Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Ponies to pickups: the pace of change
A 20th-century transport revolution transformed the working life of the gamekeeper, who swapped two or four legs for four-wheel drive
There was a time when life was lived, and travelled, at a slower pace — and it wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things. When I began my gamekeeping career, pretty much everything was done on foot and that’s the way it had been for a very long time before that.
There were a few gamekeepers who used ponies, but given the density of men on the ground up to World War I, the area they had to cover could be done from their home on foot on a daily basis. During the shooting season, early starts were the norm on the grouse moors, with staff having to walk from home to the meeting place for a 7am start. This meant they had to leave home at 6am or even earlier.
A Teesdale resident, Gilbert Watson, told me how a few friends used to walk from Teesdale to Moor House in Cumbria, where they lived and were cared for in a large wooden bothy for the duration of the shoot days — maybe three or four — before walking home, a distance of about 10 miles.
Gilbert, whose family had a farm, used to take a riding pony with him for one of the Guns, but he never told me whether he rode it or simply walked with it on the journey. My guess is that he would have walked with his companions.
Moor House is no longer a grouse moor. The government bought it in 1951 to research what could be done in the uplands to aid food production, among other things. It is now a National Nature Reserve.
Propped up
The annual clay pigeon shoot for gamekeepers, known locally as the Holwick Shoot, has been running for more than 100 years and one of the rules is that everyone participating must be on the ground by 8am. For many, this entailed a 5am or 6am start and, although the odd one rode over the tops, many walked. It was held on New Year’s Day and there are tales of the odd keeper, at the end of the day, being propped on his mount, which was then given some encouragement to go home and take its master with it.
My own memories of keepers from my childhood matched up very well with what I was told by
Sep Fawcett, a retired gamekeeper who is approaching his century. He said that little changed for many years, but when change came, it was
considerable. Sep’s early recollections are that no, or very few, gamekeepers had a vehicle until around 1950.
Prior to that, bicycles were not uncommon in the lowlands, but useless in the uplands. Some had a motorcycle, but these were mainly used for pleasure, not work.
Sidecar
The beatkeeper on the first estate I worked at in Dunsinane, Perthshire, used both a cycle and a scrambler to get around. When I could afford one, I bought a motorbike with a sidecar box for transporting all sorts of bits and pieces, including my dog, who loved sitting up in it on a good day, the wind blowing his ears around.
In the 1950s more keepers were given vehicles by their employers. There were a few early four-wheel drives — Land Rovers that always smelled strongly of petrol, as I recall — but most people were given a van of some description, so off-roading was limited, to say the least.
Those fortunate enough to be given a Land Rover were very often restricted in how much fuel they could use. Indeed, Sep told me he had to buy his own fuel, so he hardly used it. It cost too much to run and wages were not what they are now — far from it. My own experiences were similar in that, until I came to my headkeeper position in 1976, I never had a vehicle supplied by my employers — and if I used my own, I put the fuel in it. Even then, it was a van and none of my staff had anything supplied.
Huge changes came in the next decade or so, in that more and more staff were given vehicles, initially not 4x4s but at least they had something to get around the ground. A keepering friend of around my age told me that, one day, he had been unable to check a trap on the edge of his beat. That evening, he used his own van to get to it, but his headkeeper saw him. He was summoned and told, in no uncertain terms, it was not to happen again — he had to walk. Such was the way of things, uplands or lowlands.
Cheaper foreign four-wheel drives arrived on the scene and increasingly owners considered it more efficient if their men could drive at least part of the way around their beat. Little Suzukis, Hondas and many more became a common sight at keepers’ homes for a decade or two, but then came the pickups.
Driving forward
As with so many things, very little changes for many years, then a lot changes quickly. In 30 years,
I saw keepers go from more or less no transport to almost everyone driving a 4x4. Then came the pickup revolution, which was another brick in the wall alongside quad bikes and MULES. In 30 years, keepers went from the basics to vehicles of every description that could take them to every corner of their ground.
I will exempt quite a bit of Scotland from that previous sentence — there are areas there where even the horse does not go. For the rest, though, many days begin and end on a quad bike or MULE. The early quads were not easy to steer because they simply wanted to go straight ahead. That did not last long, though.
Whether they are filling hoppers or checking traps, many keepers simply ride around these days.
One advantage they have over the previous generations is that their hips may not wear out with overuse. Two new hips fixed my problems, but the next generation may well suffer from all sorts of joint and back issues that are not so easy to correct.
I wonder how many of them would do the job the way we used to have to do it? Also, bear in mind that they are not having to cover the large areas that I did for most of my life.
“When I began my career, pretty much everything was done on foot”