RECEIVING hate mail is as common as the usual bills, letters and circulars for Rod Brammer.

The Mid Devon farmer is used to sparking outrage for his calls for a national cull of grey squirrels and magpies.

But thick-skinned Rod, who describes himself as a shooting coach and a naturalist, is not about to change his lifestyle or beliefs at the age of 67.

"I'm about politically correct as a cluster bomb," declares Rod who lives on a farm in Shillingford, near Bampton, with his wife Daphne and their two dogs.

"I expect a lot of people think I am an evil and cruel person but I don't think I am. When I get hate mail, if people give me their address I write back to them and thank them for their letter or if they give a telephone number I ring them and explain my bit.

"But most letters come from animal rights fanatics and they won't see it, which shows a complete lack of understanding. They won't be educated.

"If people don't like what I do then tough. I really don't care. I'm English, not British, and unlike most people I've fought for my country and fought for my alleged democracy and I think that gives me the right to speak my mind. It offends some people but so what?"

Rod was raised on a farm in Hampshire and at the age of 14 was given little choice but to follow in his father's, grandfather's and great- grandfather's footsteps and pursue a naval career.

He was with the Royal Navy for 16 years when he joined its specialist intelligence group. Describing the nature of the job as "little sensitive", he quickly steers the conversation back to his return from the sea to Hampshire at the age of 42.

"When I came out I didn't make a very good civilian." he admitted. "When you have seen a lot of blood it doesn't make you a very good civilian. I went to work for Rank Hovis McDougall and bought wheat for the flour mills from farmers or abroad. I loved it. Then through internal politics I didn't get the job which I was promised so I went to another firm and did the same job. When grain intervention came in all the fun went out of it, so I decided to do something different. A friend asked me if I would teach him to shoot and that was the start of me becoming an international shooting coach."

Two years ago Rod opened Shalden Shooting School on his farm which is now run by his youngest son Matthew, 29. All his life, Rod has been involved with field sports, listing fishing as his favourite.

When it comes to animals it is birds that he adores, but not all of them. Half of his farm has been turned into a private bird sanctuary, home to 92 recorded species, but not all birds are welcomed — nor, for that matter, are most of his fellow human beings.

He said: "It's a sanctuary: I don't want people here. That's why it's called a sanctuary. The bird population here is artificially high because of the way we stop predators taking them.

"We have to feed them all year around as there would not be enough food for them all. We go through about half a tonne a year, but they are a great joy. It's very satisfying to see that what you do makes such an enormous difference. I was the one that called for the national magpie cull about five or six years ago. That caused hell and chaos and the RSPB went bananas.

"I'm not an RSPB member. We clash mightily. The controversy comes becomes I kill things that prey on smaller birds like magpies and other animals like grey squirrels who attack trees.

"We shoot and trap anything that goes after the smaller birds. I trap a lot of them in Larsen traps. It's a perfectly legal trap. You have to use a decoy bird like a live magpie which attracts another one and then you pull their necks. It's better to trap them because it's more time efficient than shooting.

"Magpies have increased by something like over 90 per cent in just 30 years. You can see why then the smaller birds are going because magpies takes their eggs and babies."

Rod's other big bugbear is, of course, the grey squirrel, which he says is a menace towards the nation's trees and some of the creatures that inhabit them.

"I've also got photographs of them eating baby birds from nests," said Rod. " Even the Prince of Wales now says they have to go.

"I put the facts before people but they just won't have it. Even the Forestry Commission say they do untold damage but they won't come out and say let's have them gone.

"I would be the first to admit they are pretty little souls, but if you cut off their tail, which I have shown people when I have shot or trapped one, what you've essentially got is a rat.

"Would you look after a rat in your garden? Of course you wouldn't. The Government is not doing anything to promote their culling. It's exactly the same with badgers. Nothing must be culled so everything is out of balance. People say I hate squirrels and magpies but I don't. They can't help what they do but I'm not having them in my valley because I want to keep the small bird population up."

Although Rod has never gone fox hunting himself, he helped found a new church called the Free Church of Country Sports in an unsuccessful attempt to head off the ban on hunting with hounds. He is also a member of the Ounce Of Fives Group which put up a £500 bounty for the person who kills the most grey squirrels.

Aside from the animal controversy, Rod is pursing a lifelong passion for writing. Four books out of a planned series of eight on theme of espionage have already flowed from his fountain pen.

"I can only write about as fast as I think," he explains. "I'm also hopeless on computers and have no interest in them at all."

Rod must also cope with trigeminal neuralgia, a condition that causes a brief, searing pain to his face that might be the legacy of an IRA bomb.

"I have to more or less live on morphine," revealed Rod. "Lots of things trigger it such as getting in a car which makes my ears and nose bleed. It's horrendously painful. Initially it was liveable but now it isn't."

Rod's books, including new release Dismissed Dead, are all available now from www. amazon.co.uk.