Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i Shooting Gazette

February marks the end of the driven game shooting season and offers us a chance to reflect. We met some truly wonderful characters at impressive estates and I am certain all our images of shoot days held from August to January will impress you in the coming year. Those involved with driven game shooting will be looking forward to a little downtime, but even when the last shot is fired on the last drive, there is no let-up as preparations for the coming season need consideration. If you would like to become more involved on shoot day, we have a number of articles identifying the skills required. Just what are those attributes everyone from host to head chef needs in order to make sure their part in proceedings goes off…

Not the field trials that I recognise I was horrified to read Ian Morton’s letter (January issue) regarding his observation of a field trial. I find it incredulous that wounded, running game would be left unpicked or ignored by any judge or judges. At the beginning of each drive, it is customary for judges to warn the first competitor in line that if a runner should come down during the drive, the first dog will be sent, if it is safe to do so, thus enabling wounded game to be quickly gathered and dispatched. If this should happen again, the second dog in line would be sent. I am a junior non-panel field trial judge and have attended many retriever field trials to learn, watch, help and compete. I do…

I had the chance to flick through the January issue during a break in my festive responsibilities. Only those with a heart of stone could have failed to have been moved by the news of the sad demise of Old Dog. Elsewhere Patrick Laurie’s run-in with a grey squirrel in Galloway was cause for concern after all his habitat management work and vermin control. The atmospheric career memories of Douglas Morrison were enthralling, while the realities of life without lead shot in cartridges proved divisive on Christmas evening when discussed with my partner, father and brother who individually offered support for steel, lead and bismuth. As usual, the Gundogs section found favour with everyone and we’re all looking forward to the IGL Retriever Championship report next issue. So, given the…

Dear Uncle Giles, I have just received an invitation to shoot partridges in Spain this month and spouses are welcome. The other guests are bringing their mad keen shooting wives and partners but my other half is a card-carrying novice. I want her to come but don’t want her to have a wasted trip if she’s going to find things too difficult. Any thoughts? RJAB, via email Uncle Giles writes Don’t fret so. How ever are novice Shots going to gain experience unless they are able to get out there and have a go? New to shooting your lovely wife may be – and as new to shooting partridges in Spain in February every bit as much as you are yourself, I venture – but why should she enjoy it…

Mention Staffordshire and many people will immediately think of pottery and fine china - think Wedgwood, Aynsley and Spode - and in truth, this was the industry that by the late 18th century had established Stokeon-Trent and its Potteries in the north of the county as the largest producers of ceramics in Britain and catapulted the industry into world-leading predominance. The natural resources of clay, lead, salt and long-flame coal were ideal, not just for crafting fine china, but for fuelling the Industrial Revolution taking middle England by storm and latterly, the county became as famous for its foundries and blast furnaces that gave the Black Country its name, as for its china. A network of inland waterways helped bring Staffordshire’s products south to London and east via the River…

At the end of the game season, a strip of maize, when flailed, can often produce a great day’s pigeon shooting. Recently, as I sat watching a straw-coloured strip with optimism, it was soon apparent there were not as many pigeons feeding there as had been anticipated. On inspecting the ground it was obvious that pigeons and rooks had cleared the bright golden grains of maize as the cobs were smashed by the flail a week earlier. I was too late. However, I was in no hurry to make a decision. A few birds came and circled around before casually flying off over the adjacent field of winter wheat to sit in a long narrow wood on the far side, 300yds away. “I would mount my gun as a bird…

The area in India where Jacob lived was primarily desert and many of the confrontations occurred at great distances. Jacob was an engineer and innovator, and after inventing his four-winged bullet he turned his attention to other long-range devices. He invented what was effectively a long-range sniper rifle with a devastating explosive bullet. Once again it used the four-wing design but instead of it being a solid lump of lead, Jacob designed what he termed an ‘explosive shell’. Contained within the bullet was a small charge of powder in a copper tube, the front of which was primed with detonating powder designed to explode on impact. Jacob claimed that “two good riflemen with his explosive bullet could annihilate a field battery at extreme range in 10 minutes”. The effect on…

Q Is it possible to practise being a walking Gun in wooded areas where ground is uneven? A I often think being a walking Gun or walking-up game is very much a dying art. I often watch some of my clients who are used to being stood on a peg being asked to walk and shoot with some trepidation. As always in these situations, safety always comes first. The act of simply moving through a wood with a shotgun suddenly presents you with a number of challenges. Your main focus actually becomes walking and not falling or tripping over. Shooting becomes your secondary focus. It may be necessary to carry your gun differently in order to duck under branches and move through thick cover. Whilst doing this, awareness of where…

Aston Martin has unveiled its first SUV and the chaps from Gaydon’s attempt at a plutocratic Gunbus is certainly more handsome than its Bentley or Rolls-Royce competition. The DBX comes with the same snorting V8 as the DB11 I tested last month, and doesn’t weigh much more than two tons, making it one of the lightest in its class. It also has an optional fieldsports package, which gives it an integrated gunbox with matching picnic hamper and shooting stick. Prices for the car (without extras) start at £158,000 and the order book is open now for deliveries starting in the spring.…

How to win For your chance to win either a Pintail Explorer smock (top right) or a Seasons jacket (right), email high-res images to martin.puddifer@ti-media. com. Please put ‘Gundog Picture of the Month’ in the subject line. The winner will be chosen by the Shooting Gazette judging panel. Good luck! The prize will only be posted to winners with a fixed UK postal address.…

A dog’s life After saying a sad farewell to Old Dog in last month’s A Dog’s Life, it’s time to say cheerio to Roderick Emery’s column. I know that our man and his dogs have brought you much joy over the years, and as we wanted to end on a high, we thought it only proper to let you know they’re going to be fine, even though one of their number has crossed the rainbow bridge. A good day What’s the difference between an average shoot day and a truly spectacular one? Is it the birds in the sky, the quality of the beating or picking-up or even the elevenses served? David Whitby, a headkeeper who knows a thing or two about shoot days, offers a personal insight into the…

Those of us who have been fortunate enough to work our dogs in the field have many a tale to tell. I once had a black labrador called Molly who really wanted to be a spaniel; she was a hard hunting bitch and at times had a will of her own. One day, we were out on a shoot in our customary position near the house, on the wall, watching the drive unfold in front of us, waiting for birds to fall in the wood behind. The drive finished and Molly was off. At the same time, the game cart arrived in the field and out stepped its driver, Arthur, followed by a rather rotund spaniel that proceeded to scoop up all the fallen birds. Unfortunately, a nearby knight of…

Know your market: and listen to customer needs and feedback. First and foremost, in order to engage effectively and provide your market with what it wants/needs, you need to understand and empathise with those at the core of the industry and really listen to them – both end-consumers and trade customers. We have an incredible network of retailers who spend their time, day in, day out, at the coalface, dealing directly with our end-consumers, so their feedback is invaluable. Shooting is a nuanced community that has, on occasion, been vilified unfairly – therefore it is more important than ever to have a comprehensive understanding of the issues at play in the market and people’s sentiments and motivations. Guardianship – don’t forget the bigger picture: It is vital that everyone is…

You are an interior designer specialising in bespoke wallcoverings – how did you get into this particular area? I’d always been arty as a child and teenager, but stopped once I started my career in marketing. Around three years ago I rediscovered my love for painting and was drawn to the textures and natural heritage of our landscape, and the animals within it. There are so many interesting and wonderful shapes and colours, and I found I relished the challenge of capturing that which I’d grown up in and around, from birds to foxes. I’d thought about displaying some of the painted characters on a wall in my home, and the idea for wallpaper was born. I now run my hand-painted wallpaper company from my base in North Yorkshire, and…

The dying hours of the wildfowling season seem to draw me away from the comfort and ease of dry land. After a flurry of excitement at the end of the inland fowling season, it’s tempting to draw stumps and pack up for the year. Mallard are often falling into pairs by this stage, and it seems unfair to pursue them as the breeding season kicks in. I watch them circling above the river which winds through the farm, and I always pity the poor ducks, sometimes pursued by as many as seven or eight drakes at a time. It’s clear the boys have one thing on their mind. “The sport’s reputation is tarnished by the fact lead shot continues to turn up in wildfowl carcases.” But there are many other…

Human So we are now a single dog household. There is a body of opinion which says that in an organised home you should always have a puppy on the go. “Coming on!”, they say, so that as a sporting chap you are never without a decently trained dog about the place to collect the slain on your regular huntering and gathering forays. This is a somewhat antediluvian attitude; especially when my own tally of sporting outings can be counted on the fingers of...well, let’s say, two or three hands in any given season. And another smattering out of season. And very few of them are single handed. They mostly come with great rafts of pickers-up in the vicinity, so, if we were to be brutally honest, I could exist…

There was much talk in the Gunbus recently about role reversal on shoot day, namely the advantages of asking people who normally find themselves in the line to take a day off to load for others, on the basis everyone can learn from sharing someone else’s travails. This may be encountering their polished expertise with awe and wonder, or their struggle to hit the arse of an ass with a Bofors gun, but in either case, everyone gains from the experience. There are some Guns more recently called to arms who haven’t quite got the drift of how their days come together in the seamless way that they do, and loading is a first rate way to give them an insight. If one’s experience in the field has been shaped…

Using three traps on a Promatic Huntsman trailer with a remote control, some of the most extreme partridge targets can be presented. I put the Fausti through its paces accompanied by Mickey Rouse. It has to be said the handling was truly exceptional, and the traditional Silver’s-style pad was very comfortable. We shot a wide variety of cartridges, from 28gram clay and game loads to some 34gram loads designed for the best Exmoor can throw at you. These were clearly a fast performance load but very comfortable through the Fausti. The balance is just in front of the hinge pin yet it was no slouch in the handling stakes – smooth and pointable would be an appropriate description, due in part to the combination of balance and barrel weight. The…

BURFORD INSULATED BOOT BY ARIAT £150 ariat.com A storm that took its time passing over Shooting Gazette HQ late last year provided the ideal conditions for testing these neoprene-lined wellingtons. I was out and about for a good few hours, crossing streams and muddy fields, my feet warm and dry for the duration of the test. The comfort was in part thanks to Ariat’s ATS® Pro technology and meant that switching between hard ground and softer ground was no big deal. I was grateful for the shock-absorbing EVA midsole and Duratread™ outsole in particular, without which I might have had a tricky time navigating muddy slopes. The boots benefit from an adjustable leather strap, which appears to be stronger than previous models I have tried. This is a traditional-looking vulcanised…

1 Declan Boyle’s Int FTCh Miller McDuff 2 Ms Wendy Glue’s FTCh Tanyrhallt Blue Bloods handled by Jamie Bettinson 3 Matty Lambden’s IR FTCh Tamrose Aragon 4 Mike Jones’ Ffynongain Buzzard of Wauniago Diplomas of merit Nathan Laffy’s Think Twice Zero To Hero (also Guns’ choice) Lee Hartis’ FTCh Troddenmills Full Throttle of Leacaz Lady C. Carter’s FTCh Asterix Aguzannis of Chatsworth handled by John Halsted Louie Robertson’s Mitforton Onour Mark Demaine’s Burrendale Fergie of Caytonfell David Field’s FTCh Artistryn Ulrich…

I want a dumper truck for my birthday. I’m quite sure of this because I’ve been driving one in order to service the Ancient Mariner who came in September to dig out my pond. I dumped 18 loads of silt at three tonnes a load. Apart from the kangaroo diesel it was great fun. The Ancient Mariner is a digger artist and I now have a beautiful pond, which has greened up in just a few weeks. Even better fun has been the appearance of a few teal tempted in by a bag of barley kindly donated by the Ancient Mariner, whose reward on earth was to join me and Cecil for a small flight in the New Year. He insisted on bringing what he calls his proper dogs (labs)…

QI hear a lot about training the owner as well as the dog. What exactly does that mean? A Gundog training is a sequence of learned responses, in different conditions, to achieve a particular goal. There is a great deal of information available on dog training but little on the dog trainer. I probably spend 70% of the time working with and mentoring the owner and aligning the owner to the personality and abilities of the dog, layering an approach that fits them. As we are all different there are a number of ways to get the desired result. Dog training is never straightforward due to the human variables. Patience, tenacity and consistency are a given. Being analytical and problem-solving help. Energy giving (as opposed to animation) and fitness are…

THE AUTHOR of the Letter of the Month will receive a pair of Wexford boots from Dubarry of Ireland (RRP £325). The knee-length side-zip boots – designed for both men and women – are handcrafted from waterproof Dry Fast-Dry Soft breathable leathers. The high quality of the boot is reinforced throughout with an insulated GORE-TEX lining that wicks moisture away from the foot, ensuring the wearer remains dry and comfortable all day. Dubarry’s new, hard-wearing durable outsole gives maximum grip whatever the ground conditions.…

As Sapiens is about what we can do even better in game shooting, let’s have a look at the end of the season. With many people suggesting that February marks the start of a holiday for game shoots and gamekeepers – a myth that needs dispelling – the fact is that there is much to do. And as Liam Bell, chairman of the NGO, writes in his excellent book On Your Shoot, this end-of-season work isn’t just about tidying up but “about people’s perception of us and game shooting in general”. On larger ‘commercial’ shoots it tends to be shoot workers and gamekeepers who do most of the end-of-season work while on smaller ones and syndicate shoots Guns, beaters, pickers-up, spouses, partners and children often muck in. Whatever your role,…

For your chance to win a bottle of Taittinger Champagne for Picture of the Month, send us a team photograph or a picture of something unusual from your shoot. Send high-resolution images or prints with captions to Shooting Gazette Gallery, TI Media Ltd, Pinehurst 2, Pinehurst Road, Farnborough, Hampshire, GU14 7BF or email: martin.puddifer@ti-media.com. The Guns at Ardtaraig shoot in Argyll on 30 November managed a bag of 183 challenging birds. From left: Robert Simpson, Nicola Simpson, David Reid, Keith Chalmers-Watson, Sir Fraser Morrison, Michael Leslie, Robin Brunton, Willie McEwan, John Carswell and Brian Carnegie. Skinner’s donated more than £5,000 worth of Field & Trial dog food to 12 rescue centres across the county in December following a social media campaign that resulted in over 2,600 nominations. On each of…

I’d be a nightmare if I ran a commercial shoot or hosted days on one. How so many people do it with such grace and élan, season in season out, is beyond my comprehension and they will always have my utmost respect. Perfect preparation and all that, but given the pressures, not to mention the money involved, it’s not a job I would want. It must be very lonely at the top when things go wrong. If there were even one minor bum note on my first day I know I would start flustering, worried the shooting party would zip up their guns and be off before I could say “Over!” “Being seen to be trying to do one’s best in difficult circumstances would, I hope, be enough for my…

Earning a living as a photographer and a writer gives you few opportunities to be a team player. In the days when I was in advertising there were occasions when a photoshoot would involve an art director, a model, the client and the client handler, together with myself and an assistant. That’s as close as I’ve got. Even my favourite team sport, cricket, is arguably a set of individual performances for one cause. But there is a bit of me that relishes being part of something bigger, especially when it means being on the inside and making a difference to the day, however small a difference that is. That’s one of the main reasons I decided to take up loading last year – to be a small cog in the…

A muzzle-loading rifle made in the 1840s with open sights sighted up to 2,000yds? This must be some kind of salesman’s pitch, as the normal range for a muzzle-loading rifle was around 100yds to 200yds. But no, this is absolutely true, as the Jacob muzzle-loading rifle was sighted right up to that impressive distance and was intended to be quite devastating at extreme range. Firing a muzzle-loading rifle at extreme range was always risky owing to the low velocity and poor trajectory of such rifles. It was difficult to ram down the bullet from the muzzle to the breech and consequently, most rifling was shallow grooved, meaning it could not impart sufficient grip to the bullet. In addition, the bullets were made of soft lead with no jacket so they…

Engineering: 9/10 Fausti has been established for a long time and has invested in new machinery, so the barrels are well finished and the patterns delivered by the fixed chokes are exceptional. The round action is well finished and the aesthetics pleasing to the eye. The engraving is fine rather than deep and as good as any at this price. Looks and finish: 8/10 The gun is finished to a high standard, the wood-to-metal fit is excellent and the gun feels well put together. The light-coloured wood is not to my personal taste; I would prefer something darker. My preference is also for an oil finish rather than lacquer. Handling: 10/10 Absolutely on the money to a level that surprised us during the test. Great handling matched by first-class trigger…

On shoots, the gamekeeper is the governing body. His regulations, which would probably fit on half a sheet of A4, might go something like this: On this shoot, gundogs, regardless of breed, must: • Have good game finding and retrieving ability • Have a soft mouth • Be steady no matter what • Be able to wait patiently and walk reasonably to heel on or off the lead • Must stop, go, sit and return to the whistle • Must be able work on their own initiative without going totally self employed • Must have enough stamina to be able to work all day, often in harsh conditions • Must face cover • Must be sociable with both humans and dogs • Must stop and look at its handler for…