Innholdsfortegnelse for 6-Oct-2021 i Shooting Times & Country

Two male deer have been shot by authorities after they were judged to be a hazard to the public. The first, which is believed to be a sika stag, was shot by deer managers at Knole Park in Kent after it made a series of attacks on visitors. After it attacked a jogger, park rangers decided to shoot the animal. The second, a white fallow buck, was shot by Merseyside Police after it was repeatedly spotted on and around busy streets in Bootle. According to press reports, police were able to corral the animal in an industrial estate. After advice from vets and the RSPCA, a decision was made to shoot it. The shooting of the buck, which was described by ITV, Sky, GB News and the BBC as a…

Rewilding efforts and a ban on hunting have caused a wave of conflict between farmers and wolves in northern Spain and southern France. In Spain, the national government, which is led by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, has introduced a nationwide ban on the hunting of wolves. Prior to the ban, wolves could be hunted north of the Douro river, where 95% of the country’s approximately 2,000 wolves live. The ban has provoked consternation from both farmers’ groups and the governments of Cantabria, Castilla y León, Asturias and Galicia. Galician president Alberto Núñez Feijóo called the ban ‘an extraordinary mistake’ and claimed that the wolves had killed more than 2,000 livestock in the region in the past few years. Meanwhile in France, a dead wolf was hung from the doors…

Wildfowling is a wonderful sport, but not always the most productive in terms of action or shooting opportunities compared with other fieldsports. Making the most of the chances presented is key to success, turning a trip from a birdwatching outing into a hunter-gathering expedition. I try to implement a few things to increase the chance of making a shot connect to put fantastic meat on the table. There are a lot of different aspects associated with wildfowling that can make the sport challenging. Weather, mud, light levels and erratic flight patterns, to name a few, all contribute to making it somewhat harder to get on the scoreboard. You may only get one opportunity for a shot after weeks of effort and I like to make it count. Perfect position As…

As I get older I marvel more and more frequently, and ever more gratefully, at the state of mind in which I come home from a fishing day that has given me a few trout. It seems wonderful that catching a fish or two can produce so deep a sense of contentment and so profound a feeling of peace. And there is something else that surprises me: a difference that has grown up between my experience of fishing and shooting. It is not that I love my shooting days less than I did in my younger years. In fact, I know they are even more important to me than they were a few decades ago. I frequently return from them in possession of both contentment and peace, though not of…

One of the secret ingredients to good game shooting is fieldcraft. This cannot be learned on a clay ground. At its most basic, it is understanding your quarry, its preferences and habits in such detail that you have a good understanding of what the bird is likely to do in any given conditions. It can only be learned through close observation of your quarry and the habitat in which it resides throughout the year. Narrowing down the likelihood of its behaviour means you can anticipate its flight and this gives you more time. The very best game Shots seem to have more time than others because of this. It takes a lifetime to learn the habits of the variety of quarry species we have, but it is never too late…

Of all the fish I have pursued this year, mullet has been the greatest challenge. In fact, successfully landing a mullet on the fly has been a goal of mine for far longer than only a year. I have chased them up and down the south coast on multiple occasions, making thousands of casts and hundreds of fly changes but I’m yet to make one stick. Their fighting ability and presence along our shores has led many to hail them as the ‘British bonefish’. On a balmy summer evening, casting at tailing fish, it is quite possible to draw a comparison between the Belizean salt flats and the English Channel. However, on a late September afternoon there are a few contrasts. Aside from the slightly chillier water, mullet have different…

A month ago, I reported that the very first HPR challenge, with teams representing no fewer than 11 different breeds, was being held by the Worcestershire Gundog Society (Battle of the HPRs, 1 September).. The event was won by the German wirehaired pointers with 331 points. They narrowly beat my pre-match favourites, the German shorthaired pointers, which scored 323 points. Third were the Weimaraners (308.5 points), with the Hungarian vizslas fourth on 290 points. They were followed by large Munsterlanders (289), Korthals griffons (267.5), Hungarian wirehaired vizslas (249), bracco Italiano (228), Brittany (188), Italian spinones (164) and Slovakian rough-haired pointers (162). Lloyd Birch, the organiser, said the Slovaks and the spinoni had their best dogs pull out the day before because of illness, hence their low scores. He added: “Some…

BOSS & CO This Boss label is interesting and rare. The address, 13 Dover Street, dates it to 1908, but this is a departure from the standard labels used between 1850 and 1930, which were very similar and prominently sported the Royal Warrant to the Prince of Wales. This simple label does not show it at all, but attests to the proprietorship of John Robertson, which began in 1891. It also mentions his sons, Bob and Sam, as proprietors. The style is very much like a Boss trade card of the 1930s and the telegram address is the same as at that time, as is the telephone number. That it mentions “Late of 73 St James’s Street” suggests it was used soon after the move in 1908. Boss was at…

The Cairngorms National Park Authority has proposed a plan that includes reducing the amount of shooting in the UK’s largest national park over the next 10 years. In the park’s draft Partnership Plan for 2022-2027, the authority proposed a target to “reduce the intensity of gamebird (grouse, pheasant, partridge) management within the National Park. Encourage lower-density grouse shooting, as well as the adoption of best practice management techniques and sustainable pheasant and partridge shooting/releases”. It suggested that the success or failure of the target would be measured by “average gamebird bags per unit area” and “numbers of gamebirds released in the National Park”. In a video posted online of the park’s board meeting, several board members criticised the idea. Commenting on the consultation, a spokesman for the Scottish Gamekeepers Association…

A friend recently had to drive to Somerset and counted dead on the road two sika deer, three roe and four badgers. By strange coincidence, there was not one hedgehog. In the 1950s and 1960s, on any country road, you would find a flattened hedgehog every few miles. In the countryside there are very few hedgehogs. However, in the suburban gardens, they are running about like rabbits. The reason is there are no badgers there to eat them. People working in the countryside have seen the evidence many times; a prickly shell with nothing in it. Peter Whitfield, Hampshire IN ASSOCIATION WITH GMK Each week, the best letter wins a Wellington Boot Bag from GMK, perfect for shooting in any conditions. Visit gmk.co.uk for more details. If your letter is…

When working with clients and their dogs, I so often get asked the same question: when will my dog be fully trained? As any trainer will know, there is simply no way to answer this. Every single dog is different and can only be trained in its own time. When I hear of dogs out in the shooting field at nine months, often people jump on the bandwagon saying it’s far too soon. And in the majority of cases, I am inclined to agree. However, I have known dogs that have matured so much quicker than others. Their personality thrived on being stretched. Other dogs I have known are not ready at two years old. So for any client who wants an answer, I can give them an outline of…

Travelling by car along the Queensway ring road through the northern part of the new town of Telford in Shropshire, you would be forgiven for thinking that whole place has never been particularly exciting. However, little more than a century ago, the area formed part of the southern fringe of the vast 17,000-acre Lilleshall Estate, which was the West Midlands seat of the Dukes of Sutherland and boasted one of England’s greatest shoots. Daily bags of between 900 and 1,000 pheasants were regularly taken and sporting guests often included prominent British and European royalty, such as the Prince of Wales and Grand Duke Michael of Russia, as well as members of the aristocracy. Game shooting had taken place at Lilleshall since the 18th century, but it was not until the…

You don’t have to bankrupt yourself to own a decent telescopic sight. Modern production processes mean that a comparatively modest outlay will now buy you an optic that would have been considered as high-end glass not so long ago. The three sub-£500 scopes in this roundup are extremely versatile and built to cover a variety of rimfire and centrefire applications. Particularly suited to rabbit and fox control, they all have adjustable parallaxes that can focus down to very close range, so are also an option for serious airgun shooters who want to pair their rifle with a quality optic. 1 Hawke Sidewinder 30 SF 4.5-14X44 RRP £459  hawkeoptics.com Made from high-quality aluminium with a monotube chassis, the Sidewinder has a 30mm tube. Combined with quality crown glass and Hawke’s…

Shooting sticks or a bipod? TECHNIQUE Q Which is best, shooting off a bipod or shooting off sticks? A It all depends on the shot you’re taking. Shooting off a bipod is the most accurate and is best for long-range shooting or zeroing, yet it may not always be possible in a hunting situation. Dropping down to a prone position may well be too much movement to make while under the watchful eye of a fox or deer. Also, more often than not, you may not be able to maintain a line of sight when dropping down low, with long grass or foliage blocking your view. In these situations, a quick shot from a set of sticks can offer by far the most practical rest. Also, as we get a…

Latin name: Asplenium ruta-muraria Common name: Wall-rue Other names: Tentwort, white maidenhair, wall spleenroot How to spot it and where to find it: An easy-to-identify evergreen, the leaves of this fern are club-shaped and appear in groups of three leaflets on a pale-green stalk. Wall-rue prefers limestone and grows on steep, bare rockfaces and crevices, as well as hollowed clints in limestone pavement or in tufts growing out of old mortar. It rarely grows more than 20cm tall. It reproduces using spores, which ripen from June to October and grow on the underside of the leaves, looking rather like insect eggs. Interesting facts: One of the old names for wall-rue, tentwort, refers to its use as a cure for rickets, a disease once known as ‘the taint’. It was also…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD Coppicing is an all-too-rare sight in English woodlands. It is an ancient form of management that is excellent for biodiversity and provides a literally endless supply of wood. Coppiced wood can be used for many purposes as well as providing heating fuel. Hazel is used for making stakes and binders for hedge-laying, pea sticks and bean poles for the garden, thatching spars, besom broom handles, walking sticks, clothes props, hurdle rods and staves. Hazel cordwood and offcuts that are too large for such uses make excellent charcoal. Shooting Times photographer Callum McInerney-Riley is a noted barbecue chef. “Much of the taste in a barbecue comes from the charcoal. If you buy the imported stuff on the garage forecourt don’t be surprised if your burger tastes of…

BASC has called for local communities to be given a leading role in managing deer on Scotland’s public land. Recreational stalkers have controlled deer on the vast area of land managed by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) for several years. Almost 6,400 people in Scotland hold the Deer Stalking Certificate 1 (introductory management qualification), while more than 2,100 individuals hold the more advanced DSC2. However, authorities continue to spend millions annually to manage deer in publicly owned woodland. Now a BASC-led partnership is calling for a pilot scheme to test the idea of local recreational stalkers managing deer on FLS land. The idea was welcomed by recreational stalkers. Alan McDade, who stalks on ground adjoining a part of the national forest estate, told Shooting Times: “It is ridiculous that on…

Sixty-five percent of the country’s shoots will be lead-free by the end of 2023, with another 20% phasing out lead shot by the end of 2025, according to a survey by land management firm Savills. The Savills Game and Conservation Benchmarking Survey found that the vast majority of shoots had already got rid of plastic wads and that most were expecting to transition away from lead. Conservation work is also being given increasing priority by shoots, with two-thirds of respondents saying they undertook self-funded conservation work. This included 93% of shoots that have established wild bird seed mixes, 64% establishing insect-friendly pollen and nectar mixes, and almost half that have worked with farming operations to establish conservation headlands. Encouragingly, 11% of shoots reported doing more conservation work after the pandemic…

Reboot of the Year of the Gamekeeper Shooting Timesunderstands that the Year of the Gamekeeper is to be rebooted in 2022 after the pandemic dominated the headlines in 2020 and 2021. The year will feature a media campaign and a series of events intended to dispel myths around gamekeeping and raise the profile of the profession. Urban falconry: arrests made Police have arrested individuals believed to have been involved in illegal urban falconry. The arrests were made by Cheshire, Lancashire and Merseyside police. Announcing the arrests, Cheshire police said that a Harris hawk had been seized along with other items used in the commission of the offences. Cannabis cultivation was also discovered in the raid and two men were arrested for drugs offences. It is not clear if this is…

Mallard have done well over the summer. The dry weather was kind to the ducklings and now I see big flights of fowl over the house and the river in the evenings. Autumn has well and truly arrived in this part of Galloway and, as the birds move around on their evening flights, a suitably seasonal mist often rises from the marshes where the new birds were born and raised. I watch for them as the swallows depart, standing on the brink of that sudden descent into darkness and cold winds that comes with a bump in October. A few teal sometimes join the early mallard. Most of these little ducks were raised on the distant hill lochs and the ditches that run around the peat hags in the uplands.…

It’s that time of year when an invitation to shoot rolls into the inbox and stings the average game Shot into confronting the fact they haven’t picked up a gun in something approaching a year. In the age of COVID-19, that might even be two years for some of us, but can a disappointing session missing pitch discs do more harm than good? Many Guns begin their seasonal migration to their local clay ground as the pink-footed geese begin to split the sky overhead in the early autumn sunshine. The clay ground for some is a place of trepidation as many game Shots are nervous of their lack of match fitness showing for all to see. They are prepared to grapple with it, though, because the imagined — and it…

Our cowhands on the ranch are unable to read or write, having been herders since they were boys in Kenya’s tribal northern ranges rather than attending school. Yet they possess skills of interpreting nature of which I am blind — as desert survivors, as stockmen, as predictors of rain and, most of all, as trackers. I can track as well as I can do a lot of things — that is, with rudimentary skill compared with my stockman Ekuwam. One evening, a herder was returning to the farm from his leave. When he got off the bus, it was already dark and so he left his luggage under a bush and walked the 9km to us. Next morning, Ekuwam rode in on his bicycle, carrying the man’s belongings. He explained…

A quick word to the wise; if you hunt hounds, don’t get married in September. In normal circumstances it would have been different but, off the back of COVID-19, this date was the one available for us so September it was. To say the week leading up to the big day was busy is something of an understatement. Trying to organise the first week of hunting, delayed as it was by a later-than-normal harvest, and helping get everything sorted for the wedding was challenging. Trying to remember whose number was whose in your ‘last dialled’ list — was it a big landowner or the nice chap who was providing the wedding car — caused a few ‘sorry, what?’ moments on the other end of the phone. As it was, the…

IT’S ONE OF THOSE perennial questions that wildfowlers have no doubt been arguing about ever since one stepped out below the hightide mark with a gun — what’s the best breed of dog for fowling? I’ve met a lot of dogs that delight in a day on the saltings, so I’m reasonably well qualified to enter the debate and make a few comments. It’s possible to be a keen partridge, pheasant or grouse Shot and not own a dog, but a canine companion is as essential for a wildfowler as his gun and his waders. Without one it would only be possible to retrieve a small number of the birds shot, which makes a good retriever essential. I should, perhaps, have put the word retriever in quote marks, for though…

There lately appeared in the correspondence column of a London newspaper a letter warning us to beware of ivy. Some varieties — so said the lady writer — were extremely poisonous to touch and the unsuspected cause of distressing skin ailments. Moreover, she declared that the best thing to do with ivy was to root it up as a “harmful and foul-smelling weed”. Needless to say, this lady had confused our harmless common ivy, Hedera helix, with the exotic importations of a quite different species called poison ivy. Rash horticulturalists of the past generation brought it in from the US and the Far East to embellish English gardens, because the autumn tints of these plants was striking in the extreme, rivalling those of Virginia creeper. Fortunately, these most undesirable immigrants…

Last week, I mentioned that obstructing a public right of way is a criminal offence (Sharpshooter, 29 September). Almost immediately, a reader contacted me: “But what about those climate protesters sitting down on roads? The police actually helped them and stopped members of the public trying to remove the obstruction.” Well, yes, we all know that the law is not always applied fairly. There has been public outrage at the allegedly soft way in which police dealt with climate protesters who were preventing people from getting to work. At the time of writing, the police, stung by the criticism, seem to be getting more robust and arrests have been made. But can you imagine what would happen if a gamekeeper stopped a group of ramblers from using an official public…