Innholdsfortegnelse for 23-Oct-2019 i Shooting Times & Country

For the second time this season, I’m heading to Humberside. This particular trip is a bit of a pilgrimage — I’m planning to get under some geese on the marshes shot over by Stanley Duncan, arguably Britain’s most famous wildfowler and one of Shooting Times’s greatest writers. It is a tremendous source of pride to me that, for more than 130 years, this magazine has served as a journal for those who squelch across the saltings while the rest of the world sleeps. I can’t help noticing, however, that when I speak to wildfowlers from Hampshire to the Hebrides the theme of struggling to get more people involved comes up often. In an effort to do my bit, I’ve joined the Langstone & District Wildfowlers & Conservation Association. I certainly…

The decision by Liverpool City Council to adopt a motion condemning all forms of hunting and shooting has been slammed as a “gross misrepresentation” by BASC. The motion said the council “declares its complete opposition to any form of hunting live animals with hounds or shooting live game, in the UK or overseas. We note that this is barbaric in all cases, and in many cases also threatens species that are already precarious.” Garry Doolan, BASC’s deputy director of communications, delivered a five-minute address to the hearing but said afterwards: “We made extremely robust points in favour of shooting and the work done in conservation to support shooting, but the mayor of Liverpool and the councillors were not interested in our arguments. “They have labelled all people who shoot in…

Shooters set record with 14,167 clays A team of five US clay shooters has broken the world record for the most clays broken in 12 hours. Youngsters Makayla Scott, Weston Zolck, Jessica Strasser and Levi Henrichs, along with CZ product manager Dave Miller, set a new Guinness World Record by breaking 14,167 clays in 12 hours. The four youngsters were chosen “for their shooting capabilities and desire to be on a world-record-breaking team”. Their total beat the previous record by 9,500. Meat allergy threat from tick bites The risk of tick bites causing Lyme disease is well known, but scientists have discovered a new hazard. According to a story in the Daily Mail, doctors have found five cases of tick bites leading to a lifelong and potentially fatal meat allergy.…

1. Note the line a pricked bird takes when shot, particularly those that set their wings and land out of sight in cover. 2. Prompt retrieval of wounded game is imperative. 3. Use two conspicuous points of stationary reference and your own position to create a mental triangulation point of where a bird has fallen. 4. As a general rule, pricked pheasants run and hide, partridges and grouse lie low where they land. 5. Lightly shot birds can travel considerable distances, so persevere in finding pricked ones.…

We are living in a bountiful period with regard to our archaeological understanding of fishing methods. Within living memory archaeologists paid little heed to fish remains. Fish bones and fishing equipment degrade quickly and may never appear on record. However, through technological advances such as wet sieving we are recovering more material from sites and gaining a fuller understanding of the eminent role fish played in the diet of the earliest humans. Indigenous people still practise fishing methods that would have been familiar to the people of prehistoric Britain. This ‘living history’ is critical to interpreting archaeological finds. These tableaux of our historic relationship with aquatic foods are a reminder of a period when we understood intimately the vitality of our oceans and river systems. A connection many of us…

My picker-up friend, Steve, told me the story of someone who had bought a part-trained English springer from Scotland. There was a serious communication problem; the dog’s trainer had a strong Scottish accent, so it failed to understand instructions given in broad Suffolk. It was only when he spoke to it in an assumed Scottish accent that it did what it was told. I have met pet owners who have such long one-sided conversations with their dogs that they must assume the animals understand English, but sadly that’s not the case. Fortunately, with gundogs many of the instructions are based on hand and whistle signals, while dogs interpret most verbal instructions by tone of voice, not on the actual word itself. I’m always amused when I hear gundog enthusiasts talking…

Disappointing weight loss CIC Q Having taken a decent, newly cleaned buck earlier this year, I prepared him and set him aside for the required drying period, leaving the head whole. When wet, it weighed 520g, but six weeks later it was down to a disappointing 375g. I thought that heads were supposed to dry out by around 10 per cent? A So there are several likely explanations for this loss. First, heads taken at the very beginning of the season, when the deer are just clean of velvet, tend to prove lighter than those taken later in the year. This is down to a number of factors including internal and external drying, the hardening of the antler structure and the porosity of the surface. Secondly, not all heads will…

The bar-tailed godwit is a smaller, straight-billed relative of the curlew, often found probing in the sand for shellfi sh and worms at the tide edge. The barred tail distinguishes the species from black-tailed godwits, which feed in the muddier bits of estuaries. Two subspecies visit the UK; some birds will stay here for the whole winter but others, that breed further east in Siberia, are leaving us now. They fly south to north and west Africa after the autumn moult. Siberia to Senegal might seem like a long journey but other bar-tailed godwits make a non-stop flight from Alaska to New Zealand at the end of the breeding season — which entails nine days of continuous flapping. Winter plumage bar-tailed godwits are grey but, come the spring, they change…

Many of us learned to shoot with a little Belgian single-barrelled folding .410 hammer shotgun. I can still remember mine and those of my friends as we paraded in the Fens near Spalding on a punitive expedition against the rabbits and pigeons, whose depredations were causing irritation on the farm. In fact, I have owned two. The first was bought for me by my father when I got my certificate, which was merely a plain piece of folded white paper in those days . My acquisition of the second was less conventional. I was rootling around in my uncle John’s shed after he died when it fell on me from the storage space in the rafters. It was in a shocking state, with a bent barrel, a loose action and…

FISH Switch to red flies for salmon. With the season coming to an end on many rivers and the first frosts setting in, salmon behaviour starts to change. As the fish become increasingly territorial a switch to red flies is often used to trigger aggressive territorial instincts, particularly in male fish. Colder water also generally calls for deeper, slower fishing. CALL Try calling rutting deer. With rutting activity now at full throttle in many areas there is a good chance of calling in the stag or buck of your dreams. A variety of proprietary deer calls are available, but skilled practitioners are often able to produce a convincing imitation using nothing but their own voice. Imitating the smell of rutting stag is more difficult and perhaps best not attempted by…

DSC2 AT LAST After many years of trying to complete my Deer Stalking Certificate (DSC2), in July I managed to get witness stalks completed with Chris Dalton of South Ayrshire Stalking. Having a good number of deer available is a bonus. I had many blank stalks before and six years of trying, with the slight disability of a drop foot, was difficult. I would like to thank the British Deer Society, my assessor Paul Messenger and all of my friends for their help. M. Phipps, by email AN ECO WIN-WIN? At the risk of sounding political, I had a brainwave — or so I thought — about the Extinction Rebellion protests in our capital. I’m pretty sure your switched-on readers are well aware of the chaos and disruption these pointless…

I recently had mudita. It isn’t a medical condition requiring an embarrassing doctor’s appointment and a course of penicillin. Mudita is an ancient Sanskrit word meaning ‘taking pleasure from the success others’. My dose of mudita came about thanks to the GWCT. Each year, shooting’s favourite conservation charity announces the winner of its East Anglian Grey Partridge Award. This recognises the improvement made to native grey partridge populations by farmers and landowners. Last month the laurels for 2019 were presented to Adam Steed. Adam is a friend and neighbour and it would be hard to imagine a more worthy recipient of this prestigious title. He is a softly spoken, unassuming countryman and has been the part-time keeper at the Blacks’ farm at Bacton in Suffolk for the past 10 years.…

Macnabs are increasing in price but with careful planning you could pull one off without delving into the far reaches of your wallet. The average stag would set you back around £600 and on some rivers you could get the morning unguided for less than £100. This gives you roughly £300 to ask an estate owner whether you could have a quick walk round to complete your Macnab and get a grouse or two. This may sound far-fetched to some but with the promise of a Macnab it is even more rewarding when you organise it all yourself. However, if you would rather sit back, Invercauld Estate can set up an attempt for you for roughly £1,400, which includes accommodation at the Fife Arms, and may give you a better…

BILL HARRIMAN BASC’s head of firearms and a 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 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 senior CIC international trophy judge…

I’m not surprised that people who have never visited rural Africa have ill-informed preconceptions about ‘trophy hunting’. What does surprise me is the wilful ignorance of some who have been there and should know better. Some years ago a well-known wildlife magazine ran a holiday promotion featuring a safari lodge based in a wonderful game reserve in South Africa. The then editor ran an enthusiastic account of her own visit to this paragon of wildlife conservation. I researched the reserve in question. It proved to be fairly typical of its ilk in South Africa. It had been formed from a number of privately owned former cattle ranches; the owners had taken down the internal fences. Farm buildings were dismantled and the native vegetation allowed to return. Some areas were cleared…

25 OCTOBER TASTE OF GAME DINNER Bodysgallen Hall & Spa, The Royal Welsh Way, Llandudno http://po.st/FOFjsJ 31 OCTOBER YOUNG SHOTS’ OCTOBER HALF-TERM ACTIVITY DAY Penrhiwpal Shooting Club, Rhydlewis basc.org.uk/events 15 NOVEMBER CHELTENHAM COUNTRYSIDE RACE DAY Cheltenham Racecourse, Evesham Rd, Cheltenham countryside-alliance.org/ support-us/events 16 NOVEMBER SHOTGUN AND CHELSEA BUN CLUB LADIES’ CLAY SHOOT Hereford & Worcester Shooting Ground http://po.st/wqLaVH 18 NOVEMBER GWCT ROADSHOW Crown Hotel, West Street, Blandford Forum, Dorset gwct.org.uk/events 19 NOVEMBER GWCT ROADSHOW Royal Oak, 25 High Street, Eccleshall, Staffordshire gwct.org.uk/events…

I suspect I have been reading Shooting Times for longer than most of its staff have been alive. During those 55 years, while Shooting Times always catered for a wide range of interests, I never felt that it was quite as focused on small being beautiful as it now appears to be, and at the expense of any larger shooting entity. Shooting comes in all sorts of forms: vermin control, ratting, rough shooting, wildfowling, pigeon shooting and driven shooting, to name a few. All have their place in the countryside, but over the past two or three years, there seems to have been a deliberate attempt on the part of the editorial team to try to differentiate, with small being good and big being bad. There are instances of bad…

When a senior member of Natural England asks a grouse keeper how many birds he releases and it’s not 1 April, you have a right to worry. It is not the only example of government employees showing a serious lack of working knowledge. The licensing debacle has left the management of the most important sites for breeding birds in the hands of civil servants. The notified moors cannot use the new general licences but have to rely on being granted individual ones for individual species. During a conversation with an official, one grouse keeper was asked why he wanted to control magpies. As you might expect, the answer was fairly straightforward, but that was not deemed enough. “Surely you must expect some predation,” said the official. I have never met…

WITH JUST A TRAINEE spaniel and one that’s retired, I’m currently dogless from a working point of view, which explains why it wasn’t until early October that I enjoyed my first shoot day. Armed with my camera, I joined the picking-up team on a small Norfolk shoot where my wife, Tan, is a regular brusher — or what is called a beater anywhere else in England. Do any other areas of the British Isles use alternative words for beater? My day started on an amusing note as one of the pickers-up, Adrian, arrived without his dog, something he failed to notice until it was time to get in position for the first drive. Adrian isn’t suffering from memory loss and he only lives half a mile away from the shoot,…

Wild boar is among the ultimate game species. Not only are boar exceptionally difficult to hunt but they are also one of the tastiest game species out there. The wild boar is the ancestor of our domesticated pigs and have been feasted on for thousands of years. Earlier this year I went to Croatia with Tomo Svetic from Artemis Hunting and Fieldsports Channel TV. Though the weather was poor for the first two days, I finally managed to take a shot at a decent-sized boar. It took us two nights on a very tall box high seat to harvest our boar. It took hours of concentration to stay focused. As it got dark, visibility dropped and we switched to thermal spotters. This was a management hunt so it was important…

Latin name: Salix purpurea Common name: Purple willow Other names: Purple osier, bitter willow, basket willow, Arctic willow How to spot it and where to find it: This deciduous shrub is found on wet ground, marshy areas, wet ditch banks and water margins. While it produces fluffy catkins in the spring, its arching stems are a pronounced reddish purple, giving it year-round interest. The slender leaves are glossy green, with a blueish underside, and are seen to best advantage in windy situations when the whole plant brings life and movement to its surroundings, making it a popular garden feature. Interesting facts: The bark of purple willow has multiple medicinal properties, as it contains salicylic glycosides, flavonoids and others. Primarily, it is used to make the painkiller aspirin and the natural…

1 Allen neoprene chest high waders RRP: £179 johnforsey.co.uk These waders are ideal for wildfowling in cold water. With a thick lining to keep you warm, insulated boots and plenty of storage space for your essentials, they will ensure you will be all set for the marsh this winter. Available in sizes 7-13. 2 Royal Scot Lomond men’s boot RRP: £124.99 sportsmanguncentre.co.uk Designed to perform on challenging and rough terrain, the Lomond features a full-leg zip for ease of entry and a buckle for a refined fit, with a full-length gusset to keep out water and mud. It also features a full 4mm neoprene lining, which adds warmth, extra protection and durability. 3 Sandwich tweed cap RRP: £155 Lockhatters.co.uk Handcrafted on a wooden block from pure wool…