A lady killer in the hills of Kingairloch
Of all the many people I have stalked deer with, there is perhaps no other who stands out so well in my memory than Mrs Patricia Strutt of Kingairloch, who died 18 years ago aged 88.
In her day she was one of the finest rifle shots in Scotland, with the claim of killing more stags in her stalking career than any other woman in Britain.
She lived for today’s date, The Day of the Roaring, which marks the beginning of the rut - although when deaf through age and the noise of all the bullets she had fired without ear defenders, she would announce: ‘Not nearly so romantic now that I can’t hear them’.
She was born Patricia Kebbell on October 20, 1911, the daughter of a successful New Zealand sheep farmer. Through her mother she was a descendent of Lochaber’s John Cameron of Corrychoillie – Scotland’s greatest 19th-century cattle and sheep drover, from whom she may well have inherited her love of walking and the hills.
She was educated at Queensgate School in London and at a Swiss finishing school, and got to know the daughters of George Herbert Strutt. They took her on holiday with them to Kingairloch where she met Arthur, Strutt’s son, whom she married in 1930.
The Strutts are descendents of Jedediah Strutt of Derby (1726-1797), the cotton spinner and inventor of the Derby Rig who, with Richard Arkwright, established the cotton manufacturing industry in Britain. This helped make Britain, and the Strutts, very rich.
In 1902 George Herbert Strutt bought the 24,000-acre Kingairloch Estate on the Morvern peninsula. There he set about enlarging the old Maclean of Kingairloch house, building miles of pony paths, several cottages, a dairy, a walled garden and an enormous concrete dam in Glengalmadale from which water could in dry weather be released into the Galma river to improve the fishing. There was also a 150-ton steam yacht, Sanda, for family cruises to St Kilda and Oban. There, she was a well-known sight anchored in the bay, dressed with flags ‘over all’ for the Argyllshire Gathering.
Under the expert eye of Christopher MacRae, head stalker on Kingairloch from 1917 to 1946, Pat Strutt shot her first stag there in 1930, when she was 19. She went on to account for more than 2,000 deer over the next seven decades.
Part of the secret of her skill as a shot lay in the way she would constantly remind herself of her rifle’s trigger pressure and know precisely when it would go off – a tip she picked up from the old estate stalkers. She perfected her aim by shooting at a knot on an old money-puzzle near the house and having what she called “dry pulls” with the unloaded rifle prior to leaving the lodge each morning.
Of medium height and slight build she would follow the stalker’s movements precisely, slipping forward to take the rifle only when beckoned. She was particular about her firing position and never took a shot unless she was entirely steady. Her favourite rest was an old leather binocular case held together with string, or the stalker’s rolled up tweed jacket. She was always meticulous about having a clear line of fire, flattening the vegetation in front of the muzzle with her walking stick.
Pat Strutt kept the empty cases of every bullet where she had killed a stag with one shot and would sometimes spend hours looking for it. If more than one bullet was necessary she was not interested, and would push them into the ground out of sight.
For many years her favourite rifle was a Rigby .275 with open sights. On her 80th birthday, she had a .25-06 rifle with a telescopic sight made for her by the specialist gun-maker David Lloyd of Nottingham. She hazarded that she was probably the only woman in Great Britain who sold her granny bonds and bought a rifle with the proceeds.
Once the rifle had been zeroed for the season she seldom returned to an artificial target and always advised young shots against it, maintaining that it ruined one’s aim.
In her heyday, Pat Strutt was a remarkably consistent and accurate marksman. She preferred to aim for the neck rather than the heart. On one occasion she shot in the neck within five seconds two stags which were lying down 250 yards away.
Pat Strutt excelled at skiing and tennis, and continued skiing at Davos, Switzerland, into her eighties. At the age of 84, she was still climbing the 2,500ft Kingairloch hills, spurning the use of any machinery to carry her there and scornful of a more youthful neighbouring laird who used a helicopter.
For the stalker who took her to the hill, Pat Strutt was the perfect companion, always cheerful and full of enthusiasm for the work ahead. Her long experience had taught her
how to crawl properly and to put up with the discomfort of lying motionless for long periods among bogs and peat banks under the watchful eye of an inquisitive hind. One wrong move, especially among the wild high ground stags, could mean a wasted day.
She enjoyed a story, even at her own expense. On one occasion she mistakenly shot two hinds outright with one bullet. Earlier in the day she had been telling the gardener that he would need to be more careful with his expenditure. As she rose to her feet the stalker muttered to himself: ‘You said you wanted to economise, but this is ridiculous.’
In common with most stalkers she enjoyed a dram round the kitchen table after the larder work was done. Her favourite tipple was Old Inverness, one of the cheapest supermarket whiskies.
Pat Strutt loved fast cars and being driven at high speed – she drove her own car until a few days before she died – and often told a story of flying as a passenger in the co-pilot’s seat of a small two-seater plane in the 1920s. She bullied the pilot into looping the loop, unaware until they were upside down that her seat hadn’t been bolted to the floor and that she was only being held in the cockpit by her seat belt.
Arthur Strutt died in 1977 during a walk in a spruce plantation at Kingairloch. His remains were not discovered until five years later, peacefully resting against a spruce tree.
Pat Strutt shot her last stag in 1999 when she was in her 89th year. She died on June 27, 2000 and her ashes were released on a stag-grazed knoll, overlooking Loch Linnhe and in sight of many of her favourite corries.
In an age which no longer encourages the individual nor one for human eagerness to climb obstacles, it was good to have known her: ‘Always a little further it may be beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow, across that angry or that glimmering sea.’
Those are the sort of lines which come to mind when reflecting on the life of Mrs Patricia Strutt, deer stalker and rifle shot par excellence.