Lockdown has made poachers bolder – and more dangerous

One midnight last month, Jon Wiltshire, who lives in a cottage just outside our Sussex village, was woken by a loud bang. Sleepily, he wondered if an intruder had slammed the farm gate shut. He peered out, could see and hear nothing, and so went back to bed. The next day, he had to go to London. When he returned, his wife Anja said: ‘Come and look at this.’ The whole of their sitting room was covered with a fine powder of glass and some bigger shards. Inspecting the double-glazed window, they found a 10mm hole in the outer glass and a much wider break in the inner one. Further searching, a couple of days later, uncovered a rifle round lying on the far side of the room. The house is in a dip below a quiet lane. What seems likely is that poachers in search of deer had entered the field from the lane and fired downhill in the dark — not knowing, or perhaps not caring — that a house was there.