Innholdsfortegnelse for 29-Apr-2020 i Shooting Times & Country

As silver linings go it’s a thin one but over the past few weeks I’ve been enjoying the likelihood that when I phone someone, they’ll be in. Last Sunday, I rang pigeon shooter and artist Will Garfit, with whom many readers will be familiar. When he answered, he was in his studio where he’s been spending the lockdown painting wildflowers. Our conversation turned to rough shooting in the wildest of places. Will, who is in his 70s, feels his generation have lived through a golden era. His reasoning is that when he was my age there was an abundance of wild game and there were great opportunities to pursue it. As opposed to before the wars when access was largely restricted to landowners. In a sense, he’s right but I…

IN ASSOCIATION WITH BROWNING The winner of Letter of the Week will receive a Browning Powerfleece. Warm and practical, it is ideal for both the peg and the pub and is available in sizes S-5XL. For more information visit www.browning.eu.Colour dependent on availability. SOCIAL DISTANCING It is quite possible that the crisis we are in today will still be with us later in the year, just as the shooting season starts. Social distancing and some travel restrictions may still be in place. It’s time for shoots, both large and small, to get creative and think of ways to change in order to protect Guns and beaters and provide reassurance against infection. Shoots need to be shouting out loud right now about what changes they are planning, otherwise people will be…

Muntjac were brought from China to Woburn Park in Bedfordshire in the early 20th century. Nowadays they are firmly established in England and Wales and are encroaching northwards into Scotland and Ireland, thanks to deliberate releases and escapees. Unlike other deer, muntjac do not have a defined breeding season. They breed all year round and does can conceive again within days of giving birth. Their life expectancy — bucks live up to 16 years and does up to 19 years — is another reason why they have been so successful here. Muntjac stalking has only recently become popular so there has been little to halt this increase. This high density in population has led to the muntjac becoming one of our biggest pests. They prevent coppice regeneration in woodland management…

We are living in unprecedented times. The situation with COVID-19, and the resultant social distancing and isolation, is stressful for the vast majority of us. But how is it affecting our canine friends? Some may actually be enjoying having their owners around all the time, particularly if they are used to being left during the day. But the lack of opportunity to get out and about may mean others are feeling the strain. Usually at this time of year, my dogs would be getting into the swing of the working test season, with competitions most weeks and training in between. I would have also been training in as many different places around the country as possible. But with trips and tests postponed, if not cancelled, it is a very different…

There’s a fallacy that the countryside is quiet. Compared with a city centre it might be, but it’s often surprisingly noisy. Tractors are the chief offenders, as manufacturers have never made much effort to suppress the noise of them. Modern tractors have huge, powerful engines and you can often hear them working several fields away. A John Deere 8400R, for example, has a 400hhp, 9-litre engine, so it’s not surprising that it’s raucous. On a recent Sunday morning, I was out with my dogs not long after dawn. With the country in lockdown it was remarkably quiet, so much so that it reminded me of Christmas Day. There were no tractors to be heard and even the local herd of Devon reds was silent, though the skylarks were providing a…

Responsible breeding FERRETING Q My first ever ferreting season has now finished and my jills have come into season, but I am unsure whether I should breed from a couple of them or not? I want to be a responsible breeder, so am keen to hear your opinion. Do you breed from your stock a lot? A It is refreshing to hear from someone who has a responsible attitude about whether to breed his ferrets. I rarely breed from my ferrets but when I do, I carefully consider which hob I am going to use and look back several generations — not only at the given individual. A lot of my hob ferrets are neutered, so I take all of the jills out of season if I am not breeding…

The .44 Russian is on the Obsolete Calibre List, so you can own a revolver chambered for it without a licence, as long as you keep it as a curio. It has gained some notoriety because it has been used by criminals in gangland killings and is one of the obsolete rounds under discussion for removal from the list. It was developed in the 1870s by Smith & Wesson to meet the demands of General Alexander Gorloff, who was seeking a powerful revolver for the Russian army. The new round was an improvement of the old .44 Smith & Wesson, with a self-lubricating 246-gr bullet and a charge of 23 grains of blackpowder. It produced a massive 12,000 copper units of pressure and required a heavy-framed revolver to cope; the…

1 Dummy launcher pack RRP: £119  sportingsaint.co.uk It is important to keep up your dog’s training in the close season and with this dummy pack you have everything you need. It includes a launcher with two different dummies as well as launcher blanks. This is useful for gundogs of all ages and skill levels. 2 Snowbee Prestige2 fishing jacket RRP: £188.99  farlows.co.uk This three-quarter length jacket has simple clean lines as well as specialist features designed for both anglers and shooters. It offers complete protection, whether worn over thigh waders on the reservoir or simply out walking the dog. Available in sizes S-XXL. 3 Bushnell Engage 1700 6x24 laser rangefi nder RRP: £246 edgarbrothers.com This rangefinder offers two times brighter optics, with a 40% larger lens and…

TEACH If you are one of the thousands of parents and carers who have suddenly found themselves home schooling, check out the educational resources provided by the GWCT. With topics as diverse as field mice and woodcock, the GWCT resources are available at gwct. org.uk/advisory/education. BOOK With shoots dependent on Guns’ deposits to buy their birds, an income stream at this time of year is vital. With a significant number of shoots closing for the season or reducing the number of days and birds, anyone waiting to book shooting later in the year is likely to find it both hard to get and expensive.…

I have been game dealing for over 50 years and whenever a price drops it is always the dealers who get the blame. We are by definition dealers who buy from A and sell to B. We do not set the prices. The prices are set on a supply and demand basis, usually dictated by the London markets. Liam Bell says he is disappointed that the stalkers and shoots have taken a hit on price and that no premium is being paid by dealers for UK venison with fewer food miles (Gamekeeper, 8 April). Does he expect me to pay £1 for something I can only sell for 75p? If I were to pay a premium for local venison I would soon be out of business. Ten years ago there…

Longer, warming days bring snakes out from hibernation. I’ve always had a healthy admiration and respect for reptiles, and it’s hard to imagine a smarter or more striking creature than a newly moulted adder coiled up in the heather. Once they have sloughed off their old skins, every scale seems to glow with a waxy little sheen. Each adder has a unique pattern on its head and it seems to be a matter of pride for them to show these markings to best advantage. I like to collect the papery old adder skins whenever I find them, and some of them are absolutely perfect — like a rugby sock gently peeled from a leg. Having recently taken the lease on a new piece of hill grazing for my Galloway cattle,…

BILL HARRIMAN BASC’s head of firearms and global authority on guns MAT MANNING Airgunner and journalist from the West Country DIGGORY HADOKE Vintage gun expert, firearms dealer, author and journalist 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:…

Fishing could be given green light Culture secretary Oliver Dowden has hinted that fishing may be one of the first sports to get the green light to resume. Mr Dowden said his department was “gathering evidence” on which sports can socially distance most effectively. Appearing before the sport select committee, Mr Dowden was asked by Tory MP Giles Watling if he would consider lifting restrictions on non-contact sports such as “angling, bowls and golf”. Mr Dowden stated that if there was evidence that such clubs could open safely then he would argue for them to the Prime Minister and the Cobra emergency committee. Shameless vandals targeting shoots Criminals are using the lockdown to target sporting businesses. The alarm was sounded by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) after a syndicate shoot…

I saw the six-ball challenge (News, 15 April) and thought that it would be an idea to take it a stage further. I have three working gundogs as in the picture (from left to right, Ebony, age 10, Jade, seven, and Mara, three). Having sat all three together, ensuring social distancing, we started throwing balls and dummies, six for each. As you can see there are 18 in front of the dogs. They remained steady throughout and resisted the extreme temptation to run in, though two were clearly very tempted. D Woodhams, by email…

“Blasted thing keeps eating my roses.” I looked up from my copy of Trout & Salmon to see my mother coming in through the back door with a basket of freshly picked carrots from the vegetable garden. She was shaking her head in despair. “Are the rabbits back?” I asked. “Not the rabbits,” she replied with a tone that implied it was an absurd suggestion. “The muntjac, of course.” I have to say this was an error on my part. My mother had been telling the family about this mysterious muntjac that creeps into the garden and devours her plants, but no one had ever seen it for themselves, including my mother. My father had taken it one step further and set trail cameras up round the flower bed to…

Now that we are in the midst of spring, and summer is not far away, the weather is improving and becoming consistently warmer. For the nation’s ferret keepers this offers many problems. The first is understanding how the ferret’s metabolism affects its body. The ferret uses its energy stored and gained from its diet to keep its body warm during the colder months, especially at night when the temperature plummets. In the summer this can be the reason why a lot of ferrets can quickly become a bit chubby. Keeping your ferrets fit and not fat during the summer months can be as entertaining as it is educational. The obvious choice is to add some pipes and bowls in their runs and courts, but ferrets can be quite energy efficient;…

Encouraging my fellow Britons to collect and eat seaweeds has been something of a struggle. Seaweeds are, after all, the slimy, invertebrate-infested, overly aromatic mess that you find stranded on the beach and perfect living specimens fare little better in the group mind of a kingdom of phycophobes. There are exceptions, of course. Laver is famously collected around the Bristol Channel and in Northern Ireland a superficially more attractive seaweed is consumed — dulse. The chief problem facing any domestic chef adventurous enough to undertake phycophagological experimentation is “what do you do with it?”. There is, however, no single method of cooking seaweeds; each species requires its own. The kelps are used as you would a bay leaf to enhance flavours, carragheen is boiled to extract its milk-setting complex carbohydrates…

THERE’S ONE THING I’ve learned about springer spaniels in nearly 40 years of owning and working the breed: there’s no dog that loves to hunt more than a springer. And as anyone who has owned or shot over one will confirm, they are born optimists, happy to work a piece of cover even if the likelihood of finding game is close to zero. I also have a theory that when a springer’s nose is working and its tail is wagging, there’s a valve that shuts off the ears from any extraneous noise, such as a recall whistle. This theory is, of course, disapproved by field trial spaniels, but perhaps there’s something in their breeding that allows ears and nose to work at once. My spaniels have never managed to do…

Hare loin is surely one of the finest cuts of meat in the land. Usually, I tend to charcoal or pan roast these beauties, and serve them very simply indeed — sliced and drizzled with a little oil and perhaps a dash or two of sherry vinegar. Here, however, I’ve made the hare loin into a super-indulgent noodle bowl. It is simple, very quick to make and would go down well with a few beers on a Friday night. Despite a few flavours, the hare still sings out; you always know when it is hare in a dish — there’s nothing like it. You can, of course, mix and adapt this dish to your personal taste by adding a bit more chilli, if that’s your thing, or a seaweed sheet…

Latin name: Geranium robertianum Common name: Herb robert Other names: Death-comes-quickly, dragon’s blood, fox geranium, Jenny Wren, kiss-me-quick, knife and fork, little red robin, bachelor’s buttons, nightingales, wren flower, pink pinafore, stinking Robert How to spot it and where to find it: An annual or biennial, herb robert grows to about 30cm, forming a rosette of split, almost fern-like, leaves. From late spring it produces sprays of pale pink, five-petalled flowers that continue to bloom into the autumn. The stems and leaves are hairy and gradually turn red. Herb robert appears in hedgerows and on woodland edges, on wasteland and in margins of crop fields, as well as rocky spaces. Interesting facts: Named for a French monk who lived around 1,000 AD and used it to cure various ailments, herb…

CHAMOIS Neither goat nor antelope, the mountain-dwelling chamois is in a family all of its own. Its distinctive striped face makes it instantly recognisable, while both sexes carry similar upright hooked horns, though they are thicker in the male. The chamois is an alpine specialist, living for much of the year in meadows above the treeline, but descending to forests in the winter. Females are sociable, living in herds of up to 100, but the adult males are solitary, only joining the does for the rut, in late November through to early December. Chamois are a European endemic species, found in the major mountain ranges from the Tatras and Alps, south into the Balkans and east to the Caucasus. Two species are generally recognised: the alpine chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) is…

Even an old dog can learn new tricks, especially with best practice in mind. Gamebirds are making nests and laying eggs with vigour at this time of year, and I have already witnessed three broods of mallard on one of our lagoons. Ever since I have been gamekeeping, I have always used the same method of preparing my Larsen traps for trapping crows and magpies to benefit the success of broods fledging. Previously, I fed the call birds on grey squirrels that I caught in my trap lines on the estate, along with providing water in a plastic milk bottle that had been converted to be a drinker. However, with people walking where they wish and anti propaganda becoming more frequent, I felt it was the time to adjust my…

Most of us despair of the way the national media treats fieldsports. I treasure the memory of dealing with the Guardian, which was initially dismissive of my attempts to point out that grouse are not reared, contrary to a statement in that paper. That was some years ago and I have not seen this particular error repeated in the Guardian — though its broadly anti-shooting sentiment remains. Not that most of its readers realise. This is a paper that proudly displays a “corrections and clarifications” section which seems to focus on politically correct minutiae. This nitpicking gives the impression that you can believe its meticulous reporting on any given issue. A non-shooter might think that all Guardian reporting about shooting is bound to be both factually accurate and balanced. And…