The centuries-long conflict between poachers and gamekeepers is well established, although the two roles probably did not acquire their modern titles until the 17th century. In 1670, Charles II passed a law enabling all lords of manors to authorise the appointment of one or more gamekeepers who ‘may take and seize all such guns, bows, dogs, nets, or other engines for taking or killing conies, hares, pheasants, partridges or other game within such manors from any person prohibited to use the same by said Act’. The term ‘coney’ is an old word for rabbit, still used regionally in some parts of the UK.

Those who stole wild animals from estates began to be described as poachers, and they committed a double crime. First they trespassed onto private land, and secondly they took and killed animals that the landowner considered their property. The animals taken by a poacher might include completely wild creatures such as rabbits, ducks, grouse, fish, and deer, but also those that were specially bred for hunting on the estate such as pheasants. Collectively, these targets of the poacher were termed ‘game’.

Gamekeeper role
Gamekeepers were employed to manage game birds and animals. They would patrol the estate by day and night, kill wild creatures that might endanger their game, and take measures to prevent poaching and apprehend offenders. They also had a role in helping to organise hunting, shooting and fishing events, in managing habitats, and in ensuring repairs were carried out to the estate’s boundaries.

The actions that gamekeepers took in killing wild animals were extreme. Any creature that might remotely be considered a danger to his lordship’s game was termed ‘vermin’ and slaughtered indiscriminately. These included foxes, and birds of prey such as peregrines and buzzards because they might seize adult game birds, but animals that might eat eggs or young birds were butchered too, such as rats and magpies. The dead bodies of all these animals were typically strung up as trophies near the gamekeeper’s lodge to demonstrate his prowess at doing his job.

Some birds targeted by gamekeepers as vermin were curiously inappropriate. Dead jays, for example, were strung up along with others rated as vermin even though they pose no threat to game – ‘a beautiful addition to the usual list of malefactors’ as one saddened Victorian writer put it. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that many gamekeepers were simply ‘gun happy’. Other birds such as the peregrine were persecuted so wholeheartedly that their numbers plummeted. The once numerous red kite took pheasants and also chickens and was particularly targeted by gamekeepers and farmers. By the 1850s, the ornithologist Francis Morris considered it a marvel that any kites still survived and expressed fears for their extinction in the UK. By 1881, an article in the London Standard noted that the kite was ‘almost extinct’, and by the 20th century it was extinct in England, although it has now been reintroduced.

Pheasants
One of the principal conflicts between poacher and gamekeeper centred on pheasants. The pheasant is not native to the UK, and comes originally from Asia. It was probably introduced to the British Isles by the Romans, but evidence suggests that for many centuries it was a bird reared solely in captivity for food and few, if any, lived in the wild. The practice of poaching pheasants is a particularly old crime, and it has always been punished severely. A law from the reign of Henry VII stated that none were to take pheasants or partridges ‘with engines in another man’s ground’ on pain of a hefty fine. The term ‘engines’ meant any weapon, trap, net or device used to seize game. Under James I, killing a pheasant attracted a fine of 20 shillings per bird, plus a one-month prison sentence if it was during the pheasant breeding season.

From the 18th century onwards when guns were more widely used to hunt, pheasants began to be reared artificially in very large numbers on estates to supply the needs of people who wanted to shoot them for sport. These game shoots were often massacres. The flesh of the pheasant has always been prized – this being the original reason for breeding them – but at some shoots the birds were shot in such vast numbers for entertainment that they could not all be eaten. One shooting party attended by George V in 1913 reputedly killed nearly 4000 pheasants in one day. Inevitably, the gamekeepers appointed to patrol these estates came into conflict with others who saw the pheasant as food rather than target practice.

Although a beautiful bird, the pheasant was considered by most 18th and 19th century writers as a foolish animal because it was so easily caught. In 1802, the naturalist George Montagu gave an interesting description of the techniques typically used by poachers over two centuries ago:

The poacher will catch them in nooses made of wire, horse-hair twisted, and even with a briar set in the like manner at the verge of a wood, for they always run to feed in the adjacent fields morning and evening. Besides this, they are taken by a wire fastened to a long pole, and by that means taken off their roost at night; or, by fixing a bunch of matches lighted at the end of a pole, are suffocated and drop off the perch.

Poacher’s habits
Poaching was very common. In 1826, one commentator observed: ‘Among the poorer classes in the game-preserving districts, the crime of poaching is almost universal.’ However, like smugglers, poachers were often well known within their communities and viewed as lovable rogues who fought the system, rather than villains. There was a widespread feeling that whilst the gentry might own the land they did not own God’s creatures who lived upon it, and that they were provided for the benefit of all – no matter what the law might say.

The typical poacher set traps to catch birds, rabbits and hares, or used a gun to bring them down and many had a well-trained dog too. Fish such as salmon and trout were caught using nets or fishing lines of course. It was easier for poachers to operate at night as they were less easily detected, but the legal penalties for being caught poaching at night were also higher and gamekeepers set traps that were easier to stumble upon at night. Poachers often developed hiding places for the animals they killed, so that they might be retrieved later when the coast was clear.

The poacher might kill to feed his own family, but would also trade his catches for other goods. For example, my grandfather was a fisherman and in the 1930s he regularly exchanged some of his catch with a local poacher for rabbits.

Paying the price
Detecting a poacher in your family is only likely when they were arrested and prosecuted. Poachers were usually fined for a first offence, but the financial penalties increased for repeat offenders. Those who could not pay were sent to prison.

However during the reign of George III, the punishments

available to magistrates began to escalate beyond fines. Poachers might be publicly whipped, sent to prison for long periods, forcibly conscripted into the army or navy, and under a 1765 law even transported for seven years.

In extreme cases, poachers might face the gallows. In 1822, two poachers came to trial at the Lent Assizes in Winchester. James Turner, aged 28, was convicted for aiding and assisting in killing gamekeeper Robert Baker, and Charles Smith, aged 27, was found guilty of wilfully and maliciously shooting at Robert Snelgrove, an assistant gamekeeper. Judge Burrough sentenced them both to be hanged; he explained that ‘the extreme sentence of the law should be inflicted to deter others, as resistance to gamekeepers was now arrived at an alarming height, and many lives had been lost’.

He was probably assisted in coming to this fateful conclusion by the fact that the assistant gamekeeper shot at, worked for a government minister: Secretary at War, Lord Palmerston.

So although we have a rather romanticised view of the countryside poacher it was a role that carried quite a lot of risk. The trick was not to get caught, which means if your ancestor was very good at it you may never know what he got up to.