moorland gets decimated; large numbers of deer will die through disease or starvation in winter; and deer will “push their boundaries” and end up on lower ground - on roads and in crops.

To prevent this, all the estates in an area count their deer on the same day each year. From this census each estate can work out what the next season’s cull should be, depending on whether they wish the population to rise, fall or remain the same.

That is the easy bit.

Next time you see a herd of deer, try and work out how you would get to within 150 metres of them. (remember their eyesight is every bit as good as ours and if you get upwind they will smell you a mile away).  I can guarantee that, unless you are very lucky, the solution will require a huge detour.

Now do that every working day for 6 months, add winter and dial in the fact that every beast you shoot has to be dragged, carried, lifted onto or into horse, boat, or Landrover and taken miles back to a larder where each animal is dressed out before being collected by a game dealer.

Starting to get the picture?

Gordon asked me to do this piece to explain how conflict between walkers and gamekeepers might be avoided. What I didn’t want to do is start laying down the law without first giving you the rationale about what we do. Now that you’ve read this I hope you feel that you’d like to try and help those of us who work the hills. Here’s how you can :-

  • Read any information signs. They will usually advise of shooting seasons; sensitive areas and preferred routes.

  • Keep to designated paths where possible.

  • If you want to go off the beaten track, would it be possible to do the walk outwith the shooting season or on a Sunday? (no shooting on Sundays).

  • Look out for signs of shooting activity and if you see/hear signs would it be possible to avoid that area?

  • Try to avoid disturbing deer.

  • From April to August PLEASE KEEP DOGS ON A LEAD (did you know that even if you “put up” a covey of fledgling chicks in a high wind they will be so scattered as to lose their parents and they will almost certainly die). Remember ALL upland birds and animals have their young at this time of year.

  • Don’t tamper with any traps or equipment you may come across

The grouse season starts on 12 August and, in Scotland, is usually finished by mid September. A day of grouse shooting is usually pretty obvious. If you can’t avoid it, please try, if possible, to wait until the drive is over (when the beaters reach the shooters).  If the shooters are walking and shooting, give them a wide berth and KEEP DOGS ON A LEAD.

Stag stalking starts on 1 July and closes on 20 October. Most stag stalking is done with paying guests so this is another very important time for estates financially.  Follow points1-7 if you can.

Hind stalking starts 21 October and closes on 15 February. Most estates compromise between having paying guests (more money but reduced cull) and having the keeper do the cull. Not such an important time financially but this is the key season for controlling the deer population.  Again follow points 1-7 if possible.

I understand that a lot of people reading this will not agree with blood sports. To them I would just like to point out that the work we do to encourage grouse and control deer benefits all manner of other species- particularly ground nesting birds. And the money that the “toffs” spend on the estates goes to pay for the upkeep of these places for the rest of the year and thus preserves the Scottish Highlands as we know them today.

To close, I’ll leave you with a question to ponder - if sporting estates fail to survive, what are the alternative uses for our hills? - Forestry?  Sheep farming?  Off-road driving?  Caravan parks?  Housing?  Chalets?  Picnic areas?  Quad biking?  Clay pigeon shooting?  Mountain bike trails?  Fisheries? Peat extraction?  Gravel pits?  Quarries?  Wind farms?  Hydro schemes?……….

If you would like to follow Andy's working life as a gamekeeper then visit his blog at www.naturesgrip.blogspot.com

 
 

 

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