Rabbiting on with Buccleuch

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Rabbiting on with Buccleuch

Rabbiting on at the Buccleuch. Photograph by Kirsten Scheuerl.

By Jonathan Young

Monday, 08 September 2008

There's rabbit fever, woodcock on the wing and insanely high partridges – enough to keep Jonathan Young busy on the Queensberry estate.

Ferreting doesn’t come with the usual mix of Lycra shorts and designer shades that shout extreme sport. But here we are, in conditions that warrant ice-picks and crampons, attempting to shoot bolted bunnies. “We have visitors coming from all over the world to shoot our partridges,” shouts Roy Green, the manager of Buccleuch Sporting, “But what they really talk about over dinner are the rabbits! I... said... THE... RABBITS!”

We’re being buffeted by a rainstorm, which adds to the fun of trying to stay standing on a 50-degree slope pocked
by warrens. Roy has turned out the keepering team from Queensberry, one of five sporting estates owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, and every member of it loves coney control.

Even Harry Potter. His real name’s Kieran Alison but he’s a doppelgänger for the wizarding youth. His ferret also resembles a JK Rowling creation, but this time one of the darker creatures from the Forbidden Forest. Blood is already pouring from Kieran’s left hand and the ferret’s hanging from his right. “That’s why we call that bugger Nipper,” smiles Roy, happy that another keeper’s lad is undergoing the traditional apprenticeship.

Nipper is dangerously psychotic, even for a weaselly species, striking terroir terror into the local rabbits. Five minutes after she slides into a hole there’s a blur of fur heading downhill. It’s a forlorn dash. Rab Clark, the Queensberry estate’s headkeeper, is quicker on the draw than Wyatt Earp on amphetamines. I’ve never seen a man shoot faster or straighter, and the rabbit is sent cartwheeling down the hill.

Way below, dark dots amid the rain, the Buccleuch dogmen signal to their charges. They’re standing on the flat valley bottom, at least 300yd away, and separated by a high, barbed-wire fence. A dog is selected from the line of immobile springers, cockers and labradors, soars over the fence, collects the rabbit and gallops back down the slope.

No one looks impressed. Top gundog work has been part of the Buccleuch estate since the 1830s, when the fifth Duke of Buccleuch imported one of the first labradors from Newfoundland. The present duke, Richard Buccleuch, is continuing his family’s commitment with the construction of Chapel, a state-of-the-art kennel run by David Lisett.

David’s achievements include winning the British and Irish Spaniel Championships, but the new kennel is designed to do far more than breed and house field trial champions. “We’ve built a seminar room and a huge rabbit pen so that amateur handlers can book in and have intensive training days. Although our labradors are famous, we’ve also very strong field trial lines of cockers and springers, so we can cater for most gundog enthusiasts,” says David.

What David cannot cater for, however, is Nipper. Rab has rolled over another coney and a second labrador has been despatched to retrieve. Nipper is not to be thwarted of her quarry, however, and snakes across the hill, arriving at the rabbit seconds before the lab. The “peep, peep” of the whistle is a clear enough instruction to collect and the young dog, momentarily flustered, picks up Nipper. Outraged, the ferret sinks her fangs into the lab, which learns another important lesson: never mess with a mustelid.

Mike Robinson, The Field’s cookery writer, is so transfixed by the drama that he almost misses seeing another rabbit sneak out of a burrow and head up a shale-filled gully. But he’s a handy shot with his grandfather’s damascus-barrelled Grant and another rabbit is sent spinning over.

By now the rain has almost won and with 27 rabbits in the bag we decide to edge gingerly down the hill for lunch at the Buccleuch Arms Hotel in Thornhill. “Our guests like this place because it’s a proper sporting hotel,” says Roy, ordering Buccleuch steak and chips all round. “And the food’s brilliant.” The Buccleuch herd is naturally reared, grass-fed and their carcasses are hung for a minimum of 21 days, all of which one somehow expects. What’s surprising is the marketing, with a high percentage of sales coming from the shopping channel QVC. “What do you mean, you’ve never heard of it, Jonathan?” says Roy. “You need to stay in more.”

I can’t think how anyone could remain indoors in Dumfriesshire, though. Many years ago, before gap years were invented, I worked as an assistant gamekeeper on a nearby estate, which meant I annoyed the full-time keeper but occasionally did something useful such as bank strimming. This part of Scotland, so often bypassed on the road to the Highlands, is a sporting playground of wildfowl, enormous forest stags, grouse and big fish, two of which glare glass-eyed from the bar walls: “35lb salmon, Hedge End, Mid Nithsdale Angling, Nov 1994” reads the legend of one, next to an equally impressive 14½lb sea-trout. “I had a 10-pounder last season,” volunteers a tattooed and modestly Mohicaned punk, adding, virtuously, “and on the fly.”

WOODCOCK AT DUSK
“Now time for the woodcock,” calls Roy, dragging me from the fish. As we bump along in the Landie, he explains the Buccleuch estate’s approach to sport. “We believe that as many people as possible should enjoy what we have on offer, whether it’s full-blown driven days, some smaller walk-and-stand mini days, or a combination of rough- and driven-shooting. But what we’re about to do is new, even for us.

“We’re heading to a small beef farm, owned by Willy Smyth, whose policies include a large block of sitka spruce adjoining some marshy pasture. It’s a perfect place for flighting woodcock.” Willy has invited some local farming friends and we sidle off in the gloaming. I’m dropped off on a piece of bare ground by a dirt track and instantly, I feel under pressure. Woodcock, like all wildfowl, navigate by landmarks and this is the inland equivalent of a creek bisecting a mere. If the ’cock come at all, they’ll come here.
I’m settling into the rhythm of the place, noting the exact spot where the other guns have hunkered down, mapping the breaks in the trees where the ’cock will materialise. Hoodie crows flap home from crimes committed and the air is tangy with wet bracken. A soft snuffle breaks the moment between night and day as Willy arrives with his cocker. “I’ve been watching the flight-lines for the past week,” he whispers, “and there’s a few in. We only shoot this six times a year, and the rest of the season it’s left strictly undisturbed.”

Stare into a darkening sky, every sense primped, and only midges move. Light a cigarette or talk to a friend and a bird will arrive at that very instant. A woodcock is now twisting above the spruce before dropping and arrowing to our right. I’ve seen it far too late and miss with the first barrel. Swinging behind, the second shot arrives just as the ’cock corkscrews earthwards. I can’t see Willy or his spaniel but am conscious of the same Scottish summary: “We’ve got a right one here.” But 30 seconds later a second woodcock ghosts over the trees and, concentrating now, I drop it over to the right.

A fusillade booms softly over the wind from the far edge of the wood; we hear later that Mike had a chance at a right-and-left. For 20 minutes the shots are fast and ragged as 30 or so woodcock flit between the guns nestled behind stone walls and gorse. A single ’cock floats out from the wood’s gloom but, just visible against the paleness of the track, tumbles to my shot. Seconds later, another clips out far to the right, and also falls, this time to the second barrel.

With the last of the light draining from the dusk, it’s time to help with the pick-up. We’ve eight woodcock in the bag;
if we’d held straighter, it would have been 15 but no one cares. Missing a steady, reared pheasant might bring self-recrimination but this is wild-quarry snap-shooting and half the shots weren’t attempted because of safety issues.

Roy is delighted with the evening, and he and Rab are plotting. The Queensberry estate has countless little patches of tree and pasture that replicate tonight’s venue. Could woodcock-flighting become another feature of Buccleuch Sporting? Almost certainly, they decide, so long as they don’t overdo it. “Mind you, we get a fair few ’cock at our Boughton estate,” says Roy. “Last year we were working a small covert at the end of the season when five ’cock flushed at the same time over the guns on 5, 6 and 7. Numbers 5 and 6 each shot a right-and-left and No 7 shot the fifth.”

THE DRIVE OF DOOM
The Land Rover bumps home to Dalswinton House, a Georgian jewel with baths the size of dry docks. Roy, with Brian Forrester, Buccleuch Foods managing director, has arranged for London chefs to sample the estate’s beef before a day’s driven game-shooting; though the chefs easily demolish the tender meat they’re less confident about the morrow. It’s reputed that even the great James Percy had the wobbles here two seasons ago and Rab tells a story about “a team of guns, as good as I’ve seen, who took on one of our partridge drives when there was a bit of a wind”. He pauses. “It had 22 partridges for 428 cartridges.”

The following morning a small invasion force assembles in front of Drumlanrig Castle, as the dogmen take the opportunity on “house” days to train their charges. We’re expected to shoot around 150 pheasants and the chefs show their skills aren’t confined to a skillet. With 120,000 acres, the Queensbury keepers have drives to suit every team’s abilities, and today the birds are drifting out of small hangar woods over the streams that lace Dumfriesshire. We have to concentrate but by 11am there’s a quiet confidence among the guns.

Roy pulls on an Embassy, exhales and takes me aside. “Now we’ll take them for a surprise,” and with that we clamber into the cars and on to the moorland. The hills grow with the miles, until we’re in a ravine between a couple of junior mountains. He’s brought us to the Drive of Doom.

The first drive borders on the mad. The partridges are being pushed over at an angle and curl as they collect the freshening wind. But some of the lower, easier ones are at least possible. The return drive is more an exercise in trying to spot specks, and the guns hold fire on the majority of the birds. “We don’t really shoot them this late in the season,” explains Roy. “The birds come over too high. But I thought you’d like to admire them as they pass – and see that redlegs can do well on high ground so long as you feed them.”

Back by the huddled vehicles, the keeper’s lad is adding our meagre contribution to the gamecart. Kieran’s finger is still bandaged after his wrestle with Nipper. The rain shrouds the hills. Another wild day ends in a wild country.

For further information or details about the sport and the beef, visit the Buccleuch website.