In 1844 the ownership of Lewis came into the hands of Sir James Matheson. He was keen to exploit the sporting potential of his investment. Murdo Macaulay, who had been appointed forester and gamekeeper over the Aline Shootings by the previous owner James Stewart Mackenzie, was given the responsibility of developing the area into a deer forest.

The property came to the attention of Sir Frederick Milbank, a renowned sportsman of the Victorian era. A Yorkshireman, he also leased the world famous Wethergill Grouse Moors in North Yorkshire, and although he was accomplished with the gun he had never shot a deer in his life. He had the ideal tutor in Murdo. Indeed, on their first foray together, Sir Frederick brought down a stag from 200 yards. On their second stalk they were again successful. The man was a natural. He once remarked to a friend that as soon as they had caught sight of a stag “they were as certain of them as if he was already gralloched” (“to gralloch” is to remove the offal from the deer).

Murdo managed the Aline Shootings with the help of an assistant keeper and a dog-boy. Through strict vermin control he was able to maintain reasonable stocks of grouse and woodcock. Sir Frederick’s record for woodcock in a day was 37, whilst in another day he brought down 103 grouse with 105 cartridges. He did not waste a shot. Sir Frederick spent six months of the year on the island pursuing its game. When he tired of shooting deer he would hunt for the rabbits which he introduced to an island in Loch Seaforth for that very purpose. Of course, he also fished the many rivers and lochs on the land, and nothing gave him more pleasure than poaching fish from his own lochs in an attempt to outwit his longsuffering head gamekeeper.

Although in the fourteen years he visited the islands he was a man of leisure living a life far removed from that of his crofting neighbours, he took an interest in the plight of its people. He was moved to reply in the defence of the crofters at the time of the Park Deer Raid trial by an article in the Yorkshire Post which accused the crofters of being thieves, idle, lazy and workshy. He was driven to “positively assert that that during the fourteen years I lived at Aline, I never once heard of a crime of any description among the crofters. I employed regularly eight ghillies, all crofters, with whom I had daily conversation, and if any theft or crime had been committed I must have heard of it. It is all very well to write articles in newspapers where the writer is totally ignorant of the facts.

It is easy to prejudice the public against these unfortunate people by writing such articles; but when it comes to proof there is none whatsoever. The charge of idleness is also totally unfounded. It is easy to make a charge against men who cannot get a day’s work from one year’s end to another. What can they do? Positively nothing. These crofters on the brink of starvation can overlook beautiful hills and glens, in which their forefathers lived in comfort and happiness, now given up to sheep and deer. Therefore I judge that they should not be judged harshly, but with feelings of pity and sympathy….At length, starvation staring them in the face, they are driven to separation, and as they can get neither sympathy nor redress have taken this illegal course, which all their truest friends must deplore.”

Sir Frederick Milbank may have tramped the hills and moors of the island stalking its game but he was not without thought for its people. In days where there was such a division between the landed and the landless it is heartening to remember that there were those who looked beyond station and circumstances to the bonds of a common humanity. Murdo Macaulay would have approved.

Kinloch Historical Society Archive