Where have all the gamekeepers gone?

Lindsay Waddell explores the decline of gamekeepers over the past century but manages to find reasons to be optimistic in the uplands

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Most of us who work or have worked as a fulltime gamekeeper are aware of how the job evolved and how it has changed in our own lifespan, but just what has happened to gamekeepers in the past 150 years?

The turn of the 19th century saw gamekeeping as a profession heading for its peak in terms of men employed, with some 23,000 full-time gamekeepers being recorded from census records. Just prior to World War II, that number had dropped to 15,000, and today the estimated number of full-time gamekeepers is around the 3,000 mark. So what has happened to all those jobs, and just how many are now single-handed as opposed to being one of a very large team?

The reasons for the decline are complex, and it was not all down to the losses following World War I when substantial numbers of estates were broken up. There was something of a shift in the amount of funds individual landowners were willing to spend on sport for themselves and their friends. As odd days were let to balance the books, it became more of the norm not only to balance them, but to show a black line at the end of the year's accounts. The day of the commercial shoot had arrived, and not only for private owners but for bigger and bigger enterprises with more and more birds per man.

Exception not the rule There were, and still are, large estates with a fair quota of full-time gamekeepers, but they are more of the exception now than the rule.