When Ian Grindy was made redundant from his job as a head gamekeeper, his world fell apart. But, slowly and surely things started to look up and he got back on his feet. Here he explores why redundancy is so painful for gamekeepers and advises on how to recover from the body blow.

At the time it felt like the bottom had dropped out of my world. I had been working as a head gamekeeper for my employer for 19 years and the lease on our shoot was about to expire.  We - myself and my two underkeepers - were about to be made redundant. This meant that we would lose our jobs, our vehicles, our tied cottages, our pensions, and everything else. Unless you have been through such an experience you can’t imagine how it feels.

Having said that, we considered ourselves lucky because we had a very responsible and supportive employer, and we were treated with the utmost sympathy and respect. Everything that could be done to help us was done. We had more than twelve months notice to get ourselves sorted out with another job. We were given very fair redundancy terms. If we asked for help from the boss, we got it. There was no animosity at all. Nobody wanted this to happen, it just happened!

But what did all of this mean for me, for my family, for the future? My biggest concern was for my family. I’d worked in Lancashire for 30 years. I had children and grandchildren who had grown up and were settled there. But the number of professional keepers employed in this part of the county was getting less and less, as more and more DIY shoots were springing up. It was obvious that I would have to travel a long way to find gamekeeping work again.

I was used to seeing my grandchildren every day and I get emotional thinking about it even now, almost ten years later, when I consider the effect that this was having on us as a family. Although the problem was not of my making I felt responsible and guilty. I was letting them down, abandoning them. How do you explain a situation like this to a five year old child? My wife also had a good job in the area. She’d worked hard and been to college to get qualifications. There was no guarantee that she would find similar work in another county – and indeed she never did.
   
Redundancy is traumatic no matter what profession you belong to, but for keepers it has many added complications. Gamekeepers usually live in tied accommodation – moving to another job means moving to another house and trying to build a new home. And, believe me, there is a big difference between a house and a home. 
  
For keepers with a young and dependant family it is easier to move everybody to a new location and start again, in a new job. The younger you are the easier it is to adapt. The problems start when children grow up and establish their independence in the locality that you work in. They have jobs, friends and maybe a family of their own. They can’t just pack up and move with you anymore. They have their own lives to consider. 

If the worst ever comes to the worst and you find
yourself the victim of redundancy, don’t suffer in silence.

I am now an estate manager on a very large estate and as such have been on both sides of the fence. Having to deliver the redundancy message is nearly as bad as receiving it. In this case, fortunately, the keepers concerned would be able to stay in their tied cottages, at least for the time being. But this is not always the case. When gamekeepers are employed by shooting tenants as opposed to the land owner the problem can be even worse. Tied cottages are usually attached to the shooting lease and when one goes so does the other. When a new shooting tenant takes over a shoot there is often no obligation on the new tenant to take on the existing keeper. That’s why most keepers prefer to be employed by the estate owner rather than the shooting tenant.
 
I was told recently that redundancy can create a reaction in people similar to the grieving process, and I don’t doubt it. It certainly makes you angry. But redundancy is a fact of life – it happens. Sometimes the economics of employing a fulltime keeper just don’t stack up, shooting tenancies change hands, estates are sold and redundancy for the keeper becomes inevitable. But the experts tell me that the way the redundancy message is conveyed has a big impact on the way it is received. 

Some estate owners can’t face giving the bad news themselves and the job gets passed on to the land agent. And in all fairness that is what land agents are employed to do. I should know, as mentioned previously, I’ve had to do it. But this doesn’t always sit well with the keepers concerned. Some see it as a ‘cop-out’. If the boss can summon up the courage to deliver the redundancy message himself then it is usually better received and it creates a sense of empathy between both parties. Equally, if the message is delivered with sincerity and a sound rationale then most keepers will at least understand why this is happening to them - even if they don’t entirely accept it.
 
However, as I have found from my own experience, redundancy can seem like the end of the world when it happens to you, but it can also be an agent for change. I know several keepers who have turned adversity in to opportunity and made an extremely good job of it. They have done this by taking on the lease of the shoot themselves and establishing a small business of their own that usually incorporates commercial shooting with a small game farm. It’s a risk and a gamble but if anybody can make a go of such an enterprise then it has to be the existing keeper. Nobody knows the economics and the potential of a shoot better than them. 
   
Some keepers also find themselves in dead-end jobs with very little prospect of things improving. Redundancy in such circumstances can provide the impetus to start looking for something better. Believe it or not, one or two keepers have told me – in hindsight - that redundancy turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to them, but they certainly didn’t see it that way at the time.

My advice to anyone intending to make a long term career in gamekeeping is this:

• Save what money you can and do everything you can to get on the property ladder.
• Find a good financial advisor. Ask him about buy to let property. The longer you own such a property the less of a financial burden it becomes and the side benefits are a place of your own to run to in times of trouble, change – and redundancy! 
• Consider evening classes to learn additional skills. Broaden your outlook, your mind and your experience of life. I know how hard it is to find the time for such things when you are a gamekeeper but, believe me, anything that increases your confidence and skill base has to be a good thing if the worst comes to the worst, and redundancy forces you to start looking for a job outside of the game industry.

As I have already said, redundancy is a very stressful experience and bottling up such problems can have some serious side effects, such as depression. Redundancy creates a lot of uncertainty in people’s lives: uncertainty about money, about jobs, about how to put a roof over your family’s head. Redundancy is even harder to bear at Christmas. If the worst ever comes to the worst and you find yourself the victim of redundancy, don’t suffer in silence. Speak to somebody about it.  There are people willing to help. 

Some useful contacts:-

Rural Stress Information Network: 024 76 412916
All Wales Rural Helpline: 0800 085 8119
The Farm Crisis Network: 07002 326326
www.direct.gov.uk for advice on redundancy