FIELD SPORTS


‘To the untrained eye, huge tracts of riverbank look as if they have been ploughed. The boar have been busy’


Going full boar


The Highlands are hoaching with boar, a fact not lost on one sporting estate’s head keeper WORDS RICHARD BATH


been spotted, and where huge tracts of river- bank look to the untrained eye as if they have been ploughed, gets bigger by the day. There is, however, only one estate in the country which has started hunting the pesky pigs on a commercial basis. The man behind Glen Dessary’s decision to


F


take the plunge is Fraser Mackay, a countryman from the top of his deerstalker to the tips of his gaiters. When he moved from being a water bailiff on the River Lochy to being head keeper at Sir Patrick Grant’s remote 16,000 acre estate, there had been a recent escape of boar. It was Mackay who persuaded his boss not to trap the beasts and then, later down the line, to contem- plate shooting the burgeoning population on a commercial basis. It is beyond doubt that many estates will follow his lead. ‘We’ve shot a dozen boar this year and we’ll


probably have shot around 25 by the end of April,’ he says. ‘At the moment we’re letting


Right: Fraser Mackay, keeper at Glen Dessary near Spean Bridge, the first Scottish estate to shoot boar commercially.


100 WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK


rom Corrour to Glenmoriston, Cluny to Braeroy and down in Dumfries, list of estates and areas where boar have


the


IMAGE – ANGUS BLACKBURN


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