Charles Moore Charles Moore

Lockdown has made poachers bolder – and more dangerous

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One midnight last month, Jon Wiltshire, who lives in a cottage just outside our Sussex village, was woken by a loud bang. Sleepily, he wondered if an intruder had slammed the farm gate shut. He peered out, could see and hear nothing, and so went back to bed. The next day, he had to go to London. When he returned, his wife Anja said: ‘Come and look at this.’ The whole of their sitting room was covered with a fine powder of glass and some bigger shards. Inspecting the double-glazed window, they found a 10mm hole in the outer glass and a much wider break in the inner one. Further searching, a couple of days later, uncovered a rifle round lying on the far side of the room. The house is in a dip below a quiet lane. What seems likely is that poachers in search of deer had entered the field from the lane and fired downhill in the dark — not knowing, or perhaps not caring — that a house was there. The Wiltshires often sit in their sitting room by the fire (as one does on a winter evening). If they had happened to be there when the shot was fired, they could quite easily have been killed. The local estate confirmed that no one was shooting legally on its land that night.

Mr Wiltshire is keen the facts be known. Neighbours are pleased that this should happen because everything has been getting a bit out of hand. As with so many things, there is a Covid link, so there will be similar problems in many parts of the country. During lockdown, the lack of traffic and the fact that game-dealers stopped taking game made our always numerous local deer (mainly fallow, some roe) bolder and left them almost unculled.

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