Some commentary on the conviction and sentencing of gamekeeper Racster Dingwall

Following yesterday’s conviction and sentencing of Head Gamekeeper Racster Dingwall, 35, for conspiracy to kill a Hen Harrier on a grouse moor on the Conistone & Grassington Estate in the Yorkshire Dales National Park on 2nd October 2024, here is my commentary of the morning’s proceedings at York Magistrates’ Court.

These are comments based on notes I made during the hearing. They should not be considered a formal court record, but rather my interpretation of what happened. They are provided here to help blog readers understand how the sentence was determined.

This was supposed to be a two-day trial, after Dingwall pleaded not guilty to two charges at an earlier hearing at Skipton Magistrates’ Court in May 2025 (see here). Those two charges were:

1. Possession of an article capable of being used to commit a summary offence under Section 1 to 13 or 15 to 17 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act;
2. Encourage/assist in the commission of a summary offence believing it will be committed.

At a pre-trial hearing at York Magistrates’ Court in September 2025 in front of District Judge Adrian Lower, Dingwall’s barrister, the very experienced Justin Rouse KC, attempted to have the case thrown out on a technicality, arguing that the RSPB’s covert footage should not be admissible. Mr Rouse KC had been successful with this line of argument in another case against another grouse moor gamekeeper in 2017/2018 (the Bleasdale Estate case – see here).

However, in the current case Mr Rouse KC was unsuccessful and District Judge Lower ruled the Grassington footage lawful and thus admissible (here), and a two-day trial was set for 29-30 January 2026.

It became clear a few days ago that Dingwall was probably now going to change his plea to ‘guilty’ when the case was formerly listed in court documents as a ‘sentencing’ hearing. The same document listed three JPs as the presiding magistrates. However, District Judge Lower turned up in the court yesterday and sat as a single judge for this hearing.

Mr Rouse KC was not present this time, and Dingwall was represented by Tim Ryan of Warners Solicitors in Kent. Mr Ryan is another highly experienced lawyer, having represented gamekeepers in court for many years and he also provides briefing notes for the National Gamekeepers Organisation. He knows what he’s doing.

For the prosecution was Jody Beaumont (Crown Prosecution Service – CPS), as per the pre-trial hearing in September 2025.

The hearing kicked off with Dingwall being asked to provide his date of birth and address, and then his plea to the two charges (‘guilty’).

The CPS then provided District Judge Lower with a background summary of the case. He told the court that between March and September 2024, the RSPB were working on intelligence that potential offences were being committed on the Conistone & Grassington Estate. They identified a location and installed a covert camera, set to record between 1st – 19th October 2024.

When the camera was later retrieved, the footage and audio showed the offences were recorded on 2nd October 2024. The footage showed Dingwall [and two others], dressed in camouflage carrying a semi-automatic weapon and binoculars.

The footage was passed to Channel 4 News and North Yorkshire Police in late October 2024. North Yorkshire Police interviewed Dingwall five months later on 18th March 2025. [We also know that his two fellow suspects were interviewed but apparently both refused to say a word, presumably because they were concerned that voice analysis might match them with the voices recorded on the footage].

Mr Beaumont then gave some background on Dingwall. The court heard he had a prior conviction for violence in 2018 (the precise offence was not revealed) but that he had no other convictions or cautions. [For those wondering how a man with a conviction for violence was deemed suitable to hold a shotgun certificate is a question for North Yorkshire Police].

Mr Beaumont then went on to discuss sentencing guidelines, saying there weren’t any for these specific offences and suggested that the judge might use more generalised sentencing guidelines within the constraints of a magistrates’ court jurisdiction.

Mr Beaumont assessed Dingwall’s culpability as ‘high’, especially as there was an element of planning and the involvement of others was an aggravating factor, but then went on to assess the level of harm as ‘medium’ because ‘no Hen Harrier was injured or harmed as a result of Dingwall’s offending’. [Eh?? I’ll come back to this point].

District Judge Lower then said a few words in response to the prosecution’s comments. This is where things started to get really strange. He said he was putting Dingwall’s previous conviction for violence “out of my mind” because it was “dissimilar” to the current offending and “wasn’t relevant”.

He then said he had read four character references for Dingwall, provided by a Mr Gray, Mr Hewlitt, Mr “Bikey” and Mrs Sixsmith. My ears pricked up at Mr “Bikey”. I wondered whether this was Nicholas Baikie, a well known sporting agent with links to many grouse moors across the UK including the infamous Millden Estate in the Angus Glens, currently serving a three-year General Licence restriction imposed by NatureScot after multiple wildlife crime offences against birds were uncovered there.

DJ Lower said it was clear from the character references that Dingwall’s latest offending was “completely out of character“.

Then it was the turn of Tim Ryan to provide a statement of mitigation for Dingwall. Mr Ryan told the court that his client “regrets enormously” his actions, which have led to a “lost job, livelihood and reputation“. Mr Ryan claimed that Dingwall was realising that he had “no prospect of working as a gamekeeper again” [I don’t believe that – there are a number of examples over the years of convicted gamekeepers who have been subsequently employed on the same or on other estates] and that he had “let himself down and his family“.

In terms of sentencing suggestions, Mr Ryan argued that Dingwall’s guilty plea needed to be taken into account.

DJ Lower interjected at this point and said that Dingwall’s guilty plea on the opening day of the trial had been noted, and that because Dingwall had indicated his change of plea to the court prior to the trial, it had “spared the court time and spared the witnesses“, so he intended to give a “25% discount” to whatever sentence was handed down.

Mr Ryan then proposed that a Community Order would be an “appropriate starting point” for the judge to consider given the “devastating consequences on Dingwall and his family” but that a fine would be preferential because the overall effect [of a Community Order] would be “worse for his family“.

We then got to District Judge Lower’s sentencing remarks.

He repeated his comments that the court had “not had to be troubled with a trial” and that “witnesses were not called“.

He then repeated the offences to which Dingwall had pleaded guilty and launched into the most bizarre commentary about the protection of Hen Harriers. He said he understood that there was “controversy” about Hen Harrier management in terms of alleged predation on grouse. He said, “Some take the view that Hen Harriers are, to say the least, a pest, and that they have to be shot to prevent them predating Red Grouse, and this brings in to issue the management of grouse farms and those responsible for the management of farms because it’s a business, and if there aren’t any Red Grouse for others to shoot as part of a day out then there is no business“.

He continued, “Other people take the view that Hen Harriers are a protected species, and indeed they are, and should not be shot and be allowed to predate Red Grouse. I make no comment about these views”. [Eh? How on earth is this relevant?].

“What I am dealing with is on 2nd October 2024 you chose to take with you a shotgun, binoculars, audio equipment, and dress up in camouflage, in order to at least observe a Hen Harrier at a piece of land and you were in communication with others who were interested in the movements of Hen Harriers at that land, with a view to killing a Hen Harrier if it was showing any indication of preying on Red Grouse. [Er…the Harriers being targeted by Dingwall and his accomplices were coming in to an evening roost, not hunting for Red Grouse].

“That’s an offence and you should have known it was an offence and you knew full well what your responsibilities as a gamekeeper were….you may not have not have known all the ins and outs but you would have known something of how to respond to a Hen Harrier.

“I’ve read your character references – your behaviour is really out of character. A change in your occupation, your income – it seems rather [inaudible] for me to say, but not wrong to say, you’ll never work as a gamekeeper again as a consequence of your behaviour and this is more of a punishment than any I can impose this morning“.

There was then a brief commentary about sentencing guidelines which I didn’t catch in full so won’t try to repeat that here.

DJ Lowther then spoke about culpability and agreed with the CPS’s assessment that Dingwall’s culpability was “high“, with a degree of planning with others, and that the harm caused was “medium” because, wait for it, “no Hen Harrier was shot or killed due to your behaviour“.

At this point I looked across to the packed media benches and caught the eyes of several journalists who clearly were as bemused as I was with this statement.

We’d all seen the RSPB’s footage, as shown on Channel 4 News. How anyone could watch that and believe that a Hen Harrier hadn’t been shot and killed would be beyond the comprehension of many. I’m reminded of the idiom, ‘When you hear hooves, look for horses, not zebras’.

I’ve tried to understand the rationale for DJ Lower’s statement, and struggled initially, but the following explanation is the best I came up with on my journey home from court:

Those of us who watched the footage and believed that Dingwall had shot and killed the untagged Hen Harrier based that belief on a civil burden of proof, i.e. on the balance of probability, given everything else we’d seen and heard on the RSPB’s footage, we considered it more likely than not that a Hen Harrier was shot and killed.

However, the RSPB’s footage does not meet the evidential threshold to ‘prove’, to a criminal standard of proof, i.e. beyond reasonable doubt, that a Hen Harrier was shot and killed, nor by whom, which is presumably why Dingwall was not charged with that offence.

We might not like it, and probably don’t agree with his statement, but Judge Lower had a duty to consider the criminal standard of proof in his deliberations, and not the civil burden of proof. In my opinion, though, he could/should have done a better job of explaining his statement.

If nothing else, this case provides a very good example of the high evidential threshold required to convict anyone of raptor persecution, and demonstrates why so many cases fail to result in a prosecution. Not because an offence hasn’t been committed, but because it’s really really difficult to ‘prove’ who did it.

I do think though that the footage will have opened the eyes of many members of the public about what goes on on grouse moors when gamekeepers think nobody is watching, and that awareness is crucial if we want more members of the public to start applying pressure on our political representatives to get a grip and support effective enforcement to deal with this ongoing criminality.

Anyway, back to the court room.

DJ Lower repeated his earlier comment that he was “disregarding” Dingwall’s previous conviction (for violence) because it was “dissimilar” to the current offences and “not related to killing wild birds“.

He then went through his sentencing options, musing that he had considered a custodial term “to make an example of you” and to show that “the court takes theses offences seriously” but he disregarded a custodial option because he didn’t think Dingwall would spend much time in prison.

He said he’d also considered a Community Order and what that might look like but he didn’t think it was appropriate, nor that Dingwall needed the support of the probation service.

Instead he settled on a fine, £400 for each of the two offences, plus a surcharge of £320 and prosecution costs of £400, making a total of £1,520, to be payable within 28 days. Dingwall was asked about his means to pay and he indicated that he could make the payment within the timescale.

Does this fine reflect the seriousness of Dingwall’s offending? I’d say absolutely not. I’d say it was an insult to everyone who worked so hard to bring the case to court and it’s certainly no deterrent whatsoever to anyone else thinking of killing a Hen Harrier (and there are a lot of those criminals about). The fine is just a minor inconvenience for Dingwall and once again the estate owner and/or the sporting agent goes unpunished. This really has to change.

The hearing ended with an extraordinary direction from DJ Lower. He noted how packed the court was (press, police, RSPB and general observers) and said that he didn’t think Dingwall should have to ‘meet’ any of the people who had attended the hearing so he instructed a court clerk to allow Dingwall and his solicitor to leave the court room before anyone else.

My interpretation of that direction was that Dingwall was being allowed to leave the court building by a separate entrance without having to face the wall of journalists outside. However, this message didn’t quite get through to the clerks, who ‘held’ Dingwall and Mr Ryan in a separate holding room until everyone had left the court building, and then Dingwall and Mr Ryan were escorted out to the front door of the court building, where the cameras and journalists were waiting for him.

There’s another good piece from Alex Thomson (Channel 4 News) of Dingwall’s case, here.