By John Howard

Ever since I was a boy, my favourite edition of the Shooting Times has always been the Christmas one. My father has been a subscriber for as long as I can remember and I always waited in anticipation towards the end of November for that seasonally painted or photographed glossy front cover.

Traditionally this edition has always been packed with the usual Christmas advertisements as well as some great tales and stories from by-gone days. Although I have to say that this past few years I think it has lacked that festive touch. They seem to have more emphasis now on the edition just before Christmas, which is not so bad either, but then why bother with a special Christmas edition if they are not going to make the same effort?

The ghostly tales from writers such as BB, John Humphreys and many others about strange happenings on the wild fens and foreshores would send a shiver down your neck as you read them. I am sure many of these stories were based on true tales and indeed some of the characters that they wrote about did actually perish in the foreshore, caught unaware by the tides.

HAUNTING TALES

One such story is still vivid in my mind as it concerned a man who was cutting cabbage on a very stormy afternoon and his thoughts were of the evening duck flight on the foreshore. It reminded me so much of myself, because I spent 27 years market gardening and indeed grew winter cabbage also. Many a time when I was in the fields my mind was elsewhere and I would finish up early just to go for a shot to the nearest pond. Anyway, this misfortunate man in the story did just that, but to make a long story short, he perished on the foreshore that night and one of the last lines in the story was about the haunting sound of the wind blowing through the empty crates in that field of cabbage.

I have had my own share of frights too over the years when out shooting alone and I have no doubt that there will be many more to come. One such incident happened at the time when I used to work in Rathcooney Fruit Farm when I was about 20 years old. It was on 8th December, a church holiday and therefore a shooting day. One of my duties on the farm at that time was picking Brussels sprouts. This was a busy time as there was big demand for them at this period and there were always extra pickers needed for December to cope with the extra volumes required - and so my task then in the mornings was to pick for a few hours and then to transport the sprouts from the fields to the packing shed.

On this particular day I decided not to miss an opportunity to have a shot and so arranged to be in for mid-day when there would be enough sprouts picked for me to transport to the packing shed. It was a cold and foggy morning and I suppose I should have stayed at home, but being young and eager I ventured out anyway. My destination was about 3 miles away and on higher ground but there were birds there and I should at least get a shot at one. As I started hunting, the fog got heavier and visibility was poor. I was not having much luck and after about half an hour while walking by a small ditch my dog Grouse cocked his ear as if he could hear something and an eerie silence came over the place at the same time. I can’t remember all the details, but I do very clearly remember hearing a faint wailing or crying-like sound coming from the forestry towards the top of Glenakip.

Visibility was now very poor and the silence was unusual except for this strange crying. This wailing sounded like a banshee and was getting louder. Then to make matters worse, I heard the sound of animal hooves coming closer to me. As the wailing got nearer to me, it began to sound more like singing. I can tell you now that the hair stood up on my neck and I froze to the ground for a while. All sorts of thoughts flooded through my mind in a few seconds. My first reaction was to run for it, but then I thought a little and decided to keep still and take my chances. There had to be an explanation.

I stood up on the ditch to get a get a better view and as the hooves got closer I could make out the shadows of cattle walking through a path in the forestry. This wailing sound seemed to be following the cattle and was now more like a woman singing. Still out of sight but close enough to see what was happening, I discovered that the animals were cows being driven out to a field in the middle of the forestry, after milking I presume. The farmer’s wife driving out the cows was singing as she went, none the wiser for the fright that she gave me that morning.

ANOTHER MYSTERY SOLVED

Another incident that almost stopped my heart happened again when I had just started shooting at 17 years old. I was cycling home on a dark night with my gun and dog after a flighting a local duck pond, which incidentally is now drained and just another plain grass field. As I went uphill the whole place around me lit up brightly. There was not the slightest sound of anything to indicate what was going on. This brightness seemed to go on for quite a while and lit up the road in front of me like Saul on the road to Damascus. My heart started racing for a few moments and again I got the fright of my life. In a short while it all became very clear what was happening. The lights of a car that was coming down the hill about half a mile behind me had shone across to the hill that I was climbing and of course the car being so far away, could not be heard.

For me Christmas would not be the same without a real Christmas tree and red berry holly. The countryside seems to be full of it at the moment but I wonder how much will be there when I go on my annual trip for some. The holly trees are truly a brilliant sight at this time of year laden with scarlet berries. The birds don’t seem to take them until they are just at a particular stage of ripeness, but when they do decide the berries are ready, it does not take them long to strip the trees of every single one, although they do waste a few by clumsily knocking them off the branches.

Being out in the countryside all the time if you are observant, you can be assured of a supply for Christmas. There will always be a tree somewhere that will be later ripening and so have a good supply of berries on Christmas week. Normally these trees will have been shaded from the sun at flowering time and during the year and so will have been later to flower and naturally later to fruit. I always find that in a year when berries are scarce you will get a tree with a few branches full of them overhanging a river or indeed in the middle of a wood. Have you ever noticed that the leaves of the lower branches of holly trees have all the thorns and as you go up the tree the leaves are very smooth and without thorns. I am told that this is nature's way of protecting the tree from damage by animals etc. Under the dry shelter of a holly is also a great spot to find a woodcock.

I remember many years ago one Christmas morning walking around my small estate of 20 acres and coming upon what were very unusual tracks in the mud. They resembled sheep, but I knew that this was not the case and so upon further investigation and with the help of a book on animal tracks, I came to the conclusion that I had evidence of the one first deer to be seen in Rathcormac. We had quite a bit of forestry at the time in our area but there had never been deer reported before. This was about 25 years ago and before the deer population had exploded and spread.

Anyway, overjoyed with my findings I began to tell people but of course they were all sceptical of my find, not because of my reputation or anything untoward like that, but because the idea of wild deer in Rathcormac was absurd. One of the best responses that I received had be from a friend of mine who almost had me convinced that the tracks I had seem on that Christmas morning belonged to Rudolf the red nosed reindeer, from his deliveries the night before.

I wish all readers a very happy Christmas and I hope you will all have some good memories from the hills and bogs this festive season.

blog comments powered by Disqus