Step through the front door into John Waters house and there’s no mistaking what makes the man tick. The clues are all around on the walls; skulls of kudu shot in Namibia, two wild boar tusks from Sweden, feral goat heads from Scotland and in pride of place on a sideboard a couple of warthog tusks from KwaZulu-Natal.
And by the time you’re ushered into the sitting room and seen the red deer skull from Argentina and heard some of his inexhaustible supply of colourful stories, it’s pretty obvious John Waters is a man who relishes hunting and stalking and all the experiences that go with travelling to shoot game in countries around the globe.
His fundamental passion however is for Scotland, for its wildlife and the professionalism and credibility of those who are responsible for managing the landscape and wild animals. And he has had a massive influence over at least two generations of stalkers and gamekeepers through his position as a course organiser and tutor of the well known game keeping courses at North Highland College in Thurso.
If circumstances had been different John Waters might well have fulfilled his ambition of being a professional hunter in Africa, but being born in Thurso a generation removed from the land meant he didn’t have the credentials necessary to be accepted into what at that time was a closed world of game keeping. The minimum requirement in those days was a father or uncle in the profession, and young John’s evident skill and enthusiasm for shooting, snaring and fishing just wasn’t enough to convince prospective employers. So he had to take an indirect path – serving a five year apprenticeship as a fitter then working offshore – before finally landing the job which has served the game keeping industry so well these past 23 years.
He made inroads slowly, beginning by building kennels for his beloved lurchers, spaniels and terriers in the back garden of his house in Thurso, going grouse and pheasant beating on local estates and learning the skills of training gundogs. Then a friend secured a gamekeeping job on Sandside Estate along the coast near Dounreay, and John helped out stalking red deer and running shoots. When the friend moved on, John moved in and took over.
“It was around this time that Thurso – now North Highland - College started their first gamekeeping courses, and I was asked to help out with practical training. There were only six young lads at that time but it grew quickly and I realised the only way of giving the students the education they needed was to get them out onto estates learning their trade with professionals,” he says.
“Important parts of the job such as regulations, customer care, food hygiene and first aid can be taught in a classroom, but these lads also need to be out learning how to spy deer, how to use the contours of the land and where to set snares. They have to get their feet wet and their hands in a gralloch (a culled deer’s intestines) or they’ll never learn to do it properly.”
John Waters is acutely aware that today’s gamekeepers and wildlife managers need to have qualifications in order to get responsible jobs on sporting estates, and he is quietly proud that so many budding ‘keepers bypass other courses further south to travel to the far north coast to qualify with a Highland gamekeeping certificate. And the pride is well justified because just last week two North Highland students – Malcolm Downie from Dunmaglass Estate near Fort William and Leslie Dingwall from Tomintoul - won top Lantra awards in the game and wildlife category. Ironically, given John’s experience when he left school, many of the top keepers who have graduated from the College have had no family associations with the profession. It has inspired many a wry smile over the years.
And now, as he settles down to plan retirement trips to stalk red deer in New Zealand and hunt wild boar in Poland, there is a quiet satisfaction that the courses he and his fellow tutors, Richard MacNicol and Iris Mackenzie set up have established the high standards for wildlife management which are now recognised across the industry.
In the meantime he’s waiting for the head of the fallow buck he shot in Sweden, and the elk from Colorado to join those other trophies in the front room. Mrs Waters, who doesn’t shoot, is clearly an extremely forbearing lady.