Innholdsfortegnelse for 30-Aug-2017 i Shooting Times & Country

I’ve never toppled a tiger. While the idea of puffing a whackin’ white cheroot as the sun goes down after a sweaty day of big game hunting sounds all right, I much prefer the thought of lying on a sofa next to a smoky peat fire after an evening on a soggy moor. If you had invited me to despatch a known man-eater in the 1920s, and I didn’t have to get up intolerably early for the boat, I’d have answered the call. What I would never do, though, is accept an invitation to tear off through the African wilderness with a crossbow slung over my shoulder. Since we ran Tony Jackson’s piece on the real story behind the demise of Cecil the lion (16 August), I have had various…

Martin Myers took high Gun for the third time in the annual Barbury Challenge at Barbury Shooting School, Swindon, earlier this month. More than 400 competitors battled it out over a challenging 100 Sporting layout, with Mr Myers taking the top spot, thanks to a score of 95. He was presented with a Browning 525 Sporter One by Huw Stephens, owner of Barbury Shooting School, who told Shooting Times: “We are very happy with how the competition went, with lots of great feedback, and we are so pleased to have exceeded 400 entries.” Helen McKenna was the top lady Gun with a score of 76 and James Bradley-Day won the junior prize with 91. Scott Bailes took home the members’ high Gun prize, while Michele Brandligt and Sarah Locke shared…

1-3 SEPTEMBER CHATSWORTH COUNTRY FAIR Chatsworth House, Bakewell, Derbyshire Tel 01328 821821 2 SEPTEMBER BASC YOUNG SHOTS PARTRIDGE DAY Checkley Estate, Crewe, Cheshire Tel 01283 810910 3 SEPTEMBER RIBEYE CLAY SHOOT 2017 Hazel Manor, Miserden, Stroud, Gloucestershire Tel 01380 831068 8 SEPTEMBER NATIONAL DEER MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE Ashorne Hill, near Leamington Spa, Warwickshire Tel 01244 573019 15 SEPTEMBER GWCT PART TIME KEEPERS COURSE Allerton Project Visitor Centre, Loddington, Leicestershire Tel 01425 651013 16-17 SEPTEMBER THE MIDLAND GAME FAIR Weston Park, Weston-under-Lizard, Shropshire Tel 01889 563232…

Sandringham shoot raises £29k for GWT Holts Auctioneers’ annual charity clay shoot, held at the Sandringham estate, has raised £29,000 for the Gamekeepers’ Welfare Trust. Thirty-five teams of four Guns entered the competition, in which they took on five simulated game drives. The winning team, which scored 433 out of 500, was Oakbank Game and Conservation (pictured below), comprising Tim Furbank, owner of Oakbank, Marcus Janssen, editor of Fieldsports magazine, Ross Gibson from the William Powell Gunroom and Mark Thompson, a Cambridgeshire farmer. Lady’s Wood result Nick Portlock from Gloucestershire shot 48 out of 50 to take first place at the inaugural Lady’s Wood Challenge Super Final, which pitted 20 shooters against one another for a first prize shooting experience worth £1,000, at the shooting school near Chipping Sodbury. Purdey…

 TWO HUNDRED YEARS ago, on 1 September 1817, Colonel Peter Hawker noted a poor start to the partridge season. “Birds greatly destroyed by an incessant rain, no barley cut, and even the greater part of the wheat still standing. I tried to get the shooting deferred, but could not prevail on others to agree. The birds which were to be caught out of the corn were as wild as in November. I, however, did vastly well considering all disadvantages, having bagged 20 partridges, 1 hare, 1 quail and 1 landrail.” “Red Hector was so fat and out of wind that he would scarcely hunt” The Colonel wasn’t a man given to false modesty: shooting 20 partridges with a flintlock gun was no mean achievement, especially as he noted that the…

“Urban children cannot recognise farm animals nor where their food comes from” Like most country people, throughout the year I try to sustain my dwindling garden bird population with assorted feeders, using a combination of nuts and different seeds. Up to about five years ago, greenfinches were common, while siskins, greater spotted woodpeckers, chaffinches and bramblings were frequent visitors. Today, only a handful of house sparrows, two or three dunnocks, the odd robin, blue tits, an occasional great tit and goldfinches still come to the feeders. I have not seen a song thrush for years, though mistle thrushes and blackbirds are common enough, as too are sparrowhawks. The steep decline of so many species of once-common hedgerow, garden and farm birds over the past 45 years is a cause for…

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 rifle 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 Times,…

The Spanish greatly valued spotted horses, which they bred for riding, and some were taken to Mexico by the conquistadors in the 16th century. Descendants of With its spotted coat, the appaloosa is one of the most distinctive of horse breeds. Spotted horses have been known since ancient times, and have been depicted in cave paintings. these horses came into the possession of an Indian tribe called the Nez Perce, who crossed the spotted horses with mustangs. The Nez Perce Indians lived near the Palouse river in what is now the US state of Washington: the horses they bred first became known as a Palouse and eventually the appaloosa. In 1938, the appaloosa was recognised as a breed, valued for its agility and strength.…

“The local populace is exasperated by the way tourism is harming their lives” A gamekeeper on the Isle of Skye has achieved some impressive media coverage about his concerns that mass tourism is degrading the landscape of the island. Scott MacKenzie, headkeeper on the Fearann Eilean Iarmain estate, joined forces with local photographer Gordon Willoughby to publicise the damage caused by careless visitors to some of the island’s scenic hotspots. Pictures show heavily eroded pathways, litter and badly parked cars that have damaged roadside verges. It may seem incongruous to some for a gamekeeper to be in the vanguard of an environmental protest. Yet who could have a greater stake in the local environment than somebody who lives and works there? Mr MacKenzie’s criticism is trenchant, moderate and sensible. Interestingly,…

NOMINATE It’s time to celebrate the best British rural businesses once again as the 13th Countryside Alliance Awards opens to public nomination on Monday (4 September). Better known as the “Rural Oscars”, these awards seek to highlight the pub, butcher, rural enterprise, village shop or post office, and local food and drink businesses that have gone above and beyond for their community. Visit www.www.countryside-alliance.org/campaigns/caawardscountryside-alliance.org/campaigns/ caawards before 26 October to nominate. WRITE A POEM Any budding poets out there now have the chance to show off their talents by entering the Gamekeepers’ Welfare Trust (GWT) poetry competition. As part of its 25th anniversary celebration, the GWT is inviting keepers and others passionate about the countryside to write a poem around the theme of “Gamekeeping for Life”. There are three categories —…

1 Limited Edition Browning Maxus  Realtree MAX-5 shotgun RRP £1,299 www.browning.com For a limited time, the Browning Maxus is available in the Realtree MAX-5 camouflage finish. The aluminium alloy construction of the Maxus’s receiver gives it a low overall weight, while its finish ensures it will feel warm to the touch on cold mornings. 2 Leica Geovid HD rangefinders RRP from £2,090 http://uk.leica-camera.com/ Sport-Optics Available in both HD-B and HD-R models, the all-new Leica Geovids incorporate laser rangefinders that allow quick and precise distance determination. They also give maximum colour fidelity, contrast and stray light suppression for sharp images, even in poor light conditions. Leica is offering £500 off the purchase of one of these new models on 1 September when part-exchanging your current binoculars or rangefinder. 3 Schöffel Ptarmigan tweed…

“How can you fill up those blank, bleak Saturdays which without shooting mean a bonfire and chores” Many years ago, the syndicate where I had spent my youth beating, picking-up and then shooting with my father abruptly came to a halt. This syndicate had everything that you could wish for; fantastic Devon pheasants, the most delicious lunches of curried parsnip soup and pheasant stew and, most importantly, good friends. Guns, beaters and pickers-up all ate together, drank together and laughed together. But suddenly I was left with the prospect of finding new days’ shooting — a daunting prospect for the unordained and something that can challenge even the most experienced of Shots. Where do you start? With the diary devoid of the regular five, eight or 10 days, how can…

Friends came to stay with their six-year-old working-bred English springer bitch, Poppy. Slim and fit, Poppy looked fine except for one thing: her coat was dull and staring, giving her a sadly neglected look. She was spayed two years ago, which might be a contributory factor to the poor state of her fur, but I’m sure that’s not the only reason. She is fed on a diet of dry food with little or nothing in the way of additions, and I suspect that she rarely gets any grooming. If she were mine, I would experiment by changing her diet to one much richer in natural oils. Her dry-food diet could easily be improved by the addition of chopped raw vegetables — which she will happily eat, as I discovered when…

Latin name: Onobrychis viciifolia Common name: Sainfoin Other names: Esparcet, holy clover How to spot it and where to find it: Sainfoin is the only member of the pea family in the UK that produces a stalked spike of pink flowers. The variety native to Britain is found mostly in chalk downland in the southern part of the country but fodder varieties from Europe introduced in the 17th and 19th centuries have probably hybridised with our natives. A silage or hay crop, sainfoin can also be grazed and thrives on nutritionally poor soil, though does not do well in the shade nor on soil that retains moisture. It has pinnate leaves and grows to about 1m, producing its pink, red-veined flowers from June to August. Interesting facts: Sainfoin is pollinated…

BE-FOWLING May I urge our wildfowling friends to pick up all their spent cartridges? In my day job as a barrister I have been working on a planning case in the Fens where a greenfield building proposal is close to some iron age barrows, thus triggering an archaeological assessment. The archaeologist kept finding spent shotgun cartridges of various ages in the topsoil in and around the barrow. The inference is that the top of the barrow is a convenient dry place to shoot from, and the cartridges had been trodden in. The brass head and rim of a cartridge is almost indestructible and will last millennia, but it is unlikely that our descendants will be interested in our old cartridges. Tidying up after a day’s sport is of the utmost…

“If it’s in decline, protect it” has been a common cry over the years, but it only works if human exploitation is causing harm. Protecting capercaillie in Scotland has done little if anything for them, and introducing bag limits for ducks in the Americas did not stem the declines there either. In these and many other cases, protection has failed too, because shooting was not a problem. It also means that people take their eye off the ball; they may think they have done something useful but if there is not a conservation plan to address the real issues, the decline will continue and further protection measures will not help.…

“Grouse pay on many moors is £60 a day, with all the extras being met by the owners” The grouse season is now well under way, with all the others approaching their own starting line. I have noted various adverts in local shop windows seeking beaters and my guess is that it is no different lower down the slopes. As the constitution of the local population continues to alter from rural stock to urban commuter, it is becoming more and more difficult for moors to source staff from the Dales communities. Gone are the days when there was a waiting list from the village of youngsters seeking some funds to see them through until next shooting season. We are continually being told things are tough but there are plenty of…

Territorial Egyptians WILDFOWLING A few years ago the first Egyptian goose appeared on our shoot in Cambridgeshire, and we now have a semi-resident pair that breeds on one of our ponds. Are they likely to scare off our resident (wild) mallard? A Though Egyptian geese are highly territorial, it’s unlikely that they will take much notice of the mallard, though they would almost certainly act aggressively to any other geese bold enough to land on the pond. In recent years these geese have spread much more widely around the country and they can now be found nesting from Devon to East Lothian, though their stronghold remains in East Anglia. Nobody knows why they have expanded, but experts think that the increasing population in Norfolk and Suffolk has led to wider…

As August ends, there are lots of young waders on the move, heading in what instinct tells them is the right direction. They range from curlew sandpipers from Siberia to knot from Greenland. Elegant greenshanks will be on their way from Scotland, Scandinavia and Northern Europe to spend the winter at coastal sites as far south as Ghana. Fewer than 1,000 birds spend the winter in the UK, with many more popping in on the way south. Though most greenshanks will be found on estuaries, an odd juvenile can turn up on any water body, wading around in the shallows in search for food. It can be distinguished from the more common redshank by its greenish-grey legs and a more refined shape and bill. The easiest identifying feature is the…