Innholdsfortegnelse for 21-Aug-2019 i Shooting Times & Country

The Twelfth this year was up there with the very best days I’ve had in the field (see p.16). The weather was wet and the going was tough but as I lay in the bath that evening, I had that tremendous sense of satisfaction that comes from working hard to bring home a brace. The total bag was seven and it was a joy to see one of the Guns shoot his first grouse. “Tust to be out on the Twelfth, seeing them fly across the moor, is simply amazing,” Peter Haining told me, in awe, as one of the Labradors ran out to pick his bird. After my bath, I headed to the sheep shed to pluck one of the birds. I always think that grouse are best simply…

Gamekeepers from estates in Grampian have joined the hunt for a golden eagle that appears to have trap attached to its leg. The bird was photographed by a tourist with what appeared to be a Fenn or spring type trap on its left leg. The photograph was passed to the police who appealed for information. The picture was taken near Crathie, which is on the border of HM The Queen’s Balmoral estate on Deeside. The poor resolution of the picture and the very long range at which it was taken make the details unclear. This has led some people to suggest that the bird was carrying the trap in its talons, presumably with the intention of eating its contents rather than having been caught by it. However, keen to resolve…

25 - 26 AUGUST FENLAND COUNTRY FAIR Stow cum Quy Park, Cambridgeshire fenlandfairs.com 31 AUGUST CANINE HEART AND EYE TESTING Devon po.st/heartandeye 7 SEPTEMBER LADIES’ DRIVEN PARTRIDGE DUCK SHOOT Naughton estate, Fife po.st/partridgeduck 8 SEPTEMBER CARMARTHENSHIRE WILDFOWLERS NOVICE GUNDOG TEST Stardley castle, LLanelli Contact David Herbert tel 07557336211 or dai.herbert51@gmail.com 11 SEPTEMBER SOMERSET DRINKS PARTY AND SHOOT RAFFLE AT HATCH COURT Hatch Beauchamp Somerset, contact Nick Evelyn, tel 07850616181 29 SEPTEMBER EDINBURGH & SOUTH EAST SCOTLAND CLAY SHOOT Bisley at Braidwood, Selkirk po.st/Scottishclay…

Gamekeepers save family in Angus Gamekeepers in the Angus Glens have won plaudits for helping rescue a family of four. The party became lost in the fog while walking on hill called Mayar. Keepers were able to use their detailed local knowledge and specialist vehicles to assist police officers with getting the party to safety. This is not the first time keepers have had to rescue lost walkers from the hill. There was a similar rescue last August when another party got lost and ended up in the wrong glen. Purdey launches sporting clay gun Gunmaker Purdey is launching a new clay gun. The Purdey Sporting Clays Gun boasts a 5mm raised rib — tapered 11mm to 7mm — a higher comb and an ergonomically designed grip and palm swell.…

Galloway used to be a grand place for grouse. The old game books are filled with record days and bags that groaned and strained with the weight of birds. You can still see the butts on many moors and it is not so long ago that blackgrouse were poached and dealt as a kind of illicit currency between farms and pubs. But most of that is history now. The hills were extensively planted with commercial forestry in the 1970s and many of the best moors have been grazed out of existence by livestock. Gamekeepers were put out of work and went away, and now there is little in the way of grouse culture. In the spring you will be lucky to see three or four other plumes of smoke in…

The crow call is probably the one I have been using the longest and it can be very effective. I have tried a variety over the years but have found some of the cheap plastic ones sound a bit too squeaky. Michael Bell at Calls of the Wild recently made me a fantastic crow call from African blackwood, which has a realistic throaty croak. By blowing from the back of my throat and pronouncing the “graw” of a crow, I can produce a convincing call. This brilliant piece of kit has helped me to make some great bags with the air rifle and shotgun. My usual approach with crows is to set up a discreet hide within range of the area they are targeting then use decoys to lure them…

THE FIRST GAME BIRD I ever shot was a grouse during my school holidays. I was enjoying a shooting, fishing and birdwatching holiday on a family friend’s 6,000-acre farm in the Hebrides. The ground included a grouse moor, though a more apt description would have been a moor with a few grouse. On the Glorious Twelfth my companion and I trudged through the heather for hours in pursuit of the elusive birds. We found the odd feather, even the occasional pile of distinctive droppings, but the grouse themselves remained unseen. Eventually, after an exhausting blank morning, an old hen took off in front of me. I fired in what must have been a reflex reaction and, to my astonishment, the bird tumbled back to the heather. “We owe it to…

Paul ‘Hardy’ Hardcastle has been the sole keeper at Benningham Hall near Eye, in Suffolk, for the past 15 years. A born-and-bred local lad, he started in the profession aged 17 at Crow’s Hall, near Debenham in Suffolk, then worked as an underkeeper at Little Glemham. The Benningham Hall shoot is an English partridge manor of the old school. Under Hardy’s careful management, grey partridges thrive, wild pheasants abound and are as cunning as they are strong on the wing. The whole estate is a haven for wildlife and is testimony to his management and ethos as a countryman. Patrick Barker, the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) Silver Lapwing award-winning farmer, said: “Hardy is the finest gamekeeper naturalist I have met.” So my first question to Hardy was what…

Latin name: Rhinanthus minor Common name: Yellow rattle Other names: Corn rattle, hay rattle, penny grass, rattle grass, cock’s comb, shackle caps, gowk’s shilling, hen pennies How to spot it and where to find it: At this point in the year, you may hear yellow rattle rather than see its pretty flowers. As the blooms die back, the plant produces inflated seed pods, inside which the tiny seeds rattle. The tube-like flowers appear May to September and the serrated leaves sprout on opposite sides of the stem, which has dark spots. It is found in nutrient-poor pastures, hay meadows, flushes in lowland and upland grasslands, on roadsides and waste ground. Interesting facts: Yellow rattle is hemi-parasitic; as its roots develop they seek out the roots of grasses growing nearby. The…

1 Linen shirt in moss RRP: £54.95 (deal two for £80)  oxfordshirt.co.uk This shirt is loose and cool, making it ideal to wear in hot weather. It would also be perfect for walked-up shooting and it is smart, with a button-down collar and a single cuff. Available in a variety of colours for every occasion, this shirt is a versatile addition to your wardrobe. 2 6oz shooter and dog hip flask RRP: £34.95 (on sale £30.95)  ukoutdoorstore.co.uk Just the right size to slip into your pocket, this hip flask is a great addition to a long, cold day in the field. Ingeniously, it is designed with a flat bottom, so that it stands up ready and waiting to be filled with whatever tipple takes your fancy. 3…

FISHING Try a hopper. Hoppers are flies that imitate the long-legged insects which abound in the late summer. Fished dry or wet near the surface on a summer evening, they can be deadly for brown and rainbow trout. Hoppers have a reputation for pulling trout up from the deeps, so you don’t need to wait for rising fish before trying them out. SHOOT Phone round the beaters. With the partridge season fast approaching and pheasants only a few weeks further off, it is time to rally the troops. An evening spent ringing round will let you check who will be available to beat and pick-up this season. This information will help to avoid any nasty surprises at the last minute.…

I am obsessed by the link between farming and wildlife. When I first went into farming several years ago, I wanted to use hill cattle to improve moorland habitats for grouse and waders. I was a shooting man through and through; my livestock was a means to an end. Then my interest grew to soils and arable farming, food production and the constant presence of human beings as part of a relationship with the land. Despite almost 10 years in this line of work, I am still very near the start of it — I learn more with every passing day. Fiddling with some aspects of old-fashioned agriculture, I grew a couple of acres of turnips this summer. An old farm worker reliably informed me that the best crop for…

When it comes to squirrel calling, I am still a relative newcomer, but I am already getting some reasonable results. The call I have been experimenting with over the past couple of years is the Primos Squirrel Buster. It has an impressive range of sounds — including the squeal of a distressed youngster and the chatter, wheeze and bark of territorial adults — though I have yet to master them all. Push the bellows in and let them back out, and the Squirrel Buster makes a raspy wheezing sound. You can do this one-handed by pushing it against your knee when holding a gun. Hold the barrel and give the bellows a shake, and you get an excited chatter. You can even make a piercing squeal by blowing into the…

IF I’M HONEST, the ‘Plus’ bit of the kit might be a bit overkill for my needs. I’m sure the standard D-Max suspension would be more than adequate. The Standard Huntsman kit comes in at £6,250 plus VAT and the Huntsman Plus is £7,250 plus VAT. Add that to the Utah’s on-the-road price of £25,709 plus VAT and that gives you a grand total of £32,959 plus VAT, or £39,550 inclusive. So, in summary, Isuzu has taken something that wasn’t broken and made it better for the sporting country type. I’d recommend you buy one — actually, buy two and give me the other one.…

The law is quite clear on the subject of dogs in public places: they must wear a collar bearing a tag with the name and address of their owner engraved or written on it; a telephone number is advised but isn’t mandatory. There are exceptions, including any dog being used for the destruction or capture of vermin, any dog used for sporting purposes or any pack of hounds. Despite the fact that all dogs must now be microchipped, these rules haven’t changed. Without a chip reader microchips are useless. If you find a lost dog wearing a collar with an identity tag, you can usually contact its owner. I’ve often been guilty of having a dog in a public place without a collar and tag, because my dogs seldom wore…

How to call in roe deer STALKING Q I’m fairly new to stalking and have never called roe before. Can you recommend the best call for the roe rut? A It largely depends on the size, type and population of roe on your ground. For instance, in Scotland on the open heather and long hillsides, a far-reaching call such as the Buttolo is handy. Rubber, hand-held and squeezable, it can imitate the call of a rutting doe or roe kid in distress at varying volumes. It’s easy to carry and the sound travels a long way. For more wooded areas, or close rides where you can’t see a roe coming, start off with a reed call. These mouth-blown calls come in a few different varieties — the natural wood Richard…

The American National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of the most powerful campaigning organisations in the world. Yet it is currently beset by troubles. This comes at a sensitive time in the US, where there have been a string of appalling mass shootings and the next presidential electoral cycle is cranking up. The NRA’s woes erupted into a failed coup against the long-standing chief executive Wayne LaPierre earlier this year. In the wake of a dip in membership and fundraising revenues, the NRA had to make cuts to haul its finances out of the red. Yet at the same time, critics claim, Mr LaPierrie was indulging in lavish personal spending. He is said to use a private jet for travel and to have run up huge hotel bills, despite being…

I’m still giggling at Richard Negus’s wonderful ‘fast forward’to 2079 (Wolves, aurochs — and beer rationing, 17 July). It was such an enjoyable read, and clearly written by someone who knows and loves his subject. Of course, as with much of clever satire, a lot of what he says may well contain a grain of truth. The recent terrible shootings in the US brought the usual suspects out of the woodwork to barrack for more stringent firearms laws here, regardless of the fact that we have the some of the world’s strictest gun control legislation. Mass shootings are America’s problem, not ours — the last mass shooting in the UK was Cumbria in 2011 — but that doesn’t stop the ‘ban everything’ fanatics. Richard’s vision of individuals owning firearms being…

A few weekends ago I attended the Countryfile Live event with the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation (NGO) stand at Blenheim Palace. I am totally against watching Countryfile and shout at the television if my fiancée switches it on. I fail to see how 99 per cent of the show has any relevance to actual country life. It pains me to see no mention of country pursuits. Instead there’s drivel about poets, artists, wildlife deserts — nature reserves — geocaching and cycle routes. It’s a shame programmes such as Out of town by Jack Hargreaves are not mimicked; I am certain the public would be interested in watching how country life was and actually is. I walked around the show a little during the day to see what it had to offer.…

My magpie call could not be simpler, nor cheaper. It is an old plastic 35mm film canister — for those readers who are old enough to remember them — filled with a few heavy airgun pellets to create a rattle. This call works very well when decoying magpies, either with a fake nest or imitation owl, during the spring months when they are particularly territorial. My usual strategy is to retire to the hide and let the decoy arrangement do the work. A swift shake of the rattle is often required to steer the attention of resident birds towards my trap. A few rattles are usually enough to get a response, after which I tend to mimic the clack and chatter of incoming birds until I think they are close…

“Stop calling when birds are nearby because you don’t want to draw their attention to your hiding place” I have been using the ACME dove and pigeon call for more than two decades. For such a basic design — it looks like a very large whistle — it does a remarkable job of replicating the call of a pigeon and it’s very easy to get the hang of. Frequently when controlling pigeons with an air rifle, it can be difficult to persuade the birds to land within striking distance when they are targeting open crops. One way around this is to ambush them in adjacent woodland to which they will usually flight back and forth. The only snag is that pigeons can be difficult to spot up in the boughs…

I shoot with German rifles. I drive a German car, do a lot of work for a German family, speak passable German and have been fortunate enough to spend quite a bit of time sampling Germany’s sporting culture and traditions. The differences in approach and seeming boundless enthusiasm for regulations and qualifications set our continental friends miles apart from our sporting norms. Readily available training, radio earpieces and myriad safety rules, plus the universal adoption of high-visibility clothing, make the whole endeavour considerably safer and far more controlled than it might first appear. I’m always keen to learn from anybody worth listening to. I have imported one of the elements of my sampled continental sport and found it to be ideally suited to our conditions at home — the hunting…

This is one of those made-up recipes that has zero authenticity in terms of where it is from. The broad bean hummus is vaguely Middle Eastern, though I’m not even sure they have broad beans there. The garam masala mix is stolen wholesale from Rick Stein’s India cookbook, so is probably genuine. My wife Caroline makes it in my Devon kitchen and it has become a staple ingredient. You can, of course, buy garam masala straight off the shelf — there are good ones and bad ones out there but none are as good as making it yourself. All you have to do is remove the seeds from a dessertspoon of cardamom pods, add two dessertspoons of cloves, a tablespoon of black peppercorns and two each of coriander seed and…

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 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 JEREMY HUNT Runs Fenway Labradors and a professional gundog trainer TIM MADDAMS Former head chef at River Cottage and runs a shoot in Devon SIMON WHITEHEAD Author, professional ferreter and rabbit controller IAIN WATSON Keen stalker and…

Oystercatchers that spend the winter around the shores of Britain and Ireland are a mix of both birds that breed within these islands and migrants, mainly from Scandinavia and Iceland. Ringing and colour-ringing enables us to plot movements of individuals over the course of up to 40 years of a bird’s life and reveals some quirky stories. The Wash Wader Ringing Group (WWRG) received a report that two of its ringed oystercatchers were nesting together in Norway. This is just a coincidence; pairs of waders do not migrate together. For instance, work on Icelandic black-tailed godwits has shown that members of the same pair rarely winter in the same country, let alone in the same flock. One of the WWRG oystercatchers was ringed on the Lincolnshire side of the Wash…