Donald Hiscock | Articles | The Guardian
Samantha Edwards would not fit a townie's notion of gamekeeper.
She is not a taciturn chap in a flat cap with uncanny night vision and a shoot-first
attitude to poachers.
Edwards belongs to a new breed of keepers, and not just because
she is articulate and boasts a degree in geography from Newcastle University.
She and her fellow students on the BTec in gamekeeping at Sparsholt College
in Hampshire are learning to be PR savvy.
As foxhunting is now illegal and the focus of anti-blood sport campaigners
may swing to shooting, the ability among practitioners to make a good case
for it is more important than it has ever been.
"On this course I've been taught to be considerate and
be aware of public opinion about blood sports," she says. "I'm not
likely to send out a message that is going to jeopardise my chances of employment."
She argues that through education the public might develop a
clearer understanding of the ways of the countryside. "We need to build
it into the national curriculum, particularly in geography. There is evidence
from the Game Conservancy Trust that shooting has a positive benefit for the
countryside, even though people think it is cruel."
She was attracted to the job because gamekeeping remains very
much an open-air career. "I felt that my degree didn't qualify me for
any particular job and I didn't want to take a job in an office," she
says.
David Ballantyne, the assistant section manager for game, wildlife
and countryside management at Sparsholt, laughs at the traditional picture
of gamekeeping. "Gamekeepers have had a bad reputation in the past but
one of the elements of the programmes we run here is communication. We're
educating students to talk to the public about gamekeeping. There's an emphasis
on public relations. The image of the modern gamekeeper is changing. Their
role now is one of sustainable management of the environment."
The college was the first in the country to run gamekeeping
courses, having started them 30 years ago. It now offers a wide range of options,
from BTec first award to national diploma level, and is the largest provider
of countryside courses in Britain.
Students come from all over the UK to study the wildlife courses
at Sparsholt. There are links with large country estates, including Sandringham,
and students do study tours as part of their course. The college also gets
students working in its own 4,000-acre shoot.
Ballantyne and his students feel that the government is caught
up in an emotive issue when it comes to shooting. They fear limitations will
be placed on the number of birds that can be reared for sport. "If we
as gamekeepers are not looking after the countryside, then who will?"
Pete Wall, another student on the gamekeeping course, joined
it aged 42 after several jobs in agriculture. "It's been brilliant being
here at college. I want to move on to take a degree and then go out and speak
up for the smaller person in the countryside, the labourer. Doors have opened
wider for me here and I've realised that if you don't have qualifications,
people don't listen to you."
"The job is about conservation, not just about game,"
says Jeremy Elliott, who is taking a final-year national diploma in game and
wildlife. "A lot of the course has taught us how to tackle aspects of
management."
Elliott has been trained in deer-stalking and the rearing of
pheasants on the estate where he did his work placement, but, like all the
other students on his course, he has found that loading the bullet points
into a PowerPoint presentation is just as useful as inserting pellets into
a shotgun.
There are around 6,000 full-time gamekeepers in the UK. From his position at Sparsholt's national centre of vocational excellence in wildlife, Ballantyne feels that this number might be about to change. "The trend towards developing the marketing of game as a healthy food might open up more job possibilities," he says.
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