Sharpshooter

National Trust members are to vote on whether to phase out barbed wire. Its trustees reject the need for a ban, but surely there is an alternative?

Barbed wire: stuff from hell, or an essential tool for livestock management? National Trust members are to vote at the charity’s AGM on 20 October on a resolution to bring in a phased ban on barbed wire on Trust properties. The resolution has been instigated by people horrified at the sight of a deer that had been caught on the top strand of a fence on a Trust property and suffered a nasty death.

The board of trustees of the charity has urged members to reject the resolution, saying that such incidents are rare. They point out that barbed wire is necessary to control farm livestock, especially cattle. The Countryside Alliance supports the trustees’ position.

So is this yet another row between wellmeaning but ignorant townies and those who are better informed about the realities of land management?

I must confess that I loathe barbed wire. Whenever I replace a fence on my farm, I tend to put plain wire on top. Mind you, I have sheep but no cattle and it is the latter that cause problems by leaning over fences and wrecking them. Containing cattle is the main purpose of agricultural barbed wire.

The origins of barbed wire go back to France, in the 1860s, but the first commercially successful versions were designed in the US the following decade. A patent was awarded to Joseph F. Glidden, of Illinois, for his improved design in 1874 and that’s when it really took off. Barbed wire has always been controversial. In the 1880s, it was used to enforce grazing rights across the American West, provoking numerous rows and even battles as part of the so-called Texas Fence Cutting War.

Today, barbed wire is standard specification for the top strand of stock fences. The biggest problems occur when there is a double strand for extra height. Animals that leap over — whether deer or dogs — can be caught when their feet hit the top wire and cause it to fold under the lower one, effectively hanging the hapless creature up by a foot in a steel noose. I once had to shoot a fallow buck that had been caught up like this.

One of my neighbouring farmers angrily cut the barbed wire top strand off a considerable length of wire netting after his favourite sheep dog mistimed a jump and ripped her belly open. And I cannot count the number of times I have seen gundogs injured by barbed wire. As for humans, how many shoots require Guns to cross over barbed wire by means of a rickety stile, or with a fertiliser bag wrapped around the rusty, tetanus-laden spikes? I have known people to walk off a shoot because the place was festooned with awkward barbed wire.

When hunting, the risk to horse and hound is obvious, especially when the vicious strands are contained in hedgerows or on alongside drystone walls. Traditionally, farmers in hunting country signalled the presence of barbed wire with small red signboards on fence posts. Some big estates took more drastic action. I still treasure the letter written by an agent to tenant farmers that I found within the papers of my own farm. Dated late October 1929, the agent wrote: “Please ensure that, as usual, all wire is taken down before the opening meet.”

On a trip to cattle country in France,

I saw very little barbed wire; single hot wire electric fences were de rigueur. What do French farmers know that we don’t?

“How many shoots require Guns to cross over barbed wire by means of a rickety stile?”