Innholdsfortegnelse for 15-Feb-2017 i Shooting Times & Country

Brambles caught the bare skin of my inner thigh like a tangled octopus and, as I tried to pull away its woody tentacles, thorns dug deep into my flesh, creating scarlet tramlines of blood. I had lost my footing and fallen into what seemed like an ocean of spikes while applying stick and voice to the task of beating. As the sharp stab of pain shot through my leg I asked myself: what kind of fool wears a kilt for this sort of work? A bit higher up and the damage could have been… well, enough said. Yet I couldn’t help smiling because I was having a great day on the Rockstead shoot, gaining a deeper understanding of how it worked and enjoying the company of my fellow beaters. I…

The recently published RSPB Birdcrime 2015 report says that there were 196 reports of shooting and destruction of birds of prey and 50 reports of wildlife poisoning and pesticide-related offences across the UK in 2015, which it links to gamekeepers. The report notes that: “A long-term review of individuals convicted of raptor persecution-related offences shows a clear link with game-rearing interests.” The charity has suggested tougher penalties for those who persecute birds of prey and has renewed its call for the licensing of driven grouse shooting and a vicarious liability offence for employers whose staff commit wildlife crime. But rural organisations believe the RSPB should work with the shooting community to stamp out raptor persecution rather than seeking to condemn it. Liam Stokes, head of shooting at the Countryside Alliance,…

16 FEBRUARY KEEPERS CHOICE GAME & COUNTRYSIDE CONFERENCE Cokethorpe School, Witney, Oxfordshire Tel 01489 780033 21 FEBRUARY BASC YOUNG SHOTS INTRODUCTORY DAY Lains Shooting School, Quarley, Andover, Hampshire Tel 01244 573028 26 FEBRUARY COUNTRYSIDE ALLIANCE POINT-TO-POINT RACES Badbury Rings, Blandford Forum, Dorset Tel 07974 141933 9 MARCH GWCT GAME MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICE DAY Allerton Project, Loddington, Leicestershire Tel 01425 651013 9-12 MARCH CRUFTS 2017 National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, West Midlands Tel 01217 804141 16 MARCH HOLT’S AUCTION OF FINE MODERN & ANTIQUE GUNS Princess Louise House, Hammersmith, London Tel 01485 542822…

Berkshire keeper passes away Gamekeeper Timmy James Wright has passed away at the age of 53. He worked at Minal and Ramsfield near Marlborough in Wiltshire as underkeeper and then single-handed keeper. He later became headkeeper at Polesden and Stipe, near Hungerford in Berkshire, for the famed philanthropist Dame Vivien Duffield. Mr Wright (pictured) kept Labradors and spaniels and was described by friends as “the most incredible dog man”. He leaves behind a wife, Louise, and two children, Katie and Beth. Shadow environment secretary resigns Rachael Maskell, the shadow DEFRA secretary, resigned from the shadow cabinet earlier this month following Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to impose a three-line whip on his party to vote in favour of the Government’s EU withdrawal bill. Ms Maskell (below), who is the Labour…

Though there is no keeper on Alford, shoot manager Paul Smith has carried out many of the keepering duties and acted as shoot captain for the past five seasons. A butcher by trade, he has been involved with shoot management for more than 20 years, initially working as a part-time keeper on a syndicate shoot he joined at the age of 17. One of the biggest, changes Paul introduced to Alford was to get Guns, beaters and pickers-up to sit and eat together during the shoot lunch. “Eating together makes everyone feel equal, which I think is very important. Our beaters and pickers-up are all volunteers — they do a great job and it couldn’t happen without them,” he explained. Owing to Paul’s trade, his skills extend far beyond working…

“Heads have been presented that with another season would have achieved a trophy score” Roebuck seasons come and go, remembered by stalkers for many reasons — a fi rst buck, a trophy scored, an atypical animal, a new rifle or permission or, for very few, the trophy of a lifetime. It has been said on many occasions that, in terms of the quality of its roe, Scotland as part of the UK punches way above its weight when compared with other European countries. A trophy taken in 2016 once again underlines this, and in terms of the records and scores accepted by the CIC its position in the top 10 per cent of recorded roe trophies is currently secure. Time was that the benchmark for a high-scoring roebuck was set…

If you like your birds colourful and noisy you might welcome the addition of the ring-necked parakeet to the country’s bird list. On the other hand, if you are trying to grow apples commercially or you live within earshot of one of their noisy nighttime roosts you might view them differently. These small parrots should be breeding in Africa and southern Asia, but releases and escapes of cage birds led to the first record of UK breeding in 1971. Though the majority are in the London area, there are significant numbers in Thanet in Kent and an increasing number of reports from Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham. In February, pairs will be looking for nest holes in trees, which may mean competing with species such as starling and nuthatch. Once…

BASC Scotland is holding a series of three night-vision evenings from 22 to 24 February. Guests will have the chance to test and compare a range of equipment, including digital and traditional night vision, thermal imaging and day scopes. The first event is at the Steadings hotel in Stratnairn, Inverness, followed by evenings at the BASC Scottish Centre in Dunkeld, Perthshire, and the Mabie House Hotel in Mabie Forest, Dumfries. The events are free for members and £5 for non-members. For further details or to book, contact BASC Scotland, tel 01350 723226. We are only accepting applications for the 2017 Shooting Industry Awards for nine more days — so if you are planning to enter, do it soon. The annual awards celebrate the achievements of the trade throughout the previous…

BREEDING WORKERS Canine breed standards are set by the breed clubs, which often also provide the judges to decide the best in breed. This means that best in breed may be the least healthy dog on show. The Kennel Club (KC) does nothing to discourage the breed clubs from persevering with the characteristics that we see in the ugly, unhealthy and deformed dogs that some breed societies present at Crufts. The sad fact is that all this agony is imposed by people for reasons that I find incomprehensible. Do they like watching their pet struggling to breathe, trying to see through a mop of beautifully groomed hair that hangs over its eyes, dying of stomach torsion or losing the ability to run and eventually to walk? All breeds that have…

Alasdair Mitchell suggests that people who shoot but don’t take up membership of any of our shooting organisations are short-sighted, even selfish (Sharpshooter, 18 January).Hear, hear. He is right, too, about the shooting community having a more powerful voice with a string of organisations all working towards common goals, rather than us all sailing in one big sinkable ship. Most seasoned shooters will have talked about the merits of joining a particular shooting organisation. I have, and it peeves me that so many people seem to be driven solely by who offers them the “best” insurance package. Isn’t that a little selfish too? What about the bigger issues that affect the wellbeing of our countryside and the shooting sports that we all love? BASC, the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation, the Scottish…

Ray Rabbets has just completed his ninth season at Rockstead, having been a professional keeper for 39 years, since his early 20s. However, his connection to the place goes back much further than that because he pretty much grew up here, and went beating at Rockstead from boyhood. In those early years his father Peter — known to everyone as Bunny — keepered the shoot. After a brief break under different management, Bunny came back in the 1980s, retiring at the end of the 2003-2004 season, but he is still out on shoot days, waving his flag and helping to make the day run smoothly.…

“For the collector, post-war Lock examples are relatively easy to find but the 1930s Special are far more elusive” The small town of Atherstone in Warwickshire is situated on the A5 and, until recent years, this busy trunk road ran through the main street. It is famed for its unique game of “street football”, performed every Shrove Tuesday, when the street is closed and hundreds of players pursue a ball using tactics that are more suited to rugby. I have never been able to fathom out the rules but there appears to be a single winner. While most rural towns had their own gunmakers in the 19th century, often blacksmiths for whom this was a small subsidiary trade, none are listed for Atherstone. However, I have seen a centre-hammer pocket…

“The braque Français is like a souped-up Brittany spaniel. It is really impressive” THOUGH IT IS NOT a claim I have ever heard him make, Rory Major has almost certainly trained and competed with more breeds of gundog than anyone else in the business. He has trialled everything from retrievers and spaniels to setters and most breeds of HPR. His successes include making-up the first British wirehaired pointer field trial champion, and subsequently two more. He has also made-up two Brittanys, ensuring that both these dogs (mother and daughter) became dual champions. His DVD on training HPRs (filmed and produced by Paul French) is a bestseller, and he has provided the commentary to Paul French’s film of the 2016 HPR Championship. I have listed all this…

BILL HARRIMAN BASC’s head of firearms and global authority on guns MAT MANNING Airgunner and journalist from the West Country BRUCE POTTS Shooting Times rifl e reviewer and stalker DAVID TOMLINSON Highly regarded writer and ornithologist LIAM BELL NGO chairman, Shropshire gamekeeper and keen wildfowler GRAHAM DOWNING Shooting consultant and sporting author PAUL RAWLINGS Gundog expert and A-panel spaniel judge CHRIS DE CANI Riverkeeper, with specialist knowledge of chalkstreams TONY BUCKWELL Veterinary surgeon with a special interest in gundogs TONY JACKSON A game Shot, keen stalker and former editor of Shooting Times TOM PAYNE Professional shooting instructor and avid pigeon shooter SIMON WHITEHEAD Author, professional ferreter and rabbit controller IAIN WATSON Keen stalker and senior CIC international trophy judge Contact the team Email: stanswers@timeinc.com By post: Shooting…

Arguably the toughest of all our native sheep breeds, the Herdwick is known as the guardian of the fells for the vital role it plays in shaping the appearance of its native Lake District. Here it lives on the hill for much of the year, each flock hefted (unfenced) to its owners’ land. The greyish wool is heavy and dense to give the animal the protection it needs to survive in the wettest, and often the coldest, environment in England. The face and legs are white, or what the breed standard calls “hoar-frosted”. Only the rams have horns. Meat from the Herdwick is renowned for its flavour, the result of the slow-maturing lambs being reared on the heather and bilberries of the fells. It is marketed as Lakeland Herdwick, indicating…

 The question of big bags raised by reader Mr J. Norbury (Letters, 1 February) is a trap that we must avoid falling into. As shooters we are often guilty of making sweeping assertions as to what the wider public love or hate about what we do. We base our beliefs on what we or our friends think, rather than a more scientific assessment of what voters think. And it’s that category that impacts on us in Parliament and the media. “Arguments based on real concerns are what we need to fight shooting’s corner in Westminster” Public concern about shooting — such as it is — makes no distinction when it comes to bag size. If “killing for sport” is where all this originates, then any bag more than a mere…

“On any well-stocked beat, there is always an abundant source of food for predators to prey upon” The headline “Stoat trap restrictions on the way” (News, 1 February) will no doubt have had many keepers muttering something unprintable. I have written quite a bit about the need to keep stoats under control for the benefit of ground-nesting birds, but the current situation brings things a little more into focus. I, alongside almost every decent wild bird keeper, is well aware of the damage all the members of the weasel family can do, not only to gamebirds but also to many other species, some of them now on the red list. Those same keepers, like countless of their predecessors, will be well versed in just about every legal trapping technique available…

“A bird had flown in and out of a window to hide peanuts under a pillow, causing a bit of a surprise come bedtime” One of the distinguishing features of nuthatches is that they can climb down trees — the only British bird that can do this. Woodpeckers and treecreepers work their way up the trunk, hunting for insects under the bark, then fly to the base of another tree to start again, but nuthatches can descend a tree headfirst. It is one of those funky facts that birdwatchers like but one that you do not need to know in order to identify a nuthatch. In size, they are a bit bigger than a great tit, with greyish-blue on the back, a pinkish-russet front and a black eye-stripe, almost bandit-like…

Let sleeping dogs lie has always been one of my favourite proverbs. It is based on the fact that a sleeping dog is no problem to anyone, but it might well be a different case should you wake it up. As a rule dogs are light sleepers and it doesn’t take much to wake them up. They certainly sleep more heavily after a hard day’s work, hence the phrase “dog-tired”, but sometimes a really exhausted dog finds it difficult to settle. Dogs are a little like us in that some seem to be much better sleepers than others. Over the years I have shared my bedroom with a number of my own dogs, usually when travelling away from home. Some of the dogs have been perfect bedroom companions, hardly stirring…

Latin name: Ulmus glabra Common name: Scotch elm, feathered elm, mountain elm, wych elm How to spot it and where to find it: Similar in appearance to English elm, this large tree — which can reach 40m tall — grows in damp places in woods, near the sea and on mountain slopes. It is the only elm regarded as truly native to Britain but because of Dutch elm disease is only rarely found today. In winter, look out for its reddish-brown hairy buds — the reddish hair also covers the twigs. Tiny red-purple flowers appear in early spring in clusters of 10 to 20, before growing into green seeds after they have been pollinated. The leaves of the wych elm are oval shaped and distinctly asymmetrical at the bottom. Their…

“We don’t ask people to re-take their driving test every five years and we have one central driving licence agency” Have you seen your doctor recently? If you have, I do hope it wasn’t for anything significant. I don’t know about you, but I consider a visit to the doctor to be what marketing geeks call a “distress purchase”. It isn’t a recreational choice so much as something you do only when absolutely necessary. Mind you, I am sure all GPs have tales of certain patients who turn up with monotonous regularity for little more than a chat and some company. The thing is that “my GP” is any GP on duty who can fit me in within the necessary timescale. They all seem nice enough but, to be frank,…