Owen's ingenuity gets him out of a potentially awkward situation but he is left feeling hot under the collar...
[With grateful thanks to Mark Lorne, our relative and a good friend to Owen, who first captured this tale several years ago.]
It was November on Shrubbery Farm and the cold, damp, foggy weather associated with the month had affected my co-worker Sid's asthma condition. The older man had been given a lengthy spell "on the sick" by his doctor. Sid's main duties on the farm were caring for the "store" (over-wintered on a forage diet) cattle, a job I never really cared for. This work was beyond the abilities of "Hopper", one of the other labourers on the farm, and the task was given to me by the farmer. This put an extra burden of work on to me but I decided to look on it as a potential chance to earn a few extra shillings overtime.
My boss thought otherwise regarding the overtime - as usual - and instructed me to finish my arable duties an hour early which, in mid-winter, rarely allowed me sufficient time to feed the cattle in the last of the dwindling daylight. Although it meant a lot of extra work for little reward I did find this new freedom much to my liking. A short walk from the bullock-yard was a small spinney and it had not escaped my attention that this was a favoured roosting site for several pheasants - which I was only too keen to get at. So, on the first Friday on the job, I hid my father Elijah's dismantled single barrel 12 bore (the renowned "Long Tom" of our family's history) in the hay loft during the early morning feed, ready for my return late that afternoon.
The afternoon feed was completed in a swift and methodical fashion. Friday was market day and the farmer and his wife would not be home before 6 p.m. so I knew I was at liberty to indulge myself in a cooking-pot filling raid. The first Friday yielded only a brace but I was better prepared the following week when a stiff wind was blowing and a full moon hung in the sky. This time I took along a .410 adaptor to fit inside the chamber of Long Tom, a method that allowed me to use the smaller and quieter calibre cartridge. Entering the spinney with the wind blowing into my face I could easily see the pheasants at roost thanks to the full-moon and I swiftly dropped half a dozen longtails from the bare winter branches. It was then that I almost regretted my good fortune as I now had to find a way of inconspiculously transporting the pheasants home. Now, I can be quite inventive, and I suddenly remembered the offcut lengths of binder twine* that hung in the bullock yard...
A short while later I retrieved my previously hidden bicycle (I took this precaution as I did not want my employer to find I was still on the premises should he return home early) and carefully started my journey home. Beneath my thick ex-R.A.F. overcoat was my haul of six pheasants. The birds were noosed at each end of the binder twine to create three "yokes" that were suspended around my neck. I had a three mile cycle ride home to Bunwell and by the time I reached my garden gate I was bathed in sweat as the recently killed birds had "heated" during the journey.
"That nearly did for me," I later told Mark. "I was sweatin' like a hoss and I couldn't do it now."
When I told Mark this story I was in my 80s and the news that I couldn't do it now was reassuring for him as some of his rough-shoots had been on my former poaching grounds!
*A very strong memory I have of my father is seeing him with his coat pockets stuffed full of different lengths of orange and, latterly, blue binder twine. I suspect he rarely used it for its intended purpose but he certainly used it for many others! (Annette)
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