Innholdsfortegnelse for 29-Sep-2021 i Shooting Times & Country

Thousands of French hunters, many wearing their orange hunting vests, have taken to the streets to protest against changes to the law. In Mont-de-Marsan in south-west France, police counted more than 13,000 people taking part in the protests, which marchers marked by setting off firecrackers and blowing traditional hunting horns. The immediate cause of the protest has been a series of decisions by France’s top court, which has banned or restricted traditional practices such as glue trapping and turtle dove hunting. However, speaking to France24, Eric, a 47-year-old from Gascony, suggested it had deeper roots. “I’m sick of seeing my culture fall to pieces. They’ve already eradicated my language, Gascon, now it’s the traditional hunts,” he said. Another protester told the online paper: “Let the urbanites leave us alone.” UK…

Hopes are high that the lockdown-inspired gundog puppy price bubble may finally be deflating. A surge in demand for puppies to keep children entertained and to provide company for homeworkers has been widely held to be responsible for rapidly rising puppy prices. Last autumn cocker spaniel puppies were selling at £3,000 each, with labradors achieving a similar value. But increased supply and reduced demand now seem to be having their inevitable effect and puppy prices appear to be falling. Major puppy-selling websites such as Epupz and Gumtree are carrying many adverts for cocker and springer spaniel puppies priced between £1,000 and £1,500. Shooting Times was able to locate several sellers of working spaniel and labrador puppies asking for between £1,000 and £1,500 for well-bred Kennel Club-registered animals. While the drop…

LEAD IN WHEAT Regarding lead shot contaminating wheat (News, 15 September), the problem is when the wheat is growing in the field. I am a farmer and we were growing wheat near a local clay shooting club. We fed the wheat to our own pig unit and ground the grain through our milling process. I was amazed to find the stone trap on the mill full of lead shot. It never happened when we grew barley on that land. I am pretty sure it is the upright nature of the wheat head that was catching the falling shot. Along with the help of the National Farmers’ Union and local council, we were able to get the clay club to shoot in the opposite direction and the problem went away. Michael…

There’s a phrase that I’ve come across on social media that has always given me pause for thought — the ‘ordinary shooting person’. It is usually used in the context of bemoaning either the cost of shooting or some perceived failure of the shooting organisations — shooting is becoming too expensive for the ordinary shooting person, or the organisations have forgotten about the ordinary shooting person. I suspect that when people use the phrase, they have a very clear picture in their head of what this person is like, the kind of places they shoot, how much money they have, how often they shoot and how much they spend on it. What is meant by the phrase and does this ordinary shooting person exist? Shooting is a far more diverse…

It is 4am in mid-January. The Shipping Forecast warns of meteorological Armageddon from Gibraltar Point to North Foreland. Sleet like spittle taps the windows and a gusting north-easterly is making up its mind whetheror not to remove the shed roof. In conditions such as this, mere mortals draw their duvet to their chin and return to blissful slumber, glad they are not abroad at this hour. Not so the wildfowler. Storms and gales and general nastiness are the conditions of choice for marsh and foreshore. There is a hint of the masochist about every wildfowler, but we are not so daft that we would venture to the coast at dawn garbed in the natty attire seen on a driven day. Things have come a long way since the days when…

The so-called transitional revolver has always piqued my curiosity. These guns pair the frame and grip of a pepperbox-type revolver with a short cylinder, bored with a number of chambers. It is for that reason people imagine them to be some sort of missing link between the pepperbox-type and the perfected revolver, famously patented by Sam Colt in 1836. Pepperbox revolvers had been about since the mid-1830s. They were little more than streamlined versions of the multi-barrelled, hand-rotated pocket pistol made in both flint and percussion ignition. They were called ‘pepperboxes’ due to the slight resemblance that their fluted barrel groups had to a domestic pepper shaker. They would have been handy for self-defence at close range, but their accuracy was poor because they were muzzle-heavy. Revolutionary design Colt’s revolver,…

Of the 7,000 or so larger — as in, not microscopic — fungi found in Britain, my educated guess is that about 500 are edible, 500 have varying degrees of toxicity and the rest are too small, too tough, too bitter or too slimy to bother with. Only about 150 of the edible ones have any gastronomic merit and of those perhaps 30 you would be prepared to pay for in a restaurant. Even then there is a hierarchy of excellence and the four I have chosen are true top-table species. For those who wish to forage wild mushrooms, it is worth noting that only two dozen of the 500 poisonous species are deadly. This sounds encouraging, but very few of the thousand or so fungus forays I have enjoyed…

OUR VERDICT I have always been a sucker for a carbine. The short stature and feel of such rifles makes great sense for most of my woodland stalking. A carbine balances reduced weight with enough barrel length to be ballistically efficient, yet doesn’t impede you stalking through foliage. That’s why when Unique Alpine (UA), a Bavarian company, sent the new Kodiak Scout version of its JPR-1 series rifle, I couldn’t wait to take it roe stalking. “It possesses all the features that real hunters want” UA has served the military and police with sniper rifles for years and has now branched out into more civilian-orientated rifles. They are designed for stalking and vermin but still utilise UA’s reputation for quality and bullet-on-bullet accuracy. This Kodiak Scout model is the archetypal…

As Professor Higgins didn’t quite bemoan in My Fair Lady, “Why can’t a grouse be more like a pigeon?” The dear old woodpigeon may be accorded by its admirers the status of ‘grey grouse’, an accolade it surely deserves for its sporting and culinary qualities, but otherwise its lot is pretty lowly compared with the king of the gamebirds. The pigeon and its mate are under siege throughout the year, from corvids stealing their eggs and chicks, to aerial attack from peregrine and sparrowhawk. If his natural predators don’t get him, he has to avoid battalions of pigeon shooters lurking in hedgerow, spinney and roost wood. True entrepreneur Despite all this, the pigeon thrives. It has adapted to change, a true entrepreneur, able to exploit the man-made landscape of arable…

Newspapers like to run so-called news stories about dogs. I read one recently warning would-be owners of dachshunds about the breed’s problems because their legs are too short and their bodies too long. When I was a child, we always called them sausage dogs, for good reason, but it seems that in recent years the legs have got shorter, the bodies longer. However, it’s long been known that dachshunds are particularly vulnerable to intervertebral disc disease, or IVDD, and that many end up paralysed, so it was hardly news. Dachshunds originated in Germany, hence the name ‘dachs (badger) hound’, a reminder that they were proper sporting dogs, used for going to ground with badgers. One history of the breed I read stated that they were once popular with the royal…

HEDGES Q We have miles of neatly trimmed hawthorn hedges on the shoot, but we never seem to see much fruit. Are there different species of hawthorn that fruit more freely? A I suspect that the answer lies in the words ‘neatly trimmed’. In common with most fruiting shrubs and trees, hawthorn produces most of its fruit on second-year wood. This means that a new branch from this summer’s growth will normally flower and set fruit next year. If you give hedges an annual trim, you lop off most of the young branches with flower buds and prevent fruiting. On the other hand, not trimming a hedge allows it to get out of hand and it is likely to be unpopular with the farm manager for taking up too much…

COOKERY Q Once frozen, how long can I keep pheasant breasts in the freezer and how is it best to defrost them? Even in a proper deep freeze (-18°C and below) things can still deteriorate. Remember that when you freeze meat, you expand the water molecules within its cellular structure and these will leach out on defrosting. That will not really affect the length of time you can store something in the freezer. There isn’t a hard and fast limit to how long meat can be frozen if it is well packaged to exclude the air and protect the meat. However, there are some guidelines I would stick to. Aim to never have anything frozen for more than six months, and ideally three months, as after this period of time,…

Shooting has a close relationship with farming. It has to, because farming is the dominant land use of the countryside. Deerstalkers and wildfowlers may be less dependent on the farmed landscape, but for most other types of shooting, good relations with the farming community are essential. Many of us have a very high regard for farmers and relations are generally good. But what happens when farmers go bad? Let’s face it, the occasional awkward farmer is a fact of countryside life. In a thousand ways, this rare species can make your life hell. It doesn’t matter that you have a written shooting lease and pay rent — if you get on the wrong side of the person who actually farms the land, there will be trouble. Muckspreading Beware of joining…

The Welsh government has announced a plan to ban snaring. The move, which will place further pressure on the country’s already struggling ground-nesting bird populations, was afforded a single sentence in a newly issued policy document. There had been signs that the Welsh government might make a move to restrict the use of snares when it issued a consultation earlier this year which said that “it is the Law Commission’s view that, in the future, the operation and inspection of snares may benefit from additional regulations prescribing how relevant snares should be operated and inspected”. Shooting and countryside groups have worked with the Welsh government to develop a code of practice on snaring. There is now anger that all that work has been discarded in favour of a ban. “The…

Though about five years behind the curve, I suspect that the accumulative brain power amassed within Aim to Sustain knows it needs to address the issue of the small market for large numbers of dead gamebirds. Surely the starting point towards sustainability must be to reduce the number of birds trying to find a market? If we assume this is the single most important step, then we need to reduce the total UK bag while ensuring the financial viability of the game shooting industry and its employees. I have a simple solution, and to make the maths easy, driven pheasants on a commercial shoot should be charged at around £70 to £80 per bird with a target bag of 75 to 100 birds. This would generate a reasonable income for…

After a cold end to August, September came back with a bang; hot sun and no rain. The warm weather prompted me to get on with some grass seeding I had long been putting off and some time spare at the weekend meant I could get it done. The problem, however, was that whenever I plant anything new in the garden, the army of rabbits living under the shed march boldly forward to thwart the advance of any young shoots pushing upwards through the soil. “An army of rabbits marches forward to any new shoots” This time I was determined not to let them win and extensive rabbit netting was deployed. I also decided that it was about time the problem was resolved more comprehensively, so I installed an advanced…

We had just left our vehicle, a practical if primitive Lada Niva, when we heard the cry of a sika stag. The sound came from a thick stand of pines, which we knew would be impossible to approach without alerting the stag’s harem of females. Instead, our guide Roy Hrelja — an Australian who’s put down roots in the Ukrainian forest area we were trekking through — put the sika call to his lips and answered the ghost hidden in the undergrowth. The stag responded at once and was soon joined by a shrill chorus of other deer, which were foraging close by in thin deciduous woodland. Keen to bring down one of Ukraine’s monster stags, hunter Frank Olsen led the way, but by the time we got there, or…

“It is sad but true that membership of many wildfowling clubs is declining” It’s hard to believe, but wildfowling clubs are a relatively modern concept. There are one or two that can trace their origins back before World War II, but most sprang up from the 1950s. What is now the Kent Wildfowling & Conservation Association (KWCA), of which my father was a founder member, was formed in 1953, as were the Fenland and the Solway. Others formed around that time include the Dorset and Holbeach clubs, in 1952, and the Fenland Wildfowlers in 1956. “Why this sudden activity to form clubs?” you might ask. Well, the answer was Lady Tweedsmuir’s bird protection bill, which became the Protection of Birds Act 1954. Suddenly wildfowlers began to fear that their sport…

Alex Rodgers’s CV belies his age. For six years, he was the only full-time gamekeeper in Northern Ireland. At their peak, grouse stocks on his watch made up 65% of the bird’s population in the country and were accompanied by NI’s most successful known breeding pair of curlew. In 2019, the Irish Grouse Conservation Trust (IGCT) — his employer at the time — won a Purdey Gold Award. Alex is 28 years old. The IGCT was formed in 2006 with the aim of rebuilding the country’s depleted population of red grouse. The 7,000-acre Glenwherry Estate in County Antrim, the trust’s base and the only driven grouse moor in NI, would become a showpiece of what can be achieved with the right approach. Until his recent move to Cumbria, Alex was…

Writing in a September heatwave, it is easy to forget that it has been a funny old spring and summer. It started with a frosty April, followed by a cold, wet May. Then things began to look up, with a warm, sunny start to June, only to break down again with some seriously wet weather around peak partridge hatch time at the end of the month. There is a school of thought that says grey partridges cannot take rain and that the chicks will all expire if they have to face anything much more than a light shower. That clearly isn’t true. It’s fair to say that, in my part of the world, it has not been a vintage year for the wild greys and, yes, there are some barren…

When I am on a driven day, I sometimes wonder why drives are driven in a particular way, or why the Guns are in a particular place when, to my eyes, they would be far better somewhere else, or the birds driven slightly differently. There are so many things to consider when you are putting the pegs out, not least the expected flight path of the birds. I quantify this by saying expected flight path, because when you are pegging out a new drive, or if you have recently taken on a new shoot and don’t quite know where the Guns have stood previously, a lot of it will be guesswork. They might be educated guesses, but until a drive has been driven a few times — under varying conditions…

The back of the truck opened and shut on the roller-blind principle, secured by a specially designed safety spring clip that passed through a fitting like the hasp of a padlock. Motoring up country to collect a load of chattels, it seemed sensible to travel with Boss and Chuckle in the back of the empty lorry, where they could stretch their legs or settle on the beanbag so kindly made for their comfort as a parting gift by the wife of one of my shooting partners. The trip was made at the height of the petrol shortage and, as the hired wagon had a thirst like a rugby team after a game, it was necessary to stop at every other motorway service station to top up the tank as a…

JAMES MACNAUGHTON James MacNaughton was the first Edinburgh gunmaker to patent a trigger-plate action gun, in 1879. His business was taken over by John Dickson in 1947, but this label precedes this date. It attests to medals at exhibitions in Melbourne in 1881 and Edinburgh in 1886. He moved several times and the label address of 36 Hanover Street places it after 1905. The label is ink printed on paper and shows the telephone number. In the early 20th century, numbers became a standard addition to labels. This label would suit a MacNaughton trigger-plate gun from the late 1800s to around 1920.…

RIFLES Q Would you recommend using the RWS Z Lang .22 rimfire ammuntion when going close-range rat shooting? A Z Lang ammunition is available from RUAG Ltd and it is a very consistent performer. It’s part of RWS’s Field Line range and, with it being made by RWS, you know it will be very well quality controlled for dependable accuracy. The Z Lang means Zimmer or Room Round. Intended for indoor use on short indoor ranges, they may be good at double-duty vermin control. They use a round-nose solid lead bullet, so you still have to be very careful with your shot, especially with non-expanding bullets like these. They look very similar to the CCI CB long rounds and, as such, feed much better from a magazine. The bullet weight…

Now is the time hedgerows provide a heady bounty. While elderberry wine and sloe gin are well-loved home-brew staples, there are many other delights to be found in the hedge that can be turned into alcoholic delights. Crab apples make a full-flavoured white wine, hawberries a passable rosé, and ‘hedgerow port’, a blend of elderberry, bullace and blackberry, is guaranteed to generate a headache the next morning. For home beer brewers, wild hops are in flower and ready for picking. This is best done when the cones crinkle like tissue paper. Tony Butler, late headkeeper on the Hinton Ampner Estate, was famed for the esoteric ingredients in his wines. When trying something new, he added more sugar to the mix, in case of bitterness. What he failed to realise was…

The season’s first migrating pink-footed geese have been spotted off Scotland’s north coast. The birds, which breed in Iceland and Greenland, have become an increasingly important part of the winter’s sport for wildfowlers in the northern parts of the UK and particularly on the east coast of Scotland. Shooting Times’s network of wildfowlers noticed a relatively small arrival of the birds in the late summer, with a number of fowlers speculating these were birds that had failed to breed. Now, the first in-season arrivals have been spied passing over Fair Isle. The island, which is halfway between Orkney and Shetland, is often the first place where winter migrants are spotted as they come in. The skein of around 24 geese was heading into a south-easterly wind and the larger arrivals,…

The Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) has restated its opposition to a transition away from the use of lead shot. The SGA was the only shooting or gamekeeping organisation not to back the five-year voluntary transition away from lead. Now, in a message encouraging members to engage with the Health & Safety Executive’s lead ammunition consultation, the association has reiterated that position. The message said: “Some countryside shooting organisations, led by BASC, have publicly declared they are behind the phasing out of lead over five years and are working with the UK Government. The SGA was asked to sign up for this position but did not do so. The SGA remains unconvinced by present evidence, particularly on how humane and safe lead shot alternatives, currently in development, are when it comes…

Salmon anglers hope for rain Many of Scotland’s smaller salmon rivers are facing a season with little or no fishing unless the weather takes a dramatic change for the worse. An exceptionally dry summer, which has extended well into September, has left many rivers at too low a level for fish to run them. The end of September is the closing date for some of the smaller west coast rivers, while most will continue until the end of October. Anglers will be crossing their fingers and hoping for significant rainfall before the end of next month to give them a chance to wet a line. ‘Starvation’ causes mass seabird deaths Mystery surrounds the mass death of seabirds in the North Sea. Large numbers of dead guillemots and razorbills have been…

It had been my mission this summer to catch a bass on the fly. With the rivers of west Wales dangerously low, sea fishing has proved more tempting than usual. I would describe myself as a trout fisherman used to stalking wild brownies with a light rod and even lighter tackle. Casting a fly into the sea was a daunting prospect. Bass are famed for their explosive takes and tenacious fights; playing one on a fly-rod would be exhilarating. Luckily, Pembrokeshire is blessed with a stunning coastline that holds an abundance of bass. I began trawling the internet for information on how to catch one. Vital tide Many hours of research later, I had a plan. The tide is vital when bass fishing as the fish will only properly feed…

Most clubs expect you to pass a test before you get free rein. As part of this you will most likely need to study quarry identification, but that is a good thing anyway. Knowing what you are looking at enhances your time on the marsh, and no one should ask “What’s that?” when their bird comes to hand. They will also want to be sure that you understand how to stay safe, and I count myself lucky that when I finally got into the West Glamorgan Wildfowlers, I was given one answer on a plate. “You wouldn’t have gone to evening flight today, would you?” said my questioner, bearing in mind a flooding tide and a ripping gale. I nodded and refrained from telling him I had just come in…

The rut has broken in the glen and it is truly one of the highlights of every hill stalker’s year. To take a particular animal, and to be able to stalk past healthier beasts in order to do so, is not something that is learned overnight. Having the right mentor early on in a stalker’s career is crucial to learning such skills. Those of you who know Loch Shiel may have seen a lonely cottage, only accessible by boat, that sits high above the far bank. It is a place that the writer Mike Tomkies christened ‘Wildernesse’ in his book A Last Wild Place. I had been there on an estate for some months as a trainee when an older stalker moved on to the beat. He instantly took me…

STALKING Q Is it essential to bleed a deer carcass after the animal has been shot? A Blood should be removed from the organs, arteries and veins of an animal after it is killed in order to ensure that the meat will keep well and that it remains of good quality for human consumption. If a deer is chest-shot, the organs will bleed out naturally and the blood will collect in the chest cavity. Provided that the chest is opened relatively soon after shooting and the blood allowed to drain out, there is no need to bleed the carcass. If an animal is head or neck shot, however, natural bleeding out will not occur quickly and you should ‘stick’ the carcass by inserting a knife point at the base of…

GUNDOGS Q I have a really lovely 13-month-old cocker spaniel. He is pretty obedient with heel and recall, and loves hunting for treats. However, I cannot get him to retrieve dummies. He is obsessed with my Crocs. If I throw one of those, he will retrieve it all day long. I didn’t worry about it to begin with, but now I am getting concerned. I intend to beat with him primarily, but sometimes the beaters are allowed to pick dead game at the end of the drive and I would love it if he would pick a bird and know what to do. Is he a lost cause? A I would not be too concerned right now. Though frustrating for you, if he is not going to be a picking-up…

AIRGUNNING Q I shoot a lot of grey squirrels with my air rifle and enjoy eating them. I think the meat is better than rabbit. I would also like to make use of their tails. Is there anything I can do with them? A The fibres from grey squirrels’ tails are a popular material in the tying of imitation flies for trout fishing. If you don’t fancy taking the time to tie your own, there are plenty of anglers who will happily take squirrel tails from you to use in their own creations. If you don’t have any fly-fishing friends who tie their own flies, try getting in touch with local angling clubs and fisheries. It shouldn’t take long to find someone who will be very grateful to take your…

The Silver Stoat is a very versatile pattern and I doubt many of us are without a selection in the fly box. This is the quintessential hairwing salmon fly. It is the pattern that best embodies everything about autumn fishing, when the water can still be clear and low, fished with a floating line and long leader. It is part of a generation of flies that includes Hairy Mary and the Tosh — great workhorse patterns. When the water drops and clears, it takes its share of autumn salmon.…