Innholdsfortegnelse for 12-Oct-2016 i Shooting Times & Country

An attempt to ban grouse shooting reaches a climax next Tuesday (18 October) when, as the result of a petition garnering 123,075 signatures, MPs will hear evidence from its creator Mark Avery, the RSPB, the Moorland Association and the Countryside Alliance. How many of those 123,075 people had ever been on a grouse moor, had ever seen a grouse or know anything of its habitat? I have no doubt that the vast majority have no clue whatsoever. Avery’s petition was heavily publicised by anti-shooting celebrities, who get airtime on “countryside” programmes. The petition was also heavily promoted at rock festivals — the attendees well known for their countryside knowledge. I wonder how many petitioners, concerned over the shooting of grouse, buy their chicken at the supermarket and do not give…

The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) has announced that the fourth annual Big Farmland Bird Count will take place from 3 to 12 February next year. As in the past few years, farmers and gamekeepers across the UK will be asked to record what species and numbers of birds they have seen on their farms. The results are used as an indication of whether farmland bird species are in decline or if conservation efforts are proving successful. GWCT head of development and advisory Jim Egan said: “On their land, farmers and gamekeepers are responsible for managing the largest songbird habitat in this country, but often their efforts to reverse bird declines are unrecorded. The Big Farmland Bird Count gives them an opportunity of showing what their conservation efforts deliver…

Red squirrel numbers strong in North West UK red squirrel numbers are strongest in North West England, new research has revealed. Native reds have held territory against invading pox-carrying greys in Merseyside and West Lancashire. Rachel Miller, squirrel project officer at Lancashire Wildlife Trust, said: “People in Merseyside and West Lancashire are rightly proud to have this habitat where red squirrels have survived some terrible setbacks. “The squirrel pox virus wiped out approximately 80 per cent of red squirrels here. This virus is carried by grey squirrels that are immune to it, but it is fatal to red squirrels.” Italy trip on offer for new Benelli owners Anyone who purchases a new Benelli Colombo shotgun this autumn is in with a chance of winning a dream holiday. The firearms manufacturer…

“We could develop a long-term, world-leading food, farming and environmental policy” Debate over the vision for a post-Brexit countryside has played out in the media over the past weeks. Conflict has ensued with so many expectations and passionate voices pushing for their own priority to top the agenda. Farmers and environmentalists have been portrayed as battling with one another to influence the Government to prioritise the environment at the expense of food production or vice versa, and the current farm payments system has once again, and rightly, come under the taxpayers’ scrutiny. Dig a little deeper into these arguments and there is a consensus that farming needs to be more profitable and that we should all make use of the new opportunities to improve the environment. But how should the…

I once owned a Harrington & Richardson centrefire single-barrelled .410, a very early model pre-dating this company’s records. It came to me via a friend whose uncle had bought it in Birmingham in 1903 from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Cody often sold his firearms after his final performance if, it was rumoured, he was short of ready cash. The gun’s provenance indicated that it had been used by Annie Oakley. The barrel was stamped “.410-44 CAL”, which refers to the .44-40 Winchester rifle cartridge that was also available as a shot load and was suitable for .410 shotguns. This model was patented on 27 February 1900 and had its action marked “.410 LC” (long chamber) and so was suitable for the 2½in cartridge. The 3in was not yet developed.…

I had a chuckle when I saw Shooting Times, 14 September. There, on the front cover, was me, together with my springer Suze. She died at the age of 11 in 2004, and judging by her appearance she was probably no more than two when the photograph was taken, which dates it to about 1995. The picture library Alamy supplied the photograph; it was taken by a friend of mine, David Tipling, who is a professional wildlife photographer. Suze was the grandmother and great grandmother of my current two spaniels, and was bred by another friend, Peter, who had also bred her mother — my line of springers goes back a long way. She was a good, reliable working dog without ever being exceptional, and enjoyed a varied career of…

Plant: Field gentian Latin name: Gentianella campestris Common name: Felwort Description and facts: Now is the last chance this year to get a sighting of the field gentian. This small plant (10cm to 30cm high), with its clusters of purplish, tubular flowers, likes damp grassland or dunes and particularly thrives near the sea. The field gentian is usually a biennial, though occasionally an annual. Its lovely compact flowers bloom from July until October and are visited by bumblebees and butterflies. Interesting facts: Widespread in Scotland, northern England and North Wales, the field gentian is now very rare in England, south of Cumbria and the Pennines. The field gentian is classified as vulnerable and considered to be facing a high risk of extinction in the wild. The name gentian is derived…

“These larger landowners are better placed to provide these benefits” The CLA has dismissed Greenpeace claims of impropriety regarding European Union (EU) farm subsidies after the environmental activist revealed the results of its investigation into the top 100 UK recipients of the Common Agricultural Policy’s (CAP) subsidies in 2015. These EU grants are paid to farmers typically based upon the amount of land they own in return for the environmental work they carry out, and the Government has promised to maintain CAP subsidies post-Brexit until 2020 while a domestic system is put in place. The highest income went to Aberdeenshire farmer Frank Smart, whose business received grants of £2,963,733 last year. He was followed in the top five highest earners by the National Trust (£2,666,880), the RSPB (£2,002,860), Farmcare Trading…

GET A VALUATION Ahead of the next auction in December, sporting gun specialist Gavin Gardiner will be visiting Sotheby’s offices across England and Scotland throughout October to offer advice and free auction valuations of your firearms and accessories. The first date is today (Wednesday, 12 October) at the Yorkshire Gun Room in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, with another visit on Friday at Sotheby’s on New Bond Street in London. Further dates are planned in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Tiverton in Devon and Pulborough in West Sussex. For an appointment or further information, tel 01798 875300. LOBBY The Parliamentary debate on driven grouse shooting will take place on 18 October, which means there is not much time left if you wish to show your support for the sport. Head online to www.basc.org.uk/grouse to find…

The BBC has been accused of being too “squeamish” about the realities of nature. Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham earlier this month, Mark Hedges, editor of Country Life, one of our sister magazines, said that the corporation needs to offer more honest reporting about the countryside. “[The BBC] does not like, or want to realise, that things do die,” said Mr Hedges. “It is rather like in a supermarket, whereby the chicken you see... wrapped in plastic, and the chicken you see walking around have somehow become two separate things. “It did do Lambing Live, which did at least touch on the fact that if you are a shepherd then probably one in 10 or one in 20 lambs that are born dies.…

Pembrokeshire-based Martin Myers (pictured) won Countryman Fairs’ Clay Shooting Festival Grand Final at the Midland Game Fair last month. Mr Myers scored 23 out of 25, two points ahead of runner-up Phillip Smith with 21 out of 25. London gunmaker John Rigby & Co. has taken on two new gunsmiths following a substantial increase in orders over the past 12 months. Metalworker Gatien Guy (left), 19, and 22-year-old stocker Martin Levis were both recruited from French gunmaking schools. An animal rescue centre has launched an appeal for information after two young hedgehogs were discovered stuffed inside a plastic bag and shut inside a gas meter box in Porth, Cornwall. One of the hedgehogs was already dead when found, while theother, which was given the name Hovis, was taken to the…

SHOOTING STARS At a time when posturing celebrities are constantly trying to get us to part with our hard-earned cash to give to all manner of worthy causes, how refreshing to see television regulars Ant and Dec, Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield actually taking part in something to raise money themselves (News, 28 September). The fact that the something is a shoot is an added bonus. For a start, if celebrities are seen to endorse any kind of shooting, it has to be good news, and the rare occurrence of our household names getting out in the field and getting muddy, while clearly having a whale of a time, sets a superb example. I salute Ant, Dec, Holly and Phillip, as well as the Royal Berkshire Shooting School where the…

“Betty has the killer instinct of a typical working terrier, with the temperament of a lapdog” At one time we had four generations of springer spaniels in our household. Head of the pack was my father’s beloved old liver-and-white girl, Pip, who was one of those “once-in-a-lifetime” dogs. A portrait of her adorns the wall over the dining table in my childhood home, where my parents still live. I recall puppies aplenty in my youth, for those springers were a productive lot. Having a litter of puppies always seemed easy. For one of our girls it was a bit too easy, and let’s just say that she gained a reputation for being rather “loose”. I remember fondly the roars of laughter from a band of merry local farmers one shoot…

Oliver Cope (right) was born and brought up in the countryside; even at the age of one he was taken out shooting and beating, though at that young age he was carried on his mother’s back. Olly always wanted to be a gamekeeper and after leaving school he studied gamekeeping at Sparsholt College, then secured his first job at the Downton estate in Shropshire. Under the guidance of the headkeeper, Bob Brewer, he learned the northern (and, in his opinion, the best) ways of game rearing. He moved back to his home county of Buckinghamshire and worked for three seasons on a private shooting estate before taking up the job at the Cold Aston shoot in 2009. After just one season, due to ill health, the shoot changed hands. Over…

MAKE UP AND MEND YOUR NETS Rabbits love to bite, chew and break the meshes of any net so repairs and replacements are often called for. Torchie has repaired my “works of art” but my sheet-netting nets are in such a state that I have decided to replace the whole lot. Anybody can make up a long-net. They arrived in a bundle, 200m long. I had taken the poles of my old nets, cut the grommets off and bought some new draw cord for the top and bottom running lines so that, once fitted to the grommets and poles, the new net is tight and even and doesn’t droop in the middle. The sheet netting is already laced top and bottom through the double selvedge meshes for ease of pulling…

“Sphagnum mosses can hold up to 20 times their own weight in water and will catch and retain heavy rain, reducing the risk of flooding” You might think that heather moorland is a land mass covered in heather, Calluna vulgaris, but nothing is further from the truth. Forget what those arrayed against us — Mark Avery and his associates — tell the public. The fact is that moorland managed for grouse shooting, in keeping with much of that which is not managed in the same manner, is not a monoculture of heather. It is true that on the eastern drier areas of the uplands, the diversity of plants is not as great as the central and western wetter moors, but even on the dry east there is still a good…

Reintroducing bustards BIRDS Q Last year, while driving down the A303, I was thrilled to see what must have been a great bustard fly across the road. I presume it was a bird from the reintroduction project on Salisbury Plain. What happened to our last native bustards? A The last recorded Cambridgeshire nest was robbed near Shefford in 1831, the last Suffolk nest was at Icklingham in 1832, and the last Norfolk one at Great Massingham Heath in 1833. The Salisbury Plain population is thought to have died out even earlier, with the last birds lingering until about 1820. There was another population in Sussex, but this had disappeared by about 1825. Other populations existed in both the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Wolds, but neither are thought to have survived much…

It is difficult to predict which week will be Bewick’s swan week, given that the arrival of birds in the UK is very much linked to weather conditions on the other side of the North Sea, but the first birds flew into the Wildlife & Wetlands Trust reserve at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire on 7 November 2014. Given that this was the latest arrival date since 1969, it should be possible to see at least some birds there and at Welney in Norfolk this month. Sorting out Bewick’s swans from the more numerous whooper swans at Welney can be a bit of a challenge; both are white, with upright necks and yellow-and-black bills. Bewick’s swans are smaller and the neck is relatively short when compared with the length of the body,…

“Any boat that requires another man to drive it for you might as well be a cross-channel ferry” People have blind spots, areas of their lives where their perspective is blurred or positively warped. Often these areas relate to consumerism, a perverse sense of “need”: I need a new pair of shoes (even though my wardrobe is groaning); I need a new car (even though my current one is only two years old); I need another fishing rod (even though my under-stairs cupboards contain more high-grade carbon fibre than the NASA space programme). My blind spot is boats. I have no connection nor correlation between need (essential requirement) and want (crazy addictive desire). My blind spot has made me historically useless at deciding a) what is a good boat to…

“Every shred of evidence says bovine TB will be beaten with better testing, vaccination, better biosecurity and animal husbandry.” Shadow DEFRA secretary Rachael Maskell says that a Labour government would end the badger cull. 23 There are just 23 days left to go from today (Wednesday, 12 October) to vote in the Countryside Alliance’s Rural Oscars. These awards celebrate those who go the extra mile to preserve or protect rural life. Visit www.countryside-alliance.org/ruraloscars by Friday, 4 November to make your nominations.…

21 OCTOBER BASC SNARING ACCREDITATION TRAINING DAY BASC Scottish Centre, Dunkeld, Perthshire Tel 01350 723226 23 OCTOBER THE COUNTRYSIDE DAY Aintree Racecourse, Liverpool, Merseyside Tel 020 7840 9207 27-28 OCTOBER NORTHERN WILDLIFE ART EXHIBITION Mowden Hall School, Stocksfield, Northumberland Tel 07925 597676 29 OCTOBER CLAYSHOOTING LADIES DAY The Oxford Gun Company, Oakley, Buckinghamshire Tel 01844 238308 9 NOVEMBER ONE-DAY GAME SEMINAR Westminster Kingsway College, London Tel 020 7802 8391 27 NOVEMBER KENNEL CLUB CANINE SPORTS SCIENCE SEMINAR Kennel Club Building, Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire Tel 01296 318540…

“The birds fl ew strongly. We had a splendid picnic lunch. Surely this is what shooting is all about” It is not often a low-ground boy like me gets invited to go grouse shooting. But that is exactly what happened a fortnight ago when I had a late call to shoot on Shap moor, which is just south of Penrith in Cumbria, from Wes Johnson, principal at Newton Rigg College. Shap moor is unique in that it is leased to, and run by, the students and lecturers of Newton Rigg. For many of the students, it was their first time on a grouse moor, ever. The students, who were to be our beaters, flankers and pickers-up, poured out of pickups and minibuses as we Guns introduced ourselves and waited for…

LINCOLN PREMIER A bestseller, the Premier satisfies the need for an elegant and practical shotgun at a reasonable price. It features fine chequering, internally chromed bore and chambers for improved lifespan and better distributed shot patterns, and is available in 12- or 20-bore. Key features: Three-year warranty as standard, fine-pitch laser chequering with double-grip pattern. • www.bisley-uk.com • Price: from £800 HUGLU 103 DE Huglu is the largest gunmaker in Turkey and its products are known the world over for reliability and performance, as well as offering great value for money. The 103 DE is available in 12- and 20-bore in either a black-or-silver finish. It is multichoke with five choke tubes. Key features: Superb value for money, a good-looking but no-frills practical gun. • www.a-s-i.co.uk • Price: £720 YILDIZ…

“Do other nations’ men have this extraordinary pickling penchant or is it peculiarly English?” Though we groaned at the time, as schoolboys do, I now bless our English master’s devotion to the Oxford Book of English Verse and its store of poetical observations that still speak through the din of today’s digital noise. What true countryman today doesn’t empathise with Keats’s Ode to Autumn’s opening verse: Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run. For the hunter-gatherer, it is difficult to glean time sufficient to gather the harvest. “My” damson tree, a runaway from a cottage garden and as such fair game, was discovered last year by an unknown…

CANINE OBITUARIES have never featured in this column. I’m not sure why, as they have the potential to make fascinating reading. Thus this week’s Gundogs is a first, because it is about a dog called Echo. He was a Chesapeake Bay retriever bred by Jan Morris and owned by Mark and Jo Greenhough. His claim to fame was starring in the BASC video The Long Retrieve, which can be viewed on the BASC website. If you’ve never watched it you must do so, as it is stirring stuff (visit po.st/Echochessie). Mark is well known as BASC’s wildfowling officer, based at Marford Mill, but 14 years ago he and Jo were living in Kent. Mark wanted a wildfowling dog, and fancied a Chesapeake. In August 2003 he and Jo travelled to…

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,…

As the name suggests, Orpington chickens originate from Orpington in Kent, where they were developed by poultry enthusiast and journalist William Cook in 1886. He crossed a number of breeds, including Minorcas and Plymouth Rocks, to produce a hen “of handsome appearance and a good winter layer”. Though the original Orpingtons were black, a variety of other colours soon appeared, and today by far the most popular is buff, a shade that has a wonderful golden glow in direct sunlight. The modern Orpington is a large and heavy bird, and is notably docile and unflappable by nature. Though originally bred as a dual-purpose hen — both a good layer and a fine table bird — an emphasis on breeding for looks rather than egg-laying has reduced the productivity of the…

“A business model that rewards the short-term ambition of the greedy is not the most suitable” I once wrote about Cabela’s, the US outdoor sports retailer. I described the Cabela’s store I visited in Virginia as being an anti’s vision of hell — it was that good. You have to experience one of these giant hunting, shooting, fishing emporiums to believe the sheer scale of them. They cover many acres and are destinations in their own right; effectively, indoor game fairs without the entrance fee. Now I see that Bass Pro Shops, Cabela’s equally gargantuan competitor, has announced that it is going to buy its rival in a deal worth $5.5billion. The resulting behemoth will have 184 outlets across the US and Canada, as well as its global mail order…