I mention my uncle Chris several times on this website and he has a chapter devoted to him in “Slices”. He was an old-fashioned type gamekeeper working the Severn Valley throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s. I spent huge amounts of time with him as a boy, soaking up all he was prepared to teach me about the countryside and its wildlife.

Most impressive of all was his ability to “mesmerise” several kinds of wild animal by simply walking, very slowly, right up to them before bashing them over the head with his mighty oaken “Knobbler” (a wooden club fashioned by his father in the Belgian trenches of WWI and used to good effect, by all accounts, in hand-to-hand skirmishing with the Hun). The unfortunate hypnotized creatures that my uncle despatched, usually Rabbits or Pheasants, were always destined for the pot of course and, although my uncle spent a great deal of time trying to teach me the basis of this technique with only a modicum of success, he would raise his hands in frustration as I finally stood above the oblivious victim totally unable to find the dispassion required to do the final heinous deed! 

What’s all this got to do with the picture shown above I hear you ask….Well, my Uncle’s mesmerizing technique is one I continued to practise over the years and, although I shall never ever be able to do it as well as him (I remember he could walk right up to a herd of wild deer or a fox too on one occasion!), I have used his technique to good effect with Pheasants and Rabbits (whose minds seem, shall we say, rather more “open” than most). I also feel a need to cover myself in scrim and smear mud on my hands and face….something my uncle never needed to do and would be disgusted to know that I should resort to such methods….Still, if it means that I can get to within a metre of a beautiful hen Pheasant like the one above to use a hand-held digital camera without the bird having a hissy-fit, then so be it!