The cogs of nature
Philip Reynolds talks to Rob Collins about his life, his motivations and being a ‘countryside engineer’
“Well I grew up wild and free Walking these fields in my bare feet There wasn’t no place I couldn’t go With a 22 rifle and a fishing pole Well I live in the city but don’t fit in You know it’s a pity the shape I’m in But I got no home and I got no choice Oh Lord have mercy on a country boy”
So sang Don Williams on Lord Have Mercy on a Country Boy. It has resonance for Rob Collins, who though now a fully fledged country boy could be said to have a foot in both camps.
Rob, 49, grew up in modest circumstances in and around Bristol. As he puts it: “My mum’s side of the family were south Bristol ‘characters’. I got embroiled in that for a short time but thought better of it.”
There will be many people who will be grateful that he did, least not many young people, but more of that later. Certainly Rob would admit that his background is what could euphemistically be described as ‘colourful’.
While one half of his family were Bristol dockers, plying their trade at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury, the other half were country people. His grandfather, a D-Day veteran whom he refers to as Pappy, was the biggest influence on the future direction of his life. It was he who encouraged the young Rob in the direction of country sports, and his father, Rob Collins Snr, taught him how to ferret and shoot.
Struggle
His childhood in the 1980s was lived against a backdrop of industrial strikes and strife in the years of the Thatcher government. Rob said: “Things weren’t aplenty when I was young. We genuinely had to worry about food on the table. I was sent out to ferret and came back with rabbits and pigeons.”
Ferreting remains a passion for Rob, who says that if he had to choose just one activity it would be that. That said, he would rather not, as he has a passion for all things country, be it pigeon shooting or wildfowling. He also has a passion for hard work. The day I spoke to him was the first that he’d had off in a while and it does not sit well with him, as he would prefer to be out in the field every waking hour.
If you take the saying ‘no rest for the wicked’ literally, well, Rob must have been have been a very bad lad indeed. He tells me he mostly works seven days a week but it is all in a good cause. One cause particularly close to his heart is the Pass It On Young Sports part of his business. It is a not-forprofit club that introduces youngsters to fieldsports, especially those who may not otherwise have had the opportunity.
Because of his background, Rob feels an affinity with many of the young people he encounters. But don’t think for a second that empathy means he cuts them slack; there are rules to abide by. “If you don’t put the effort in and learn, you will not shoot. You have to earn it. You have to work to stay on it,” he says. It is all about making connections, respect and getting young people (and the not so young, should they want) into the countryside and appreciating what it has to offer through participation in country sports.
Potential
It is also about bringing out the potential in people, a potential that was overlooked in Rob by many, with the notable exceptions of his grandfather and his former headmaster, Mr Rylands, who, says Rob, “took me under his wing”. At a time when many dismissed him as being “thick” because of undiagnosed dyslexia, the head saw something in Rob that up until then only his grandfather, Pappy, had.
Fortunately for Rob, his Uncle Dave had a farm in the northern reaches of Somerset near Bristol. This is where he learned to shoot, and discovered many other ways of the countryside – skills he is now passing on to a new generation. “I was up there for much of my childhood; riding horses, using a .22-250 to shoot foxes.”
The path to becoming a “rough old country boy” was not seamless.
When the time came to earn a living, “my dad talked me into being a postman but it was never my calling”. Other work followed, including a stint as manager of a Granada TV shop.
The direction that Rob’s life had taken was not altogether one he wanted but fieldsports remained a constant. He was renowned for his dogs – mainly lurchers and terriers, which he bred to keep and not to sell. He talks fondly of his old black labrador Brook, whom he describes as having “the heart and soul of a lion. We had a sixth sense with each other.”
Dream
His dream was to be a gamekeeper, something that he nurtured in the background during his various jobs, marriage, divorce, and being a father to three children. The chance came when he qualified for a gamekeeping course at Bicton College in Budleigh Salterton in Devon.
By this time, he had built his reputation as a countryman over many years with his businesses as a pest controller and his events company Really Wild Adventures. By his own admission he has “a finger in lots of pies”. When he is not arranging shooting trips or mentoring young shots, he is enjoying his family club called Woodspring, which started as pigeon shooting for crop protection but incorporates wildfowling. And let’s not forget the game cookbooks, which can be found on his website, theolehedgecreeper.co.uk
These days, Rob has 25,000 acres on his books for pest control on estates throughout Somerset. He credits his pest control business as keeping “the wolf from the door” during these straitened lockdown times. His message to all shooters, of whatever age and experience, is that “conservation should be at the core of what you do.
You put back more than you take out and improve the ecosystem for the good of all wildlife.” He says that in a recent talk he gave at a college he referred to the “different cogs of nature”. He regards himself as a “countryside engineer – my job is to make the cogs the right size and keep the balance between man and nature”.
He acknowledges that “fieldsports, country sports and agriculture saved me”. He is still dreaming, too – of one day owning his own farm and passing it to his Young Sports business.
“I am fortunate to do what I love in many forms. It has taken me a long road to get to here.” Speaking to Rob Collins, you get the impression that the journey has many miles to run yet.
“My job is to keep the balance between man and nature”