Innholdsfortegnelse for 17-Nov-2021 i Shooting Times & Country

Restrictions to prevent the spread of avian influenza (bird flu) have been introduced after the first cases of the season were detected at a waterfowl rescue centre in Worcestershire. The discovery came a little more than two months after the UK was officially declared bird flu-free following last season’s outbreak. Now an avian influenza prevention zone (AIPZ) has been declared across Great Britain in response to a spate of further cases. These include in a poultry unit in Warwickshire and among ‘captive birds’ in Angus. A number of cases have also been detected in wild birds. At the time of going to press, poultry keepers are not required to house their birds, though this may be introduced if the outbreak develops. The current restrictions require greater biosecurity measures and limiting…

An attempt by a member of the House of Lords to bring forward changes to the law on hare coursing has been blocked. Alan Smith, the Bishop of Saint Albans, had proposed a range of amendments to existing legislation as part of the government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The amendments brought forward by the Bishop would have increased fines and police powers and would have allowed police to recover the cost of kennelling dogs. The Bishop said: “I know from conversations with landowners and farmers just what a problem illegal hare coursing is. It is not only the damage to land and property that causes anxiety, it is the threats, verbal abuse, intimidation and violence.” The amendments were backed by former Conservative MP Lord Carrington, who also spoke…

The Editor has sent me — in our imagination — to a lodge in the Highlands with a generous supply of sherry, red wine and food. A week in a highland lodge, with access to prime salmon rivers and remote hill lochs teeming with wild brown trout, with the offer of a day or two walking-up a few grouse, is a wonderful prospect. It promises to be a week in a sportsman’s paradise. Unfortunately, the weather has different ideas. Driving rain and howling winds are battering the lodge; rivers are in roaring spate, the lochs are a seething turmoil of wild water. I cannot, of course, blame the Editor for the sort of weather that has greeted my arrival. It is a Scottish speciality and illustrates that what is arguably…

In a recent article on wildfowling dogs (Red, black or goldie?, 6 October), I suggested it’s not a great crime if a dog runs-in to the fall on the foreshore. I stand corrected by my fellow contributor Mike Swan, who believes that steadiness in a wildfowling dog is just as vital as it is in a field trial champion: “If I need the dog away to retrieve in a hurry, I can always send it, but the unsteady dog that knocks down the hide in its rush is a curse.” Mike added that if a bird falls dead in the decoys, it’s better to let it drift free then send the dog, rather than run the risk of the swimming dog tangling up the lines. There’s another good reason for…

Renowned for producing high-end sports cars for secret agents and wealthy connoisseurs, Aston Martin is the latest to add an SUV to its range with the all-new DBX. Gimmick or serious off-roader? I assumed the role of 003.5 to find out. Excited would be an understatement and, as the DBX was unloaded from the trailer, I couldn’t shake the ridiculous smile from my face. The grin only grew as it was fired up. The DBX is a thing of beauty. The not-very-practical white stone bodywork is set off nicely by the black satin 22in wheels and contrasting trims. It definitely looks like an Aston Martin — and boy does it have style. Squeezed into the engine bay is a Mercedes-AMG four-litre V8 twin turbo, producing 542bhp and 700Nm of torque.…

My first shots at ducks in the UK were memorable. Noted sporting bird artist David Hagerbaumer and I were near Inverness. We were there for several days of rough shooting and a day of driven pheasants. On our first day, one of rough shooting, we did well. We bagged pheasants, snipe, woodpigeons, grey partridges and a couple of rabbits. At the conclusion of the day, as it was quickly growing dark, the gamekeeper asked if we would like to try for teal on a small marsh. Dave and I looked at each other in total surprise. We had never shot at ducks in darkness. We both had multiple chances, went through a lot of shells and didn’t touch a feather. Dave later speculated that hitting those teal in the dark…

Ill friend passing on rifles LICENSING Q My shooting friend has terminal cancer and wants me to have his rifles when he is gone. To save his wife the grief of sorting this out at what will be a traumatic time, is it possible for his rifles to be put on to my certificate now? A A firearm or shotgun can appear on any number of different people’s certificates at the same time. Your suggestion is a very good idea and will allow your friend to pass his rifles to you when the time comes that he can no longer shoot. At the same time, he can continue to use them himself for as long as he feels able. You will need to complete the variation form (201V) and pay…

Latin name: Grifola frondosa Common name: Hen of the woods Other names: Ram’s head, sheep’s head How to spot it and where to find it: Look closely at the base of oak trees and you might be lucky enough to find hen of the woods. This fungus, which grows clusters of small, frilly brackets, is well camouflaged against its favoured tree and looks a little like feathers — hence the common name. The individual fronds are 4cm to 10cm across and 5mm to 10mm thick, and vary from tan to olive, grey or cream. The underside of each bracket is cream and covered with tiny pores that release spores as they mature. Interesting facts: Frondosa means having fronds, which describes this frilly edged polyvore perfectly. Hen of the woods is…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD When hedging in autumn, it is usual to find nests from the previous spring. Most common are the ramshackle clusters of twigs, dung and rosehips in which the woodpigeon rears its broods. They are shamed by the feats of engineering produced by the wren. Britain’s second smallest bird crafts a delicate, yet symmetrically robust, dome of moss, lichen and leaves, usually inside a cavity. Within hedges the male, who is the sole builder, seems to favour hollows in field maple. The hen bird furnishes the home, using down from her breast and other materials. One wren nest I found was carpeted with what appeared to be golden retriever pelt. So perfect was it that I placed it in my gilet pocket to show to my son…

The firm brought in to liquidate Guntrader has engaged a top legal team and promised to investigate after Shooting Times raised readers’ concerns (News, 10 November). As we reported last week, the online gun-trading enterprise announced it was going into liquidation to avoid claims from customers whose data was stolen by hackers. When a company is liquidated, independent experts can sell its assets and use the income from the sale to pay those individuals and businesses to whom it owes money. Despite being in liquidation, in a Facebook post, the company announced that Guntrader.uk was being wound up, with a business called Guntrader Media taking over. “Databases could not be sold to recover debts or pay claims” Checks by Shooting Times found that both companies had the same owners, directors and…

SHOOT On sunny days, pheasants enjoy a chance to dry off and warm up. So when the sun is shining, the rough shooter or beating team will do well to get out of the woods and to search the sunnier bracken banks for their quarry. CHECK The COVID-19 pandemic has raised awareness of good hand hygiene, but plant diseases – such as phytophthora ramorum and ash dieback – as well as zoonotic influenza infections, such as bird flu, could be transported from site to site by muddy boots and even vehicle tyres. Washing boots as you leave a shoot is good practice, as is cleaning tyres, especially if you are driving off-road…

Diggory Hadoke’s article on gun security was most comprehensive (Thwart a thief, 3 November). I must, however, take exception to one point – the storage of gun safe keys in a small safe. From the experience of close friends, the first thing the usual burglar goes looking for are small safes as they tend to be where people keep cash, watches, jewellery. So the small safe is wrenched off the wall and removed. The burglar opens it at his leisure and finds your gun safe keys. You now cannot open your gun safe to replace the locks nor remove the guns and the thief returns later to steal them. So the police’s recommendation is good in theory, just not too clever practically. A discreet hiding place in another room is…

Blackpowder muzzle-loading is loud, smoky, dirty and slightly addictive. I’ve worked in the gun trade for nearly a quarter of a century but there are still things that I’ve never tried, such as using a ‘smoke pole’. It may have seemed to my employer Nicholas Holt that this gap in my experience needed addressing. It was at his kind invitation that I joined the line-up at Glover’s Farm in Sedgeford near the west Norfolk coast. “It is rich in insect life and perfect for English partridges” This is land that has been formed by the last ice age. The ridges of higher ground and their corresponding slopes are an ancient sea whose chalk floor has been forced upward by the pressure of an ice sheet that retreated 12,000 years ago…

It is a long, hard slog along the shingle bank in the hour before dawn first glimmers in the south-eastern sky. It would admittedly be a longer and harder one into the teeth of a snowy January gale, but even in the first week of November, it’s enough to get the circulation going. To my left, the rolling and grinding of the North Sea, sucking at the stony beach, its waters picked out by the reflected lights of a distant fishing boat. To my right, the quiet darkness of the marsh and beyond it, the tidal river, snaking south to the point at which it disgorges into the sea. And ahead, a mile-and-three-quarters of loose shingle that shifts and slides at every footfall. My labrador Teal trots gaily in front…

Viewed from the early 21st century, the average English village presents a perfect picture of bucolic tranquillity. The pub sits by the village green, the church clock chimes the hour and a scene fixed in the nation’s consciousness represents the epitome of rural calm. How surprised we might be, however, to learn that these same English villages were once cauldrons of civil unrest — the woods and spinneys surrounding them the stage for nocturnal and bloody affray that raged for more than 200 years. Precarious at best, the life of the English peasant had never been easy and involved the kind of physical, hard work that is now almost impossible to imagine. These villagers did, however, have access to common land, where strips or acreages were allocated to families, allowing…

We’re breathless as we stand on the Turkish mountainside on the first day of our hunt for a Caspian red stag. Though the climb has been steep, it’s not the physical exertion that has stolen our breath: it’s the view. As far as the eye can see, undulating mountain ridges and sharp, wooded peaks break the horizon into disparate patterns like the torn edge of a piece of paper. Jens Kjaer Knudsen and I stop for a moment alongside our friend and guide for this hunting expedition, Recep Ecer, to take in the beauty of the location. We are at an altitude of 1,600m in a semi-open area with low juniper bushes, cypresses and a shrub with fruit that looks like wild apples but is not. Isolated pine and oak…

"You are on mute, Dad. Now you need to switch your camera on. You can see them, but they can’t see you,” the boy muttered, his tone a mix of despair and pity. Charlie and I sat side by side on the sofa in the study, my laptop balanced on my knees. He reached over and mouse-clicked a few buttons. All of a sudden, voices could be heard and faces flickered into view on my screen as connection, via the medium of Zoom, was made with the team at Skinner’s. Video conferencing is a quirky novelty for me. For my son, it is the stuff of normality, having endured months of online schooling during COVID-19 lockdowns. Charlie and I had been due to take a tour of the factory with…

THE DBX IS an absolute weapon of mass enjoyment. It’s versatile and capable, whether you are popping to the shops, going on a long journey, to a track day or on a morning feed run. You may want to pour a stiff drink and sit down for this next bit. Being an Aston Martin, it comes at a premium. The DBX starts off at £160,000. Add in all the goodies fitted to this one and it comes out at £181,020. It is quite stressful driving a £180,000 vehicle through a muddy wood, but the feeling you get on the open road is worth every penny. I can’t fault it, so it’s a full five out of five, despite the price. The final question is, how do I hide £180,000 in…

It was 5pm at last. From early morning, I had busied myself about the farm with the constant feeling of a day only half alive; it had been like this for two weeks, ever since young Helen flew loose to the lure. She was a falcon taken at an eyrie renowned for its gamehawks. Five o’clock was her flying time and any day now I expected she would make her first kill. So far the partridges had been too wily, but Helen was intelligent and learned from her mistakes. It was not, however, the prospect of killing alone that was responsible for my feelings; simply to see her high in the sky, free as the Hampshire breeze, to know she would descend the instant my gloved arm was raised —…

For years, I used to organise a pre-Christmas wild goose chase in Scotland. A few friends and I would sally forth in the festive period in search of geese. Crossing the border was a cause for celebration and many a tall story was told over a pint or three at our hotel. Eventually, however, I tired of the annual organisational effort. And as we all got older, our willingness to endure a long drive on congested roads for a few days’ shooting waned. In my distant youth, I thought nothing of driving for hours and sleeping in the car in the noble cause of catching a goose flight. Then I began insisting on a comfortable bed and a bath. A few years later, I wanted somebody to share the driving……

Mark Avery and the RSPB have been defeated in yet another attempt to derail the programme that has revived the fortunes of the hen harrier in England. Dr Avery brought the case against the hen harrier brood management programme in his personal capacity, not as a director of Wild Justice. The programme removed hen harrier chicks from nests where the birds were living at high densities and reared them in specially built aviaries before releasing them. Dr Avery and the RSPB claimed the programme was unlawful and asked first the high court, then the appeal court, to block it. The high court found against them in 2019 and now a much-delayed appeal court ruling has also found that the programme is lawful. Amanda Anderson, director of the Moorland Association, said:…

The role of pheasant releases in ecosystems is complicated and evidence does not support some of the assumptions made about gamekeeping, according to a paper presented to an online ornithologists’ conference by Dr Joah Madden from the University of Exeter. He used data from the poultry register to work out where pheasant releases were taking place and matched it against citizen science data from the National Biodiversity Network Trust. He also identified control areas where no releases were taking place. The effect on biodiversity of releasing pheasants was unclear. Release sites were generally more biodiverse than sites where pheasants were not released, but the researchers pointed out that this may be due to more time and effort being put into studying those sites. However, they were clear that if the…

Woodcock spotted in good numbers Woodcock arrivals have finally begun in earnest, with a surge in birdwatcher sightings and reports from shoots across the country. Shooting Times readers and contributors reported spotting increased numbers of the bird on driven days, flushing them on beating lines and finding distinctive holes in cowpats, indicating their nocturnal presence. Birds were reported in good numbers all over the country from Sutherland to Dorset. Advice from the GWCT remains not to shoot woodcock before 1 December. Twite ‘the Pennine finch’ is struggling The twite, once a ubiquitous bird of England’s uplands, is on the brink of extinction. Only 12 pairs of the seed-eating finch bred in England this summer, according to the latest evidence. Scientists have blamed the bird’s decline on diminishing hay meadows, where…

The sweet chestnut trees around Burghley Park are some of the most magnificent you will see anywhere in the country. Some of them boast about being more than five centuries old and there is one that is believed to be among the biggest in Europe by circumference. While many may look heavenward to enjoy the majesty of these trees at this time of year, I tend to be much more focused on what’s happening on the ground around them. Cocooned in their spiny shells, the little nuts fall to earth with a bump before cracking open to reveal the fruits within. At this point, a harvest can be had and I have spent a number of my lunchtime walks foraging for tasty treats. It is such a versatile food, thrown…

Goose is something I love, but I don’t get my hands on it as much as I’d like to. I’ve always thought there’s something wonderfully traditional about serving goose at Christmas. Last year, I had the chance to go goose shooting under the moon for the first time but, as with so many things, COVID-19 meant that it didn’t happen. Luckily, my good friend Kevin Minnett did manage to get out and sorted me a few birds. “You need a hawk with a big heart to tackle geese; they’re strong and they fight back” Though I have not had my chance to shoot geese yet, I have hunted them with hawks on several occasions. You need a hawk with a big heart and a crafty mind to tackle geese. They…

No wind, wrong wind, no moon, wrong tide, no cloud, no geese, fog, bad dog, bad duck and bad luck. The litany of excuses I give to my wife as to why yet another wildfowling trip became yet another morning spent armed birdwatching are many and varied. Yet my excuses do hold some water. The shorelines that I haunt and the marshes that lay behind them are vast. So much mud, such a plethora of reed and dyke, and acres of ooze. Then there is the sheer quantity of sky above it all in which fowl may fly. When you think about it, and fowlers have plenty of thinking time, placing yourself in precisely the right spot to shoot a duck or goose in all this enormity of land and…

THE RECENT TRAGIC shooting on a film set in the US is a reminder of the golden rule when handling firearms, captured so eloquently by Mark Hanbury Beaufoy MP: If a sportsman true you’d be Listen carefully to me… Never, never let your gun Pointed be at anyone. That it may unloaded be Matters not the least to me. During a lifetime of shooting I have, on a few rare occasions, found myself looking down the barrels of a loaded shotgun: it’s not a happy experience. On each occasion I was handling a dog, or dogs, so it’s appropriate to discuss those incidents on these pages. One of the most unpleasant, and thus most memorable, took place when I was picking-up on a syndicate shoot. I had never picked-up there…

Spending a lonely night picking off rats in a dirty farmyard may not sound like the finest of shooting experiences, but I have to say that it rates pretty high on my country sports chart. Just as I relish trout fishing in the spring and pigeon decoying in the summer, I can’t help but get excited about the annual rodent campaign that tends to peak towards the end of the year. The atmosphere of after-dark rat shooting has to be experienced to be appreciated. Tucked in the corner of a barn in complete darkness, often with the wind rattling the roof panels and cold nipping at your nose, the hustle and bustle of everyday life really does seem to be a million miles away. Modern night-vision kit means conventional lamplight…

DANIEL FRASER The royal warrant for the monarch proudly adorns this handsome leather Daniel Fraser label with gold embossed images and lettering. Daniel Fraser was established in Edinburgh in 1888, at 4 Leith Street Terrace, as stated on this label. He stayed there, styled Daniel Fraser & Co, until 1911, when it became a limited company. The company specialised in rifles and took out several patents, becoming well regarded at a time when rifle development was moving from blackpowder to the cordite era. Today, Daniel Fraser is part of the John Dickson group of companies and still manufactures rifles in Scotland to traditional designs.…

We held our opening meet at the beginning of the month. The mounted field was as healthy in numbers as I have seen in recent years and, with an impressive turnout of support from foot-followers and locals, it was a very enjoyable start to the season. Trails were laid in the surrounding area, hounds picked up scent well and the field enjoyed a busy start, crossing country over hedges and hunt jumps in pursuit of hounds. They eventually came to a halt after a run of five hedges. I turned in the saddle to see a favourite sight: a beaming, bustling, chattering field. Fresh horses and exhilarated riders. There are countless reasons why people from any number of different walks of life go hunting in 2021. It may be a…