The Last English Poachers

Author: Bob Tovey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781471135682
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
In deepest Gloucestershire a secret way of life is clinging to a fragile existence. This is the world of the last English poachers - men who have lived off the land, taking game from the big country estates, risking the wrath of gamekeepers in order to feed their families and make a modest livelihood. Bob and Brian Tovey are poachers of the old stripe: a father and son of 75 and 50 years old respectively, who are continuing their ancestors' traditions, reluctant to surrender the old ways of sourcing food from nature. Writer John McDonald has obtained unique access to the men's lives and histories, and tells their fascinating story in their own words. The book is filled with anecdotes both moving and hilarious, as their sense of self-preservation, mistrust of outsiders and suspicions of modern technology express themselves in daily life. It is set against the backdrop of country sports as they used to be - and colourfully explains the shoots, the once-legal coursing meets, the centuries' old techniques of lamping, ferreting and netting and, of course, how the poachers outwit the keepers and police and escape with their quarry. It is a genuine, colourful and offbeat chronicle that documents rural life from a whole new perspective and a sense of humour.

Gentlemen and Poachers

Author: Munsche
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521232845
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
The eighteenth-century English game laws have long been synonymous with petty tyranny. By imposing a property qualification on sportsmen, they effectively denied all but country gentlemen the right to take game or even to possess a gun. Those who challenged the gentry's monopoly were fined or imprisoned, usually after only a summary hearing by the local justice of the peace. In the early nineteenth century, it was claimed that one out of every four inmates in England's prisons was an offender against the game laws. Bitterly denounced at the time, they have continued to be condemned by historians as arbitrary, savage and unjust. This book is the first full scholarly examination of the English game laws. Based on material drawn from over two dozen archives - including judicial records, estate correspondence and personal diaries - it attempts to explain what the laws actually were, why they were passed, how they were enforced and why they were eventually repealed. The picture which emerges from this investigation challenges the conventional wisdom about the game laws in a number of important respects.

Poacher's Pilgrimage

Author: Alastair McIntosh
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532634455
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 471

Book Description
The islands of the Outer Hebrides are home to some of the most remote and spectacular scenery in the world. They host an astonishing range of mysterious structures - stone circles, beehive dwellings, holy wells and 'temples' from the Celtic era. Over a twelve-day pilgrimage, often in appalling conditions, Alastair McIntosh returns to the islands of his childhood and explores the meaning of these places. Traversing moors and mountains, struggling through torrential rivers, he walks from the most southerly tip of Harris to the northerly Butt of Lewis. The book is a walk through space and time, across a physical landscape and into a spiritual one. As he battled with his own ability to endure some of the toughest terrain in Britain, he met with the healing power of the land and its communities. This is a moving book, a powerful reflection not simply of this extraordinary place and its people met along the way, but of imaginative hope for humankind.

Hunters and Poachers

Author: Roger Burrow Manning
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
Hunting and poaching played significant roles in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Deer-hunting was an integral part of the culture of the aristocracy and gentry. It afforded not only recreation, but also served as a symbolic substitute for war and rebellion. During this period, the distinction between lawful and unlawful hunting remained unclear, for the Game Laws were obscure and difficult to enforce. Roger B. Manning's meticulously researched study explores symbolic and covert forms of protest, and adds much to our knowledge of the interaction between aristocratic and popular culture in early modern England.

Poacher Panic

Author: Jan Burchett
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 1434290530
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Book Description
Twins Ben and Zoe are recruited by their mysterious uncle Dr. Stephen Fisher, a famous zoologist, to rescue a Sumatran tiger from poachers.

Poachers

Author: Tom Franklin
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061856843
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Book Description
An Edgar Award winner, Tom Franklin’s Poachers collects ten stunning, bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps and chemical plants along the Alabama River. Staking his claim as a fresh, original Southern voice, Tom Frankin’s lyric, deceptively simple prose conjures a world where the default setting is violence, a world of hunting and fishing, gambling and losing, drinking and poaching—a world most of us have never seen. In the chilling title novella, three wild boys confront a mythic game warden as mysterious and deadly as the river they haunt. And, as a weathered, hand-painted sign reads: “Jesus is not coming.” This terrain isn’t pretty, isn’t for the weak of heart, but in these deperate, lost people, Franklin somehow finds the moments of grace that make them what they so abundantly are: human. “While he may occasionally wax sentimental about life in the impoverished South, Franklin’s style is often as laconic and simply spoken as his characters’ dialogue, sometimes close to Hemingway, but more often akin to Denis Johnson or Raymond Carver in its resonant ordinariness.” —Publishers Weekly

The Confessions of a Poacher

Author: John F.L.S. Watson
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Book Description
The poacher of these "Confessions" is no imaginary being. In the following pages the author has set down nothing but what has come within his own personal experience; and, although the little book is full of strange inconsistencies, he cannot, knowing the man, call them by a harder name. Nature made old "Phil" a Poacher, but she made him a Sportsman and a Naturalist at the same time. Although eighty years of age there is still some of the old erectness in his carriage; some of the old fire in his eyes. As a young man he was handsome, though now his features are battered out of all original conception. His silvery hair still covers a lion-like head, and his tanned cheeks are hard and firm. If his life has been a lawless one he has paid heavily for his wrong doings. Great as a poacher, he must have been great whatever he had been.

More Poachers Caught!

Author: Tom Chapin
Publisher: Adventure Publications
ISBN: 1591933455
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
More stories, more action, more foolhardy hunting and fishing poachers! Tom Chapin served as a Minnesota Game Warden for 29 years, a job that was far more perilous and thrilling than most people would ever expect. He was cussed at, chased, shot at, and nearly run over. More Poachers Caught! is the follow-up to Tom’s widely popular first book. It collects 30 new stories from throughout Tom’s career and from a few of Tom’s friends. Dangerous, spontaneous, and sometimes comedic, these true adventures bring readers face to face with the problem of poaching. They are tales of greed, selfishness, and hope. The short stories tell of some of the most memorable poachers who were ever caught by a Northwoods Game Warden—and some who got away. Hunters, anglers, and outdoors enthusiasts of all ages will enjoy this fascinating book.

Danny the Champion of the World

Author: Roald Dahl
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101652977
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
Can Danny and his father outsmart the villainous Mr. Hazell? Danny has a life any boy would love—his home is a gypsy caravan, he's the youngest master car mechanic around, and his best friend is his dad, who never runs out of wonderful stories to tell. But one night Danny discovers a shocking secret that his father has kept hidden for years. Soon Danny finds himself the mastermind behind the most incredible plot ever attempted against nasty Victor Hazell, a wealthy landowner with a bad attitude. Can they pull it off? If so, Danny will truly be the champion of the world.

The History of Opposition to Blood Sports in Twentieth Century England

Author: Michael Tichelar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315399768
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
An interdisciplinary social history, this book examines the major pressures and influences that brought about the remarkable growth of opposition to hunting in twentieth century England. With public opinion consistently deciding from the middle of the century onward that hunting mammals for sport was cruel and unacceptable, it would appear that the controversy over hunting has all but been decided, though hunting yet remains ‘at bay’. Based on a range of cultural, social, literary and political sources drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, including history, sociology, geography, psychology and anthropology, The History of Opposition to Blood Sports in Twentieth Century England accounts for the change in our relationship with animals that occurred in the course of the twentieth century, shedding light on the manner in which this resulted in the growth in opposition to hunting and other blood sports. With evidence comprising a mixture of primary and secondary historical sources, together with documentary films, opinion polls, Mass Observation records, political party archives, and the findings of sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and geographers, this book will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences and historians with an interest in human–animal relations.