Last week we left Hardie Carruthers in Carlisle where he had just married his beloved Jean in Upperby Church in February, 1948.
He was on track to become a train driver with British Railways but the sudden death in 1950 of his father Samuel, a gamekeeper on Orchardton Estate at Palnackie, cut short his railway career.
The sad loss meant the young couple and their toddler son Malcolm moved in with Sam’s widow Agnes at Redliggate, the gamekeeper’s cottage at Orchardton.
Leaving the steam trains was not Hardie’s first choice, he tells me, but out of a sense of duty he never gave moving back to Galloway a second thought.
“It was good pay on the railway because the last two years I was working on the Carlisle to Crewe and Carlisle to London runs,” he tells me.
“But after my father’s death Major Douglas Robertson, the owner at Orchardton, asked if I would take over my dad’s job.
“The estate just expected me to come – it was just automatic that I would come home and take over from him.
“There had been more keepers but the job was just single-handed then.”
Back in the fifties, Hardie tells me, rules for controlling predators of game birds were much less strict.
Rearing pheasants was a major undertaking – and every attempt was made to keep losses to a minimum.
“We would rear between 1,500 and 1,700 a year,” he recalls.
“Jean would come out and give me a hand at the rearing pens.
“On shooting days she would come beating as well – the whole family did beating.
“We did a lot of vermin control – that’s a keeper’s main job.
“There was ground and winged vermin like foxes and crows – and back then you killed the sparrowhawks.
“You could not do that nowadays.
“Another job was to go round and protect the wild partridge nests from vermin.
“Sometimes we would take the eggs away and put them under clocking bantie hens.
“You had to moisten the eggs and turn them every day.”
Another predator came on the scene after fashion tastes changed in the 1970s – non-native mink.
The animals were reared for their pelts but when the market collapsed they were released and the vicious killers caused mayhem with wildlife.
“There was a mink farm at Edingham near Dalbeattie,” Hardie recalls.
“They reared them for fur coats and for a wee while it was a good trade but when their popularity died away the folk who owned the farms just opened the doors and let them all oot.
“They went all over the place and if mink got in to where the young game was being bred they would take a lot of them.
“They just killed for the sake of killing – maybe taking one pheasant or partridge and the rest was wasted.”
Another pest was rabbits which, Hardie explains, were far more numerous in the fifties.
“We did a lot of rabbit killing – there were thousands of them prior to myxomatosis,” he recalls.
“A lot were sold to butchers shops or game dealers but quite a lot were sent down to markets in England,
“There used to be a rabbit train which started at Stranraer and picked up rabbits at all the stops along the way, including Dalbeattie.
“They put them in wooden hampers which held 20 couple and were sold in Manchester and Bradford.
“There were still grouse on Screel Hill when I was young.
“The hill was well looked after and the heather burned in spring to encourage new growth.
“Orchardton and Bengairn estates would do the Glorious Twelfth shoot together.
“That way you had driven grouse over the marches which made for better sport.
“I can remember when my dad was keeper they would get 25 or 26 brace.
“By the time I came back in 1950 that had practically finished.”
Growing up, Hardie remembers his dad taking great pride in his working dogs, particularly black Labradors.
Over the years Orchardton became renowned for its dogs which were among the best examples of the breed in Scotland.
“My dad was a member of the Kennel Club and showed Labradors as far as Crufts,” he says.
“He won some of the working dog classes and did field trials for the gamekeepers’ association as well.
“With a spaniel you hunted and retrieved the game but with the Labradors their job was just to retrieve.
“Once the game was shot your dog had to stay steady and only retrieve on command.
“The spaniel hunted and when they raised the game they dropped down.
“Then when the bird was shot the dog had to wait until you gave the command to retrieve.
“They used to have the trials over at Dildawn Estate outside Castle Douglas.
“Our Labrador Orchardton Donald was a Scottish field trial champion and a show champion at Crufts.
“My dad was running dogs well before the war.”
As a gamekeeper, for Hardie stout footwear for tramping miles over rough tracks and terrain every day was a must.
Somewhat to my astonishment, he can still remember the pattern of metal studs on the soles of his tackety boots.
“George Paterson and his son Sam hand-made boots,” he remembers.
“They lived in Palnackie and their shop was in Dalbeattie.
“I was size eight and the boots were all leather, curved and nailed.
“There were two sets of iron studs close together round the outside and more in the middle with a single row down the centre.
“I got my first pair in the 1930s.”
Living a stone’s throw from the sea, Hardie and his family spent many happy days on picnics to the shore.
“Jean’s mother and father, Margaret and David Bone, had died very young,” Hardie recounts.
“Jean was like a mum to her sister and three brothers.
“She was a lovely cook and a great baker so I was well fed.
“Her rhubarb tart and girdle scones were second to none.
“We spent a lot of family days down at the shore at Horse Isles Bay or White Port.
“We would take Jean’s home baking and about two dozen rolls and scoff the lot.”
Listening to Hardie, it’s fascinating to think his birth 100 years ago is fully halfway back in time to when Palnackie’s notorious smuggling trade was in full swing.
Barely 25 years before that, Robert Burns was alive, between his writings taking a wage from the Crown as a gauger – an exciseman.
Doubtless his efforts to collar those smuggling tea, tobacco and French brandy took him to Palnackie, a well-known entry point for duty-free goods.
Hardie has heard dark tales of the trade operated – but to what extent they are true, embellished or fabricated is anybody’s guess.
“Smuggling was just a way of life in those days,” he says.
“All the wee fishing villages along the Galloway coast were like that.
“Here I understand folk used to come down here from New Galloway at the dead of night to load up.
“By the time the dawn came they’d be back up Dalry way and away from the excisemen.
“The smuggling ships used to come in and lie off Heston Island.
“The wee boats from all around would be waiting for them and bring the stuff ashore.”
Illegal operations of another kind – poaching – was never a big issue at Orchardton, according to Hardie.
“We were never bothered to any degree with poachers,” he says.
“In all my time there were only
two prosecuted – and it was one action
for salmon. They were taking the fish out of the nets.”
In the treacherous tidal reaches of the Solway, Hardie relates how he earned a pound or two fishing for salmon and sea trout.
His method was haaf-netting, which back in the fifties was done on Solway rivers such as the Annan, Nith, Urr and Cree.
Haaf has nothing to do with measurement – it is a Norse word meaning channel or sea and the ancient art was first practiced by Viking raiders who plundered and eventually settled the Galloway coast 1,200 years ago,
Half-netting the Urr was a muddy,
cold and on occasion dangerous job,
often with little reward.
A typical net, Hardie explains, was framed by a main top pole roughly four metres in length with two shorter side bars
Halfway along was a central post which divided the net into two pockets behind which the fisherman stood and, up to his chest in the cold sea, waiting for a fish to swim into the net billowing back either side of him in the current.
“I would cycle down to a little bay below Cockle Point or to a turn in the river below Almorness,” Hardie recalls.
“You would wear chest waders and turned the net so the flow of the tide bulged it out.
“You stood facing the current with your fingers on the net.
“The first pluck you got told you there was a fish and you would pull the pole backwards to tip the net over.
“That trapped the fish and it could not get back out.
“You would go out time and time again and only get the odd one.
“Then you could go another time and get half a dozen.”
Hardie also had stake nets at Horse Isles Bay which were only fished on the ebb tide.
“There could be three pockets in a net and the fish would come down and get trapped,” he says.
“You had to go out over the mud from the shore to reach them.
“As a rule you could fish for so long but in some places you had to watch for a quick change in the tide.
“Sometimes you would get a great big man o’ war jellyfish caught in the nets.
“You had to cut a slit in the net and push it out with a fork so the ebb tide would take it away.
“Once the water got low enough you would sew your net back up again.
“You would get flounders, bass, mullet and cod as well but it was the salmon and sea trout you wanted.
“Sometimes you got a far better price if you put them on the train and sent them down south.
“If the price was low you were just as well to sell them to a local dealer.”
Outside work, Hardie remembers favourite family holiday destinations being Mull, Islay, Jura and North Berwick.
After retirement in 1987, Hardie and Jean enjoyed gardening, going for a run out to New Galloway for a bar lunch or to Kirkcudbright for art exhibitions.
“Our favourite was taking a wee run over the back road from Laurieston to Gatehouse,” Hardie smiles.
“We would stop for a picnic and look out for deer on the hill.
“We were always content in our own company.”
Not entirely to my surprise Hardie tells me he continued to shoot and fish until he was 92.
“I only really took up fly fishing when I retired,” he smiles.
“I was a member of Castle Douglas Angling Association and would go up to fish Loch Roan for brown trout and rainbow trout with my boys Hardie and Malcolm and friends Jimmy Murray and Bill Dunlop.”
Days away from reaching his century, Hardie still retains a sharp mind and a clear memory which prompts the obvious question about the secret to a long and healthy life.
“A nice wee dram of Laphroaig every night,” he chuckles.
“It was never any rubbish whisky – don’t give me a rubbish blend!”
At the bird table through the window the birds are stocking up for autumn.
They are a constant source of entertainment for Hardie who tells me that red squirrels also turn up for a snack.
One feeder, stuck to the glass with rubber suckers, is surrounded by noisy blue tits.
They are completely unfazed by their human observers as a beautiful view over Orchardton Bay stretches away behind.
“Jean liked to watch the birds as well,” Hardie says with a catch in his voice.
“I have been blessed with a good wife and a good life. And I’m lucky that my wonderful family is round about me.”
