By John Ferguson (Pedlar)
Index — Chapters: 1 — 2 — 3 — 4 — 5
Chapter Five – The Future
When I look at my great grand-children I have to wonder what kind of Scotland they will come to, should they visit in twenty-odd years time, from their home in Germany. By that time the conservation groups may have destroyed the beautiful countryside that I grew up in with their plans to turn this wilderness back two thousand years into a wood covered countryside devoid of any wild life.
The conservation groups want to turn the country into a tree and shrub-covered landscape. Gone would be the beautiful scenery with its shades and colours that are so loved by the tourist and which makes all Scots proud of this land that they call home. The plan is to reduce the red deer population by any means they can, not by skill and selective culling as a good stalker would do, but by mass slaughter by driving them into a corner with helicopters then firing at them from all angles. The panic that this must have created in the poor beasts, trapped and killed and taking numerous bullets before they died. Also the red deer commission have passed a ruling that if red deer are found in a regenerated wood, the landowner can kill those deer no matter what time of the year it is, be it in the shooting season or not, stags, hinds or calves would all have to go.
Recently I had a young woman from Tomatin come to my house and we got talking about Tomatin and I commented about the changes that had taken place in my lifetime. She told me that she and her partner had looked around a twenty mile radius of Inverness and chose Tomatin because it had everything that they wanted in a village – a shop, a restaurant, a pub and a post office but by the time they built their house three years later, there were none of those facilities left – that’s just how quick a village life can change. No longer will the hill shepherd be seen on the hill working his dogs or the stalker as he tests his skills against the ever alert stag.
I know that the public think on stalking as a cruel sport but it’s the stalkers job to see that there is no cruelty and that death is swift and clean. I remember one time being on a stalk with a guest and because of the terrain and because the beasts were on the move grazing, the stalk took all day. When we finally got to the position when a shot could be taken, the stag heard the click of the bolt as the guest prepared to shoot. It ran off and with that, the guest stood up and raised his cap to salute the stag saying “Good day to you sir, I hope we meet again.” To me that was what deer-stalking was all about, a challenge of skill between man and beast.
The more wood that covers the ground the less there is for the deer and sheep to graze on. The Forestry commission have 1,600,000 acres of forest without the private land owners contribution which could be twice as much again. Therefore the problem is not with the red deer but with the reduction of their habitat. The Crown Estate planted a strip of about 50 acres of rough land with hard wood trees but they failed to clear the ground of wild life which resulted in one red deer hind being left in the fenced in area. Now, five years down the line, that one hind has reduced the wood to one or two hundreds trees. If a single deer can clear a wood then how do, the conservation groups expect to keep a whole herd of deer out of an unfenced regenerated piece of land without killing them all.
There are even some of the conservation groups that want to bring back wolves to the Scottish hills as a way of controlling the deer. They quote Yellowstone Park in America as an example of how this would work. However they failed to mention that this is an area bigger than the whole of the British Isles or that in the winter the wolves come down to farm land and cause destruction among farm animals. This slaughter does not matter to them as their only interest is in bringing back to the hills and glens any animal or bird that kills. Yet they fought to have hunting with dogs outlawed by the courts. There is nothing more natural than a pack of dogs hunting to kill. The only difference is that man can control a pack of dogs whereas he would have no control over a pack of wolves.
To see the vast forests that the conservationists talk about, you will have to go up into the hills to the peat bogs where you will see the remnants of those forests, six feet below the peat and on closer examination the well preserved stumps and fallen trees. You will see that the trees had been burned and not cut by man but set on fire by nature, most likely lighting storms. Go up above 1500ft to the top of any hill where there is no sign of any vegetation due to the wind. So how the conservationists think they will be able to cover the hills with trees without destroying all the wild life thank GOD I won’t be alive to see that day.
One of the greatest dangers to all wildlife is the increase in the tick. Many of the private land lords tried to experiment with the removal of sheep from the hills in order to get better bags of grouse. This was carried out but with disastrous results from which many estates did not recover, due to the loss of grouse bags affected by the lack of insects that breed on the sheep droppings. Also there was an increase in the tick population which attacked the young grouse covering them with hundreds of ticks and draining them of their life blood. Ticks were allowed to breed to such an extent that the situation got out of control and became a danger to all living things that moved on the moors including the lives of humans who can contract Lymes and Louping-ill diseases. If the sheep are to be removed from the hills in the numbers that will be needed to allow the regeneration of the trees then visitors will have to be inoculated against those diseases before they can enter this country. This is something that they never had to do before but will happen if proper control is not kept on those blood sucking insects.
One of the worst offenders that will lead to the destruction of this wonderful country of Scotland will be the R.S.P.B. and their long term plan which is like something out of a horror story. They intend to introduce all kind of raptors with no thought of control or culling plan. They say that the raptors do not kill and that they live on carrion. If this is the case why don’t they put down carcases for them to feed on? Already the folly of their ways can be seen, although it is only shepherds and gamekeepers that are able to see the difference. They are the people that are out in all weathers all the year round and who see what is happening around them. How the waders such as Golden Plovers, Lapwings, Red and Green Shanks have all declined in numbers over the last fifty years. Over the last twenty to thirty years the first decline in raptors has started to happened, the Kestrel has almost disappeared from our skies. This once most popular bird of prey is almost gone, driven out by their much bigger cousins the Buzzard, Red Kites, and Eagles, all hunting the same ground with the weaker species being pushed out.
As a lad, nature had its place and the gamekeepers kept them in their place. The large raptors were kept to the high hills by selective culling although there again there was plenty of carrion for them to feed on. Sheep and deer were kept to the high hills where there were always casualties among sheep going into bogs or over cliffs or even being buried in snow, such was the nature of sheep on the hills. Now it is against the law to have carrion lying about leaving raptors having to kill to survive.
Before the R.S.P.B. bought the Abernethy Estate, my father-in-law had the farm next to that ground. I remember that I would go over to the forest for winter supplies and the main wildlife that I saw was Capercaillie. This would be about 1965 or ‘66 and at that time the gamekeepers and the farmers had an annual cull of the males of this large wood grouse, killing between 50 and 60 birds each year which is more than the R.S.P.B can get in their annual count today. When the R.S.P.B. took over the Abernethy Estate they took over a healthy stock of Capercaillies and the first thing that they did was to go around the neighbouring farms to warn them that there would be NO killing of any vermin on their Estate.
When you think of the damage that that ruling must have had on all ground-nesting birds which had enemies such as Foxes, Carrion Crows, Pine Martins, and all sort of raptors – in all I can count seven ground predatory animals. Then there are the winged predators and it was little wonder that within a few years the Capercaillies were all but wiped out. The R.S.P.B. tried to cover this blunder by blaming the deer fencing, making out that the birds were so stupid that they flew into the fence. Yet in all the years that I had walked around the fences I never once saw a dead bird there.
The following letter was written in the 1970’s by a man who was born in Strathdearn about the start of the 1900’s and I should like to quote the letter to show, that even 100 years ago country people were worried about what was happening to their country. I once heard an old gamekeeper from Strathspey quoted as having said, “when the hill was white with sheep it was black with grouse”. This is a very unfashionable view nowadays, but one with which I agree and can support with evidence from grouse moors which I knew well and where I earned my first wages as a grouse-beater.
SHEEP VERSUS GROUSE
‘The Prince of Wales and King George V were shooting guests at the Moy Hall Estate which was owned by The MacKintosh of MacKintosh in 1922 and 1923 respectively. On the first days shooting in 1922 over 900 brace of grouse were taken. The following year’s bag was slightly down, but over the whole season it amounted to thousands of brace. The head gamekeeper persuaded ‘the MacKintosh’ that if the sheep were put off the hill the numbers of grouse would greatly increase. So the crofter’s sheep were put off the hill and fenced into a small part of it, leaving thousands of acres unstocked. The result was that grouse stocks decreased year by year except on the area which had been allocated to the crofters. It was a very difficult pill for the MacKintosh and his Head Gamekeeper to swallow, but the evidence was staring them in the face. It was decided to put sheep back on the hill and so approximately 250 B.F Wedders were bought each spring and disposed of before the following spring. Now 250 Wedders made no impact on thousands of acres and so the decline continued to the extent I believe, that that ground is no longer shot over. There are of course other more recent reasons for this decline which I shall mention later.
Another part of the MacKintosh of MacKintosh’s estate was Mealmore which was also an excellent grouse moor but smaller, having three game keepers whereas Moy had seven. The shooting here was always let. There were eight farming tenants each with 250- 500 ewes and hoggs on the hill, and large numbers of grouse were taken there long after Moy went into decline. There were never any complaints about sheep and the keepers and farmers were on the best of terms. On many occasions I saw 150 or more sheep going in front of the beaters until the order was given, “let the sheep go back boys.” Mealmore’s second day’s shooting was on Dalmagarry and Invereen, a hill of approximately three thousand acres. In 1922, the last year that Vickers had the shooting there, over 660 brace were picked up and many more by the gamekeepers next day.
Today there is only one tenant farmer on all that land, and the owner, no doubt supported by some experts complains that his sheep are responsible for the scarcity of grouse.
Another grouse moor on which I was often on as a boy and a youth is Kyllachy at Tomatin. I believe that it was consistently one of the best in the North while Malcolm Douglas was gamekeeper there. There were then seven tenanted farms in addition to the home farm. Today there is only one tenant farm and the grouse seem to have gone with the sheep.
There were other hills that I was on which produced excellent bags, such as, Dalmigavie, Balnespick and Glenkirk, all of which carried large sheep flocks. Sheep therefore cannot be blamed for the scarcity of grouse as many conservationists and other experts would have us believe. Sadly, they appear to be gaining the ear of Parliament and the Department of Agriculture. At the risk of entering a lion’s den, I will give what I consider to be the real reasons for the decline of the grouse and other ground-nesting birds.
Firstly, there is heather-burning. In the past sixty years there has been little or no heather-burning worthy of the name, or as I saw it done in my early years. In those days the hills were properly farmed by the keepers and farmers and the fruit of that work was very rewarding. No heather burning was allowed at the end of the year or in January or February because heather burning at that time of the year takes years to recover. Whereas when burned in late March, or April, it can produce shoots of 2 or 3 inches long that same year. This excellent feeding for both grouse and sheep, which is obvious from the way in which they gravitate on these burnt areas.
Blaeberries and crowberries which appeared to be a special delicacy for birds such as grouse and golden plover were then very plentiful. Many of a feed of them were enjoyed by the beaters in those days of long ago. Today the heather is generally so long that it shuts out the sunlight restricting the berries growth and ripening. A fire then was generally 200yds wide and often wider, continuing as far as possible usually ending only when it reached a burn or peat hags. Those big fires were necessary to ensure that thousands of acres were burned in proper rotation.
Grouse always nested in short heather, very often beside a sheep path. It was a common sight to see little chicks running along those paths picking up grit and heather shoots. Nowadays fires often extend to a little more than half an acre. Another reason for burning in April was that ticks were on or near the surface and a good fire made a big dent in their numbers. Also if the heather was burnt in the back end it often singed, rendering all the labour of little value.
Another and perhaps the main reason for the loss of our native bird is the great increase of predators. Birds-of-prey must have something fresh every morning for breakfast. They have no natural enemies since they are now protected they have gained ascendancy over their quarry.
It is now a thing of the past in this district to see the lark as she “singing sores and soaring sings”, straight into the air until lost from sight. Of course we are told that they are disappearing because they are considered a delicacy in Italy, but this must be a very small part of the problem. Then, there are the four-legged predators which have become so plentiful. Badgers abound everywhere, and nightly rake the ground over a wide area. Together with foxes and wildcats they make it difficult for groundnesting birds to survive. Also enjoying a population explosion are pine martens that find their living both on the ground and in trees. They are particularly vicious, and if they gain access to poultry or game-birds pens, will often leave nothing alive. Now I’m not suggesting that those creatures should be exterminated but a balance has to be maintained, and I believe that the pendulum has now swung too far towards their protection. Peewits which were once so numerous in our Straths and Glens in the spring and summer months are now more or less extinct.
Now I have no doubt that what I have said will provoke reaction from certain quarters, but before they begin an argument I would like then to explain how those hills sustained such large populations of sheep and grouse between the wars and for many decades previously, many of those hills are now populated by bird watchers and their ilk who are neither natives nor descendants of natives, but are anti almost everything that is for the benefit of our native country. It seems it is their bent to get an honest hard-working gamekeeper into trouble. In conclusion I must mention the man who was, perhaps, the “founding-father “of modern” conservationism”
Desmond Tompson who came over from Ireland in the 1930’s if I remember correctly, and settled in the Aviemore area where he gained a seat on the Inverness County Council. He held extreme left-wing views, and was violently anti landlord and shooting tenant where as the word ‘Gamekeeper’ was to him like a red rag to a bull. He tried to project himself as a champion of the down-trodden, but I could never see him in that light, for I was on the District Council during his last years on the County Council. He was the leader of those who encouraged like-minded M.P.s to sponsor conservationist legislation and to our countryside’s great loss, they succeeded’.
William MacQueen
That was written by a man of 90 who, was writing about his fears on the decline of wild life over 40 years ago. Now over a 100 years from when he first made his observations regarding the destruction of his home land, that worry is shared by the true people of the countryside today who wonder where this destruction that is happening around the country will stop.
The RSPB have introduced even more raptors to add to the burden of the wild life. There are now Red Kites, White Tail Eagles and Magpies which have moved up from the south adding still even more pressure to a fragile wild life. Every one of those raptors is destructive and a danger to the countryside. We hear so much from the RSPB and about how they are helping to enhance the wild life but all that I see is them spending vast amounts of money providing jobs for themselves and spending very little on the countryside. They take the credit for the return of the Osprey. However the true heroes of this event are the farmers and land owners that introduced stocking ponds and lochs with trout, providing the feeding for this fish-eating bird whereas the RSPB, with all their lochs on their land, don’t stock any, depending on others to supply the food that keep the birds coming back year after year.
They are always ready to tell the public that it is modern farming methods that are responsible for the decline in the small birds which I would agree with. However they have the opportunity to do something about it but choose not to. They have bought land with farms and crofts on it which they could have reverted back to the old ways of farming, creating a haven for some of the almost extinct song birds, choosing to be more concerned with the growing of trees on land that our forefathers worked hard to make so that they could feed their families .
There are reports that Beavers have been introduced to the Argyll countryside. The damage that could happen if they were to escape and get into the river system would be devastating. It has been reported that beavers have escaped into the River Tay, one of Scotland most important salmon rivers. Instead of this being considered a disaster, Scottish Natural Heritage have chosen to leave them for three years to see what damage they will do, if any.
By the time the three years are up the damage may be too great for any hope of recovering and the outcry that a beaver cull would cause will stop it happening just as has happened with the grey squirrel today even although they are a danger to the red squirrel. There has not been a bird or animal introduced into the countryside that has not ended up a damager and a pest. Mink, Grey Squirrels and Crayfish are some that even the conservationists wish that they could get rid of. Even the humble Hedgehog, after being introduced to the Western Isles had to be captured and removed to save ground-nesting birds whose nests were being raided for the eggs by this seemly innocent little creature. The hedgehog is one of the worst egg thieves of ground-nesting birds. However the animal lovers from the city shouted the loudest and had the planned cull stopped, forcing the hand of Scottish Natural Heritage to change their plans from a cull to having them captured and then released on the mainland to carry on their devastation among other already harassed ground-nesting birds.
Conservationists have too much power over what happens in the countryside now. It’s sad when someone who was born locally and applies for planning permission to build a home on a small piece of land which he owns is confronted by conservationists who shout about some rare moss or spider on the site and therefore prevent such a build. Yet should some absentee landlord want to cover his whole estate in trees there is no thought of plant or wild life and the damage this will do. They do this with the blessing of several governments – the Scottish, the British, the European and now the National parks all are willing to put tax payers money for the planting of trees be it on farm land or hill. There is no thought to the work that went into making agricultural land. The stones and tree roots that had to be shifted all by hand and the sweat that went into claiming that land, to build dry stone dykes to provide food that is badly needed when half the world is starving. We in Scotland have the climate, the ground and the know-how to grow food but those opportunities are to be destroyed by people who want to turn the clock back thousands of years.
Forty years ago, travelling along the road between Nethybridge and Tomintoul, it was possible to shoot ten or a dozen white hares on a night. Now you cannot see one. Twenty years ago white hare drives around Scotland would be counting the hares shot in their hundreds, all caused by the removal of the shepherd and his sheep.
Visitors, to my home often comment on the peace and quiet of the surroundings and how nice it is to sit in the quiet. Sadly this is the one thing that spoils being in the country – the lack of noise. No lapwings, no small birds, nothing, no longer do we hear the sound of the country-side. Over twenty years ago my son’s Mother and Father-in-law came to visit from Harrogate and were awakened at dawn by the sound of birds singing.
The song of a Song Thrush singing from the top of a tree is sadly missed as is the noise of lapwings that have been disturbed by a fox on the prowl – those sounds no longer are to be heard and probably will never be heard again.
The following lines I wrote of the damage that incomers did to Scotland and will continue to do so –
Farewell ye proud magnificent beast,
Oh Monarch of the Glen,
No more you roam where eagles soar,
The work o’ conservation men.
Well you remember in days long gone,
On hills and glens so wild and free,
You grazed with crofters’ sheep and coo,
Till Southern men discovered thee.
They came with money, Power and wealth,
To burn the crofter from his home, The poor man left to starve and die,
So rich men’s sheep could freely roam.
Your death was called “the Sport of Kings,”
The rich men’s sporting game,
Tho’ should the poor man kill to eat,
They banished him from land and hame.
Your winter grazing was soon cut off,
With forests thick and dark, Your hills and glens reduced in size, Less room for you, the grouse, the hare, the lark.
Now Conservation men have plans,
To save the Scottish pine, So they will slaughter without pause, The stag, the calf, the pregnant hind.
They plan to reinstate the wolf,
To hunt you from your glen,
No compassion shall be shown,
By self-righteous Conservation Men.
So farewell ye proud magnificent beast,
No more we’ll hear you roar,
When wolves are running in their packs, The Red deer shall be no more.
Pedlar
For me it is sad to return to Tomatin and see it as it is now. Gone are the days when one could walk from Strathdearn to Strathnairn without seeing a tree. The last tree on the hill was at the Colonel’s grave and as a boy this wildness was my playground. Gone also are the days when children took off their boots on the first of May to go bare-footed for the summer and their feet would become so tough that they could walk anywhere over heather and rocks, nothing was too hard for a child’s feet.
Another thing that we would do was if we saw a cow shit in a field we would run through it in our bare feet feeling the sticky hot mass as it squeezed through your toes then we’d run through a burn for the sudden shock of the cold water as it washed your feet clean. Gone are the days when a child could run around all day, free to do as they liked, to go to any of the burns with a tin of worms in their pocket and catch their supper if they got hungry. It was great fun to light a fire and cook the fish on the end of a stick when a boy always had a knife in his pocket and a catapult in the other. When you could go right up into the hills to see a bird of prey but got mobbed by lapwings when walking through the moors and fields. Seagulls and terns would nest on the shingle at the side of the river. To walk through a wood of Scotch pines and have the thrill of Cross Bills throw cones from the trees after they had eaten the seeds from them. When you were woken up, in the morning by the dawn chorus, of Yellow Hammers, Song Thrushes, Blackbirds and Robins.
That dawn chorus will never be heard again. When we as children would set a farm riddle sitting up on a slim stick with a long piece of string attached to it and then hide. Under the riddle some seeds were laid to attract the birds. As they fed on the seeds the string was pulled trapping the birds under the riddle. We would then count how many species we had caught before letting them go. I can hear the RSPB shouting about cruelty but let them prove to me that their way of netting birds to ring them is a less cruel way of catching birds or less stressful than the old way of catching them. In days gone by there were always a lot of birds of different species around houses and farms. House sparrows, blackbirds, yellow hammers, robins, thrushes, three finches and siskins were just some of the birds that all fed happily with no fear of a sparrow hawk or any other bird of prey. Today the most dangerous place that a small bird can be is on a bird table.
To go back home to Tomatin and no longer see all my friends there, so many of them having passed away and who died young. To think that I had been given a good home by a great family and that I am the only one of them left. Freddie, my best man who I miss so much was about the only reason left for me to go back to Tomatin. After Alistair had gone Freddie and Kathleen were the only ones that I could reminisce with on the great times that we had, as children growing up in Tomatin in days gone.
THE END