People are coming to Scotland to shoot problem foxes and ‘hoody’ crows. But for some people it’s a job.

Most fox shooters like results. It’s a cold sport, but at the end of it they can say they bagged one, two or even a dozen in a night. Not Davie McGibbon. The headkeeper of the Gaick estate in the Grampians of Inverness-shire can be out every freezing morning between 7am and 9am (leaving the house at 5am to get there by Argocat) for a week and only see one fox, let alone shoot it. But every fox he does shoot will be a huge plus. And he lavishes time and money on it. The grouse are Davie’s main concern. Each grouse is worth £36.50 to the estate. “As much as a fox is entitled to the grouse, if he is on our ground he will be shot,” he says. 

The beat that Davie manages for grouse is about 8,000 acres. The estate can sustain one day’s driven grouse shooting a season if the birds are there. Davie aims for a bag of 50 brace, “which is good for what is a deer forest,” he says. “But there’s nothing more embarrassing when you are with a group of guns and you come across a litter of cubs. 

“There are not a lot of foxes here, but just one can kill a lot of grouse. I remember see ing one dog fox on his way back to his den with no less than four baby grouse in his mouth.” When Davie first arrived at Gaick 10 years ago, the grouse population was in peril. There were a lot of foxes. Now he reckons he knows where 98% of the dens are. He knows that a few slip through, however. Some years, he finds none of the dens occupied but he still gets foxes. The Gaick gamebook records everything, including foxes. It says that, in Davie’s first year, he killed 27 adult foxes and 16 cubs. The tally dropped to a lowest of seven adults and no cubs. 

On his most successful night on the estate, Davie shot four foxes. Usually it takes longer. 

“I’ve got a fox by the lodge now,” he says. “I’ve seen him three times but not shot at him yet. 

“He’s got 500 hinds around him. If I try to walk him up, they’ll alert him.” It’s the landscape’s fault. The glaciers were cruel to this part of Scotland. Gaick consists of 1,000ft hills rising over mile-wide valleys. Every thing watches everything else from long distances. 

Gaick gets plenty of snow and some of the highest wind speeds in the UK. A proud addition to Davie’s armoury is his ‘Yammie’ 600 Venture snowbike with a top speed of 90mph in the right conditions and heated han dlebars. Using it, he has been able to get much closer to foxes and under-keeper Kevin Smith has killed two of them with the estate’s Beretta Urika AL391 12-bore. 

“You can see the fox up to two miles away and get the bike going full pelt at it. The snow is rock solid, like concrete. The foxes think they can outrun the snowbike – but they can’t.” Davie combines bags of enthusiasm with loads of professionalism to be perhaps the ideal stalker/keeper for an estate that sees not only different guests each week but an exacting laird in Xavier-Louis Vuitton (of luggage label fame). Gaick is mainly a deer forest, with around 75-80 stags a year and 150-250 hinds. 

Davie has a weak spot as a deerstalker, however – and that, of course, is foxes. “My number one priority is the fox when shooting hinds,” he says. “If I see a fox near the hinds, I’ll shoot the fox fi rst.” Davie has used gillie suits for six years and calls them “very efficient”. He has two and bought his latest on eBay from “an army sniper,” he says. It cost £60. He didn’t ask where else the suit had been used. 

Davie added strips of jute to it to make it more his estate’s colour. To make your own, he says you start with a cheap army camo jacket and stitch on fruit cage netting. To this, tie strips of jute in colours that most closely match your shooting area. “The gillie suit is only good if you stay still but it gives you an advantage,” he says. “A fox will come over the side of the hill and if he comes on the scent of walkers or a quad bike then he’s out of there. 

Every advan tage you can get the better.” Davie has never forgotten the advice he had from his fi rst headkeeper. He told Davie: “Spot the fox before the grouse warn you it is there.” Davie says: “It’s become a race. The grouse are very vocal.” ‘The gillie suit is only good if you stay still but it gives you an advantage’ Davie glasses the hill for deer – but shooting a fox takes priority.

Davie's kit

Davie uses only the best kit for his fox shooting. When I visited, a party from optics manufacturer Leica was staying in the lodge for the red deer stalking. Davie relished the opportunity to try out some top quality optics. 

He generally carries Leica 8x42 binoculars on the hill, whether he’s stalking or fox shooting. He also uses the Leica Rangemaster 1200 rangefi nder, which is waterproof and has 7x magnifi cation. It means he can measure the precise range of any fox. Davie uses precision equipment like the Xplorer 2 handheld anemometer to measure windspeed – it will read up to nearly 100mph. This allows him to adjust the scope the right number of clicks so he can aim dead-on. 

His main foxhsooting rifle is a Remington 700 VS in .220 Swift with a Jewell trigger fitted by Precision Rifle Services in Tomintoul. 

He cleans the barrel between shots. It has a Nightforce 5.5-22x56 illuminated reticle scope, though he says he would love a Schmidt & Bender. 

Even his shooting bag is an expensive BlackHawk sniper’s dragbag he had a friend bring back from America. To keep the weight down, he doesn’t use a moderator. The rifl e, scope and other bits come to about £2,600 – he paid £250 for the trigger alone. 

As for ammunition, of course he loads his own, using Hodgdon powder, Federal brass and Norma bullets. “A lot of ‘keepers use factory ammunition and like it, but I would not be satisfi ed. I know when I fi re the cartridge that I have confi dence in it.” He likes the .220 Swift for being “super fast” and well tested compared to some of the newer calibres. He has had a .222 and a 22-250 in the past but prefers this: “At 3,650fps it’s devastatingly fast.” Davie has a 600m range behind his house. 

“I’m not a long-range shot because I like to be sure I kill the fox,” he says. “I don’t want an educated fox coming back again and again. But if the opportunity arose, I know what to dial in to the scope.”  

More on Gaick

Gaick Lodge was built in around 1820 by the Duke of Gordon. It is one of Scotland’s oldest sporting lodges, and is set amid the 18,000 acre estate, at a height of 1,500 feet above sea level and 12 miles up a private road – a location that inspired the wildlife artist Archibald Thorburn. There is a mysterious painting of a stag’s head on the wood panelling of the dining room, which some believe was painted by Thorburn. Gaick is surrounded by ghost stories and legends. Watch out for the 2ft high sprites who are said to lure hunters to their doom, and the Black Offi cer, killed by a landslide in the year 1800, who is said still to roam the forest. 

The estate can fi eld two stalking parties each day. There is also grouse shooting and fi shing for wild brown trout and arctic char on three estate lochs, one with a boat. 

For details call CKD Galbraith on 01738 451600 or visit www.sportinglets.co.uk/gaick.htm