Lidl - Fishing Gear

[diamond lil]

I once had a champion poacher as a neighbour & he was great fun. Although he didnt work he wouldnt sign on, and never had any money but his freezer would be stuffed full of salmon ..so we used to swap him stuff ice cream for a side of salmon. His dog was amazing !! Called Ralph, a real poacher's dog. The minute he lowered his voice to a whisper, Ralph hit the floor Flat as a pancake, invisible dog !
One snowy day in winter the kids were all sliding down the hill on bin bags but the wee ones were crying with the cold. He went outside, took the bonnet off his pickup & climbed the hill, sat them all on top of him on the bonnet and the whole lot of them whizzed down the hill When they got bored he shoved it back on the pickup

[Red Doe]

Ha, great story! I love working dogs, my old Border Collie is a fantastic hound and I`ll be sad when her time comes.
My old dad used to hunt venison of a weekend and one day had two young stags from the night before strung up in the doorway of a shed, bleeding into buckets beneath, when two polis came to the door (about an unrelated incident, have to say!) and it`s the only time in my life I saw dad`s face go green...his arms were covered in blood up to his elbows so he kept them ahind his back and talked smalltalk non stop to the polis til they turned and left. A usually very quiet man, I asked him why he wouldn`t shut up! He said if there`d been a silence they would have heard the drip drip of deer blood into the buckets
and worse, if they`d just looked in a certain direction, would have seen them!
The polis afore those two was one Sergeant Lister, who dad would often present with a salmon or two or haunch of venison in return for his turning a blind eye. The polis here, where I am now, aren`t so different, old school polis who recognise a genuine poacher from one of those foul van loads of gangs that come up from over the border to wholesale slaughter the deer.
There`s a mate of mine who is also a local poacher, he was out in the hills one day hunkered down in the heather targetting a stag when before he could fire, the stag dropped. He turned to see why and there was the polis, poaching the stag his own self! Caused much hilarity from my mate and he went up to him and said "You can never touch me again for the odd salmon or deer" and to this day he also has a blind eye turned.
I think the difference is, with old school poaching you are not decimating the wildlife or destroying an environment. A sensible poacher conserves the stocks so as to ensure future supply

[diamond lil]

Yep, that's how things worked when I was wee but not sure if that happens now. We have trouble here with gangs from places like Edinburgh and Newcastle, and the two big estates here have loads of young gamekeepers so there's a bit of aggro goes on on the quiet. My best poaching story is one that involves a white goose being plucked for xmas, the polis at the front door, a kitchen full of feathers, and when the back door was opened to make an escape the whole bloody place turned into a blizzard & nobody could see a thing