A Forres haggis hunter who is regarded as one of the best in the country has advertised for an assistant for the first time.
Jock Gibson, who catches wild haggis near his farm at Dallas and sells them from his butcher’s shop Macbeth’s in Forres and by mail order all over the country, said the season has been shortened this year, and he needs extra help to keep up with anticipated demand.
He said: “Due to our longer post Christmas shut-down period and an expected increase in demand for smaller haggis, we are needing to catch more over a shorter period of time. This is more than we are going to be able to cope with ourselves so I need to draft in some help.
Jock has been hunting haggis for 10 years and is one of the few that talk publicly about what is often regarded as a ‘unspoken operation.’
“It’s pretty hard going and the injuries can be pretty grim. I had to have the end of my finger sown back on a couple of years ago after loosing it to a haggis bite. Thankfully the haggis spat it out again as I had been opening bales of silage earlier and the taste was still on my hands – haggae hate silage.”
The ad, which appeared on Facebook, reveals some of the traditions connected with the hunt.
The successful applicant must provide a proven track record and send extracts from their own game book. They must have a valid licence to deal game, and most importantly, must be able to recite the ‘Hunters Creed’, the three forgotten verses of the “Address to a Haggis’.
Jock is widely regarded as a haggis hunting supremo, not least because he is one of the few to make his seasonal antics public.
In 2017, he invited a cameramen to film him baiting a haggis trap and subsequently catching one live on camera – the first time such an event has been seen by the wider public.
Details of the vacancy and an application form can be found on Facebook
