Innholdsfortegnelse for 05-Feb-2020 i Shooting Times & Country

Last week, on a day that was really far too still for the task at hand, I stood in a small wood, waiting for roosting pigeons. I was in Norfolk and in the distance, on all sides, I could hear the lively report of busy drives. In my mind’s eye, smartly dressed Guns were gracefully dropping birds from coveys breaking over the hedgerow tops, against a backdrop of the setting sun. Looking down, I noted how shabbily I was dressed: up to my ankles in floodwater, a hole in my trousers and a broken zip on my jacket. It was then that the first flocks started to whiffle in and I sent a bird tumbling among the snowdrops. An hour later, dusk descended and the pigeons stopped coming. The night…

The annual British Trust for Ornithology report on the 2019 breeding season has recorded mixed results. Among resident breeding birds, tits and treecreepers did well while ground-feeding birds struggled. The picture for migratory breeding birds was also mixed, with sedge and reed warblers experiencing a poor season and chiffchaff, blackcap and whitethroat all having had a good season. Goldfinches also recorded a strong season, up 18 per cent compared with the five-year average. The main losers in 2019 were species that tend to feed on the ground. The report says there were “significant declines in abundance, relative to the five-year mean, recorded for blackbird, robin, dunnock, chaffinch, greenfinch and reed bunting”. The situation for the chaffinch and greenfinch was particularly dire, with both down 40 per cent on the five-year…

Grouse conference to cover curlew and hen harrier issues Experts will meet at the GWCT grouse conference to discuss key issues facing the uplands. The event, which is being held at the Cedar Court Hotel in Harrogate on Wednesday, 4 March, will cover heather burning and peatland restoration, best-practice use of medicated grit, conserving hen harriers and curlew, and a range of similar issues. Tickets can be bought from the GWCT website. Elephant hunt auction cancelled An auction for the opportunity to hunt an elephant in Botswana has been cancelled. The sale was planned for the annual dinner of the Calgary chapter of the Safari Club International. However, under media scrutiny the auction was cancelled and the hunt will now be sold privately. Botswana recently reintroduced elephant hunting to manage…

It’s been a soft and shabby winter in Galloway. We’ve had three days of frost and a few sleety showers on the tops; hardly much use to man or beast. Cattle have poached the good fields and the rivers are fat and bloaty with floods. The weather has made for some fun afternoons walking-up snipe and teal but it’s hardly what you’d call a proper winter. I miss cold days and the deathly stillness of frost. Snow is crucial when it comes to tracking foxes and finding stoats and, in previous winters, I have spent days in the hills in pursuit of predator prints. Information gathered on these patrols has often come in handy for setting snares and lying out for an ambush, but all we’ve had are weeks of…

I have long thought that the best thing about the end of the season is going into the garage and not seeing a line of birds waiting to be dressed, though undressed would be a better description. I’m not sure how many birds I have handled this past season, but there have been quite a number, the great majority of which have been partridges, plus a few pheasants — but no ducks. Not that many have ended up in the Tomlinson freezer, as I have been conducting a concerted campaign to introduce as many people as possible to the pleasures of eating game. I’ve even given a lesson or two on game preparation — always worth doing, as it means that in future I can give my students birds in…

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 TONY BUCKWELL Veterinary surgeon with a special interest in gundogs 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 Contact the team Email: stanswers@ti-media.com By post: Shooting Times, Pinehurst 2, Farnborough Business Park, Hants GU14 7BF…

Apparently, there is a bit of a fuss going on in royal circles. I gather the Duke of Sussex and his wife have moved to Canada in a bid to duck the media spotlight. I don’t blame them. The media’s determination to take potshots at Prince Harry has been evident for years. Remember the strange case of the Dersingham hen harriers? It was the autumn of 2007. The media erupted with a ‘story’ — and that is a very apt term in this case — that gleefully implicated the then 23-year-old prince in the alleged shooting of two hen harriers at Dersingham Bog nature reserve in Norfolk. The Guardian ran the headline “Two hen harriers dead, one prince questioned, no charges”. The paper gave its credulous readership a further nudge…

ADVICE Check out some fresh advice from the GWCT. The trust has published new guidance for farmers and shoot operators. The advice covers frequently asked questions on cultivating game crops and identifies which wildflowers are most attractive to foraging bees. The advice can be found on the GWCT website,visit gwct.org.uk CHECK Prepare for spring corvid control. With corvids becoming more territorial as the breeding season approaches, spring is the best time to trap them. Take advantage of the opportunity by making sure traps are in good repair and checking up on good-practice guidance and legal constraints.…

Working full-time in the countryside as a gamekeeper, within the woods and beneath the trees, allows you to understand nature’s seasons and the mechanics of the environment. The birds are singing as if it’s spring, the nettles and brambles look as good as they did in summer and, apart from the sea of rain we had last year, the weather has been kind to both flora and fauna. The weather was similar last winter, with warmth at the forefront and no signs of frosts until the end of January, when eventually the snow hit, coinciding with our beaters’ day. For this estate, holding game birds this season has seemed to be an easy enough task, though the amount of wheat they have eaten has increased. With estimations on this coming…

MAKE THE MOST FROM YOUR BUNNY HARVEST It is now approaching that time of year when sporting ferreters are thinking about slowing down or perhaps hanging up the nets for another season. Youngsters are appearing and the undergrowth is starting to grow again, and the ferrets are becoming a little hormonal. A lot of ferreters see this as the perfect time to take the opportunity to stock up and fill the freezer for the upcoming months. Most store the bunnies in a chest freezer. These are fantastic if you only have a few to freeze, but can be annoyingly narrow to place your rabbits in perfectly stretched out. I prefer to leave the fur on the rabbits to protect the meat from freezer burn, but the rear legs can be…

Pheasant, pheasant and more pheasant. I am sure that every Shooting Times reader has the same thought at least once a season. When it comes to Britain’s most ubiquitous game bird I try to make sure I eat more than I shoot — something that will make those I regularly shoot with laugh. But in all seriousness, if we are to get more people eating game, and we must, it is essential that we make them aware of easy and delicious ways to cook what we kill. Here at Shooting Times we are happy to help. The recipes that appear in this section of the magazine are diverse in the extreme. I was on a Gun bus the other day and we were discussing pheasant recipes when someone said to…

A government report has recommended an end to rotational burning of heather on peat soils. The report, Land use: Policies for a Net Zero UK from the Committee on Climate Change, says the focus should be on restoring peat, which is a very effective carbon sink. The report says burning heather on peat soils “is highly damaging to the peat and to the range of environmental benefits that well-functioning peat can deliver (eg water quality, biodiversity and carbon sequestration). “A voluntary cessation of this activity by landowners has not produced the desired outcome so the practice should be banned across the UK with immediate effect.” The report also recommends an end to peat harvesting and a ban on the sale of peat for horticultural use. Responding to the report, Andrew…

07 FEBRUARY S&CBC LADIES’ CLAY SHOOTING EVENT West Kent Shooting School, Paddock Wood shotgunandchelsea bunclub.co.uk/events 12 FEBRUARY BIG FARMLAND BIRD COUNT TRAINING DAY Llwyn Y Brain, Adfa, Newtown gwct.org.uk/events 13 FEBRUARY TASTE OF GAME DINNER Gilpin Spice, Gilpin Hotel, Windermere, Cumbria events.basc.org.uk/ events 22 FEBRUARY GAMEKEEPERS WELFARE TRUST AUCTION & DINNER Newbury Racecourse 07577 458225 07787 060919 26 FEBRUARY BASC MEMBERS’ EVENING La Mon Hotel & Country Club, Castlereagh, Belfast events.basc.org.uk/ events 14-16 MARCH DEER-STALKING CERTIFICATE DSC1 Epping, Essex bds.org.uk…

I was fortunate enough to be a guest at a wild bird shoot last November. Because it had been a poor breeding season for English partridges, my host, a long-term supporter of the GWCT, asked us not to engage with the birds. He went on to say he would not fine us, but asked us to respect the need to conserve the birds in the hope of a better breeding season next year. In my enthusiasm of the day, and no doubt due to some carelessness and poor identification skills, I was horrified to find a single dead English partridge behind my peg at the end of the third drive. Of course, I apologised to my host and said I would make a donation to the GWCT as a penance.…

Of all the ways to take on what I believe to be Britain’s finest quarry, roosting requires the least amount of kit. However, that doesn’t mean to say it’s easy. In fact, shooting a bird as it flits through the treetops on the wind is about as tough as pigeon control gets. During Tanuary and February — particularly if birds are getting chased from pillar to post on rape — roosting can be one of the only ways to get a handle on numbers. To have a successful outing requires a lot of reconnaissance, good fieldcraft and straight shooting. Over the years, I’ve built up a bank of knowledge, which I hope will help you achieve a good bag. “Shooting a pigeon as it flits through the treetops is about…

YOU MIGHT BE surprised to know that DNA testing for dogs has become big business —a quick search online will reveal a dozen or so companies that will be delighted to sell you a DNA testing kit. Apparently, a simple mouth swab is all you need to discover your dog’s ancestry, because these companies claim that they can tell what mixture of breeds your dog is with remarkable accuracy. Wisdom Panel, for example, claims to be the world’s leading canine genetics company and to have tested 1.5million dogs. It also has what it says is the world’s largest breed database, with identification for 350 breeds, types and varieties. A Wisdom Panel testing kit costs an affordable £75. Send your dog’s swab sample back to the company and it then uses…

It is possible to score a female Chinese water deer? TROPHIES Q Last month I shot a Chinese water deer doe. She looked to be an oddity because she had a full set of tusks. I think they might be in the medal class; if so, would they be scored in the same way as a buck would be? A It might be an odd year for Chinese water deer because you are the second person who has asked me this question since the beginning of Tanuary. While female Chinese water deer usually have small, undeveloped tusks — a bit like the doe of muntjac — they don’t, as a rule, have long protruding tusks like the bucks. But from time to time individuals do turn up whose tusks are…

Latin name: Alchemilla alpina Common name: Alpine lady’s mantle How to spot it and where to find it: As the winter snow begins to melt, it might reveal alpine lady’s mantle, an arctic-montane herbaceous perennial. It can be found in meadows, pastureland and woodland clearings, mainly on acid soils. A low-growing plant, it has small, neat leaves shaped like a seven-pointed star, the edges strikingly picked out in silvery hairs. In early summer it produces short sprays of chartreuse-yellow flowers that ripen into seeds in autumn. Interesting facts: There are several species of Alchemilla but A. alpina is the only one that has the clearly separated leaflets; the others have neatly pleated leaves. Alchemilla means ‘little alchemist’; it was once thought that the water droplets that formed on the leaves…

1 Brown Bear trousers RRP: £124.95 gmk.co.uk These functional and lightweight trousers are manufactured from silent microfibre, making them ideal for stalking and walking-up in rough terrain. They have a breathable waterproof membrane and taped seams, which make them perfect for stalking in rough weather. 2 Henley classic tweed hoodie RRP: £250 maudeand fox.com A smart woollen hoodie that will keep you warm on days out in the field. The Henley tweed comes in a dark green hue with a subtle red and blue overcheck. Features include a half-zip neck and snug anti-pill blue fleece lining. The hoodie is cut low at the back to keep draughts out. 3 FX Airguns pocket chronograph RRP: £149.99 sportsmanguncentre.co.uk This new portable wireless radar chronograph is packed with features. It…