Heaven and Home

Once you have decided to become a killer of things, method starts to matter. Any fool can pull the trigger on a pheasant as it batters noisily above your head, and the chances are that it will die or be missed. But what if neither comes to pass, and in the rush and fluster of dogs at the end of a drive, it’s possible that you will be presented with something half-alive. The method of killing really matters then, because you cannot simply shoot something for a second time on the ground at your feet. That would be dangerous – and besides, you mustn’t shoot when the allocated time for shooting’s over.

If nobody’s looking, you might stamp on its head, but there is much talk of respect for injured quarry, and when you hand the mashed-up bird to the game cart, you’ll have to explain why its beak is askew and the eye-sockets are packed with mud. No, there’s a value placed on neatness, and neatness is derived from calmness and clarity. It’s fine to gather your injured bird and strike it sharply on the head with a stick – but not just any old rotten stick you’ve found in the field. You must use a decorative crook, or a lead-lined priest kept explicitly for that purpose. If you’re feeling bold, you can pull its neck – but be careful not to pull too hard incase the head comes off in your hand like a cork from a bottle of wine. Then you’ll look silly, as if you don’t really know what you’re doing.

A good team of beaters or pickers-up will try to ensure that you’re never exposed to a problem like this. They’ll save your blushes, but you can’t always control where the birds will fall. Even if you never mean to kill a pheasant with your own two hands, it’s a logical progression from the act of shooting – and if you cannot do it yourself, the whole sport begins to look like a charade.

When I was twelve or thirteen, my father took me out to shoot rabbits every summer’s night. I remember one rabbit which I struck too far back in the belly. It fell, then rose again to rush frantically away into cover. My father and I walked up for a closer look, and the rushes rustled threateningly. I was suddenly frightened. The creature had been little more than a target through the iron sights of the rifle, but now it was bleeding and confused. I was responsible for it, and the clinical pull of a trigger had become a grovelling finger-tip search through the undergrowth. Trying to conceal my fear, I made light of it. I picked up a stump of gorse and tossed it towards the spot where the rushes were moving. “That’ll shut him up”, I joked – but my father snapped back that it was not funny. He wasn’t long in finding the injured creature himself, picking it up stretching it down the spine to a break of the neck. I was crushed with shame, having learnt the difference between the flippant shot and the failed conclusion.

Not long afterwards, were shooting snipe at my uncle’s farm when the dogs caught and held a roe deer between them. It was a wet day, and they had it by the sides in a clearing between the whinns. I feel sure it screamed or made a sound to reflect the horror it felt, but I don’t remember anything beyond the clatter of rain. The dairyman from Auchenhay ran to catch them as they toiled and fell like a rugby maul, and he pulled the dogs and the deer onto the ground with his own bare hands, expressing strange confidence that he wouldn’t be bitten himself.

Then crouching with one foot on the fallen animal’s neck, he cried for a knife to cut its throat. I lent him mine, and I do remember the sound of the cut and a gasping rush of breath to the porcelain-bright airway. I remember the back legs trying to rise as the front remained pinned to mats of heavy moss, and there were no bullets then, or any decision to take or harvest a creature for the larder – just the shocking hauling-down of a living, unimpeded thing. Even at that age, I had often seen deer killed with rifles over long distances. I recognised the diagnostic slump of death as something which only transpired through binoculars, but here I was spattered with shreds of bloodstained moss and the gasp of strenuous contortion.

I have often been confronted by a sense of my own cowardice in the heat of killing, but given that most people will never kill a thing for themselves, perhaps it sounds like I’m splitting hairs here. I know that from the outside, only certain deaths are acceptable, but differences are arbitrary when all roads converge towards the same end. We try to control the act of killing, but it seldom goes according to plan. Methods certainly matter, but if you’re in for a penny, you must be prepared to pay the pound; and if my stomach seems stronger than yours, we started off the same.