D Brian Plummer

[New moon 250]

1 minute ago, mackem said:

Loads of people like that though, I have an acquaintance who to all appearances is a dossier, looks like he lives in a squat (currently he may look OK as he is serving four and a half years), but he has a collection of watches valued at well over a million quid. Ya just never know with people. 

True mate, with plum though i dont think he was that good with money from what i could tell, must have made a few bob along the way.

[Daniel cain 42,870]

Not gonna lie,as a kid I loved his books,but as I grew I came to realise that alot of what he wrote ,you needed to take with a large pinch of salt....my favourite book is still the Fell Terrier...even if he did embellish a few other men's tails

[New moon 250]

13 minutes ago, Daniel cain said:

Not gonna lie,as a kid I loved his books,but as I grew I came to realise that alot of what he wrote ,you needed to take with a large pinch of salt....my favourite book is still the Fell Terrier...even if he did embellish a few other men's tails

The best book he produced for sure.

[Daniel cain 42,870]

14 minutes ago, W. Katchum said:

He done a good lurcher an longdog one aswell, with all diff breeds an entering an all, was a good read as a lad like you say till you’d saw a bit

Not read that one Don,my only interests was terriers growing up,so that's what I mostly collected and read,did read the Merle one,all his ratting terrier onesstarted off loading loads of my books few yrs ago,had them bought for me for Xmas/birthdays for 30 yrs or more,first ones to go was the Darcy ones...never got on with his style of writing,pictures are amazing mind

[terryd 8,042]

3 hours ago, jukel123 said:

At the beginning of this thread there's a lad who refers to him as "Mr Plummer" and appears to think he was some sort of God. Guess he was just a young lad with some spare hero worship to get rid of.

I can well imagine Plummer  addressing others as inferiors. I suppose the game he got into: lurchers and ferreting, are traditionally working class pursuits. So he no doubt thought he was superior as he was from a middle  class background, in a middle class job,  and was, in effect slumming it with us peasants----- "educating"  us in the process. I think he would have got right up my nose!

 But as a lot of lads have said., he saw an opportunity in the market. Churned out a lot of books on others' experiences and, in the process, entertained and encouraged  youngsters to get involved in fieldsports. Before the Shooting News, the only access we had to lurcher literature were the ads in Exchange and Mart, so his articles were interesting to a lot of us. It's only in hindsight we realise he was a plonker.

I bought all his books when I was a young fella. My pride and joy and I put covers on them all and they were pristine. Got married and got fed up of moving them around the house all the time because they were in a box that was all ways in the way. I threw the whole lot in the bin. Gutted now would been worth few quid 

[mackem 23,780]

3 minutes ago, terryd said:

I bought all his books when I was a young fella. My pride and joy and I put covers on them all and they were pristine. Got married and got fed up of moving them around the house all the time because they were in a box that was all ways in the way. I threw the whole lot in the bin. Gutted now would been worth few quid 

To think of all the libraries in sunderland and Newcastle I had to visit on the weekends to nick the majority of mine, and you filed your entire collection under B for BIN

[chartpolski 20,409]

Deep sixed, as the septics say !

Cheers.

[tatsblisters 7,945]

4 hours ago, jukel123 said:

At the beginning of this thread there's a lad who refers to him as "Mr Plummer" and appears to think he was some sort of God. Guess he was just a young lad with some spare hero worship to get rid of.

I can well imagine Plummer  addressing others as inferiors. I suppose the game he got into: lurchers and ferreting, are traditionally working class pursuits. So he no doubt thought he was superior as he was from a middle  class background, in a middle class job,  and was, in effect slumming it with us peasants----- "educating"  us in the process. I think he would have got right up my nose!

 But as a lot of lads have said., he saw an opportunity in the market. Churned out a lot of books on others' experiences and, in the process, entertained and encouraged  youngsters to get involved in fieldsports. Before the Shooting News, the only access we had to lurcher literature were the ads in Exchange and Mart, so his articles were interesting to a lot of us. It's only in hindsight we realise he was a plonker.

He knocked about with Tony Capstick when he lived in Rotherham and they used to frequent pubs in the the area of Wentworth and Mexborough were Capstick used to do folk songs even he once said my mate Plummer is a bigger liar than Tom Pepper. The lads who knew him when he lived in Rotherham said he never kept a lurcher though they speak highly of the rough haired russel type terriers he had as digging dogs.

[terryd 8,042]

26 minutes ago, mackem said:

To think of all the libraries in sunderland and Newcastle I had to visit on the weekends to nick the majority of mine, and you filed your entire collection under B for BIN

Yea big regret was about 20 year ago

[terryd 8,042]

I can remember it now back in the 80's lead acid battery bubble away. That smell of acid on your clothes and getting motivated reading Merle. Fine days. Country gone to shit now 

[gasaxeman 165]

No doubt he will be laughing from his grave at a topic about himself that's still controversial. I heard firsthand accounts from certain individuals of the down right nasty tricks he pulled so my pennies worth he was best avoided like the plague. His contribution to getting people especially younger folk is not with in doubt but the methods he employed and used and the people he used to elevate himself to  positions of privilege if it be writing books or articles  are unforgivable in my humble opinion .

[eastcoast 3,729]

Some of what others have written echo my own experience with the D B Plummer book thing. Was not born into a hunting family and did not grow up in a hunting community, or so I thought. I did though from a young age have a drive to "cross the tracks" and enjoy being away from the norm searching for newts or frogs and stuff. Lifting old chevron signs on the grass of motorway roundabouts and hand catching the bank voles that lived under them became an obsession.

Then I found Working Terrier by D B Plummer in the local library. For me it was an illuminated manuscript. I have seen the Lindisfarne Gospels but that did not have the same effect on me. The photographs in WT book blew me away and I needed to have one.

Fast forward a few years and I remember Mr. Winch at a DNWT meeting announcing that D B Plummer had offered his services as a judge at next year's show. If you can imagine the response today if it was suggested that Chris Packham or Brian May had offered to judge the show, well that was the reaction to D B Plummer being welcomed to the club. It did not bother me one way or the other but it dawned on me that the author was not universally well respected in the working terrier world. 

But I enjoyed the books, and I would say that some good was in them, in particular good practice in regard to respect for the dogs that you keep and the animals that you hunt. Something that I found vindicating in the books and some times at odds to some of the things that I was seeing in the real world.  Whether the man practised what he preached I have no idea. It has never bothered me how good a dog or his owner is, how the owner conducts himself, treats his dogs and respects what he hunts is all that matters.

[tatsblisters 7,945]

First time i had ever heard of his name was when Rouges and running dogs came out shortly after Walshes lurcher's and longdogs i believe.

[mackem 23,780]

15 minutes ago, eastcoast said:

 Lifting old chevron signs on the grass of motorway roundabouts and hand catching the bank voles that lived under them

Still do it to this day, slow worms, toads, frogs, adder, grass snakes, and garter snakes

[New moon 250]

24 minutes ago, eastcoast said:

Some of what others have written echo my own experience with the D B Plummer book thing. Was not born into a hunting family and did not grow up in a hunting community, or so I thought. I did though from a young age have a drive to "cross the tracks" and enjoy being away from the norm searching for newts or frogs and stuff. Lifting old chevron signs on the grass of motorway roundabouts and hand catching the bank voles that lived under them became an obsession.

Then I found Working Terrier by D B Plummer in the local library. For me it was an illuminated manuscript. I have seen the Lindisfarne Gospels but that did not have the same effect on me. The photographs in WT book blew me away and I needed to have one.

Fast forward a few years and I remember Mr. Winch at a DNWT meeting announcing that D B Plummer had offered his services as a judge at next year's show. If you can imagine the response today if it was suggested that Chris Packham or Brian May had offered to judge the show, well that was the reaction to D B Plummer being welcomed to the club. It did not bother me one way or the other but it dawned on me that the author was not universally well respected in the working terrier world. 

But I enjoyed the books, and I would say that some good was in them, in particular good practice in regard to respect for the dogs that you keep and the animals that you hunt. Something that I found vindicating in the books and some times at odds to some of the things that I was seeing in the real world.  Whether the man practised what he preached I have no idea. It has never bothered me how good a dog or his owner is, how the owner conducts himself, treats his dogs and respects what he hunts is all that matters.

Same for me with complete lurcher, the fire didnt need fuel but it helped.