Innholdsfortegnelse for 5-Jan-2022 i Shooting Times & Country

Last week I bought some apple juice. Not an exciting event in and of itself, but the man who runs the stall was wearing a jumper with a woodcock embroidered across it. It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed his attire. Three weeks earlier, when I’d been buying cider — hair of the dog — I’d noticed he had a partridge on his shirt. “Do you shoot a few woodcock?” I asked as I handed him the coins. His face changed — I imagine he thought I was about to rain fury down upon him. I explained my fondness for woodcock: eating them, shooting them and watching them flight out of the woods at night. After we’d worked out he was a lifelong Shooting Times reader, he admitted he no…

NAME DROPPING The recent article on Suffolk nicknames struck a chord with me (Country diary, 8 December 2021). After 40-plus years domiciled in Scotland, I still fondly recall the oddity and descriptiveness of family and local characters’ nicknames: my father ‘Dusty’ (obvious, miller), his brother Stanley was ‘Botner’. There was a neighbour known as ‘Bang’ Wescott (homeloader). ‘Knifer’ was gamekeeper at Stratton Hall, Levington; I never knew his actual name, but he was definitely not a homicidal maniac. ‘Wibbles’ Mayhew was another Levington legend, and ‘Stud’ from Helmingham. I only hope the latter lived up to that. Simon Miller, Perth SEVERING TIES I am filled with sadness as I sever my relationship with the GWCT, an organisation I held in high regard for 32 years. The Complete Book of Game…

It was 11am, so we sat on the ride edge and opened our thermos flasks — a ritual we undertake every working day. Richard Gould perched on an upturned bucket, I settled on a stump. Within minutes, the birds in the wood recommenced their chatter, having been silenced in the roar of chainsaws as we coppiced hazel stakes and binders. In December, birdsong is not the raucous affair of spring, it is less competitive. Blue and great tits have conversations, goldcrests gossip, even the habitually hysterical blackbirds settle, uttering only half-hearted “chit, chit, chits”. A buzzard wheeled overhead, mewing like someone else’s annoying child. The herring gulls that circled alongside the raptor kept quiet. A covey of greys out on the plough kerred. Linnets and yellowhammers, wrens and dunnocks cheeped,…

“A dog that uses its brain and its nose is a much more valuable companion” THERE’S NOTHING a spaniel likes more than hunting, so it’s hardly surprising that almost all of them make enthusiastic beating dogs. Whether they are actually good beating dogs is another matter entirely. I have owned and worked several generations of black-and-white springers that all relished the opportunity to go beating, but none of them were really good at the job. They certainly did their share of flushing, but when in full beating mode they were invariably deaf to the whistle. Fortunately, this was rarely a problem, as on the shoots where I worked the dogs there were no hares or deer to distract them. There were rabbits, but they soon disappeared down the nearest hole.…

DON’T BE A FAIR-WEATHER FERRETER I am always asked what difference the weather makes to a day’s ferreting. I suspect it is frequently underestimated; the romantic vision of a perfect day’s ferreting is often the worst in reality. I believe the reason many do not go out has nothing to do with the weather’s ability to stop a productive outing; it’s more to do with the human perspective. A lot of people have lost their tolerance of getting cold, wet and dirty. I have seen this regularly. There is now a good selection of efficient clothing to choose from and, as the saying goes, ‘there is no such thing as bad weather, just poor clothing’. If you are a newcomer, you probably won’t yet have realised how the weather above…

Breakfast. It’s not something that I tend to do on the go, but I know a lot of people often do. One dish that shares the dubious title of ‘iconic breakfast dish’ is that of the good old muffin filled with a fried egg, a slice of processed cheese and something apparently from a pig, termed a ‘sausage’. The makers are definitely on to something here. The soft muffin, the fired egg with the soft yolk, the counterpoint of the meaty, salty patty topped off with melted cheese. You are almost, but not quite, in heaven. So, here is my version using rabbit for the patty, though you could definitely use pheasant, mallard or even goose breast meat. “These are great for breakfast any day, but especially on a shoot…

Latin name: Pilosella officinarum Common name: Mouse-ear hawkweed Other names: Blood of St John, fellon herb How to spot it and where to find it: This common herb looks rather like a tatty dandelion, with lemon-yellow flowers carried on long stems up to 50cm tall. At the stems’ base is a rosette of dark green, hairy leaves with pale undersides. The leaves are spoon shaped and untoothed. The flowers appear from May to October and are a paler shade than those of dandelion, the outer florets are red underneath. When the flowers die off, they are followed by fluffy seedheads. It is a spreading plant of dry grassland, sand dunes, screes, heaths, clifftops, rocky outcrops and chalky downlands. Interesting facts: The downy undersides of this plant give it its common…

Montecristo Open Eagle £39.99; cgarsltd.co.uk This is a great-tasting cigar offering a sweetness and hints of marzipan. With a nice draw and thick plumes of smoke, it is an impressive-looking cigar too, measuring 57/8in with a ring gauge of 54. There are a few areas of concern. The burn can be uneven and there are a few large leaf veins on the wrapper, which detracts from its good looks. At £40 a stick it’s a tad pricey, but worth it. Give yourself a good hour to smoke this stick and save it for a special occasion. It’s best enjoyed with a nice red, such as the Bottega Vinai Pinot Nero Trentino.…

Any wildfowler will tell you that an onshore gale can spell danger. Aside from big waves, the combination of wind and low atmospheric pressure can push several extra feet on to the height of the tide. Sometimes these effects are not so obvious; a look at the geography might lead you to guess that a north-easterly is a worry for north Kent, but local knowledge says a north-wester is likely to be worse. What is less well known is that conditions far away can also mean extra water, as can what happened recently. In north Kent, a southwesterly gale will push the water away but, once the gale blows out, the water rushes back, and even a flat calm can bring a couple of feet of tidal surge. Add the…

SHOOT Change your beating line tactics. January pheasants are often well educated. After three months of flapping flags, quartering spaniels and gunshots, many will now know the drill and will be well aware of how to dodge the danger areas. Adding a walking Gun, changing the direction of the beating line or shifting some pegs can all catch wily birds unawares. SHOOT Adjust expectations for end-of-season shooting. January is the month when high birds, tricky shots and small bags should be the aim. Increasing the number of birds available late in the season requires significant extra releases in the summer, which in turn can put pressure on release sites. Make your January shooting about quality, not quantity.…

My neighbour has had his annual TB test and 43 of his cows are inconclusive, with some full reactors to the test. His is not one of those mega-herds. There are a mere couple of hundred cows in total. He will be paid for the slaughter of the reacting cows, but will lose income from their milk sales, as well as not being able to sell any livestock or replace his dead cows. This situation will continue until he has a clear test. I am, of course, talking about bovine tuberculosis but it is a zoonotic disease, meaning other species, including humans, can catch it. Your pet cat, should you be mad enough to have one, is also at risk. Milk is pasteurised, making it safe, but we farmers are…

The depths of winter are not particularly conducive to foraging. Such circumstances would seldom have resulted in starvation for hunter-gatherers past and present, as hunting is always possible and gathered foods would have been preserved for the barren months. But still, the landscape is never entirely bare, so I will highlight a couple of species that are common all year and are even at their best in winter. I am always surprised how unfamiliar people are with sorrel. It is frequently planted in vegetable gardens and is no doubt available in supermarkets, so you’d think people would know it when they see it. Its leaves are very distinctive — generally oval, pointed at the distal end and with two sharp backward-pointing lobes either side of the leaf stem at the…

It was some years since I had last attended the IGL Retriever Championship, so when I went along to the 2021 event, held on the Ampton Estate in Suffolk last month, I was expecting some changes. There was only one that was immediately obvious: if you are a serious trialler, you have to drive a double-cab pickup truck. Of the 80 vehicles in the spectators’ car park, at least 60 were pickups, many of them sporting registration plates that featured LAB or DOG or even PAW. My Fiesta looked decidedly out of place alongside such a formidable array of off-road machinery. What was largely missing this year was the foreign contingent, which usually makes up around 30% of the gallery. I spoke to only a few overseas visitors, from Denmark,…

It’s rather difficult to know quite where to start with the carbon debate, when, according to my research, we have been losing carbon into the atmosphere from our soils since the dawn of agriculture some 12,000 years ago, when we began tillage. The figure I saw was an eye-watering 133 billion tons of carbon over the world as a whole. That disturbance allows particles of soil, or carbon, to leach into watercourses and blow into the atmosphere. In short, it’s no longer locked up, it’s gone. Like everything else humans have done, they became more efficient, so more and more carbon was lost in an increasingly short timescale. Now we have melting ice sheets and increasingly erratic weather systems bearing down on us. So what can we do to mitigate…

A look back at 2021 shows that BASC received 165 heads reaching medal or yearbook status in those 12 months. This shows a big increase from 2020 and it warms my heart to see that stalkers can still get out and continue with their essential deer management. I sometimes struggle to pick noteworthy heads to mention every month — even trickier at the end of the year — but I’ve combed through my records and picked out a few that piqued my interest. G Marson’s platinum-medal roe really stuck with me, not only due to its seriously impressive score, but because it came from my home county of Lancashire, somewhere not historically known for quality roe deer but moving up in the ranks. Shock A Senior’s bronze-medal red stag earns…

flow and strength of the current. Due to the possibility of takes from larger fish, I use a fluorocarbon leader with a diameter of 0.18mm, or at least 3lb to 4lb breaking strain. AS  The Pink Tag Jig nymph incorporates two of the best colours to fish close to bottom – pink and peacock. This is an exceptional fly to fish in spring for trout and in winter for grayling. It is a dark pattern that works equally well in clear or coloured rivers and streams. On small and medium-sized trout streams, I fish with a floating or slow intermediate line, depending on the…

Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane Published by Penguin, priced £9.99 The Daily Telegraph calls Landmarks “passionate and magical”. The Observer says it is a “love letter to the British Isles”. The Spectator calls it “astonishing”. Robert Macfarlane is an expert on the language of rural Britain. Across 11 chapters, he reveals the power of words to create a sense of place. Just as the Inuit are said to have 50 different words for snow, Macfarlane demonstrates what a rich and diverse dialect Britons can claim. Each chapter explores our language for hills, marshes, fields and weather. This is a worthy addition to any countryside lover’s bookshelf.…

Bedfordshire Police has assigned an officer to investigate whether a criminal offence was committed by the RSPB when it published advice on baiting electric fences (News, 24 November 2021). A controversial manual published by the charity included advice to bait fences to encourage predators to lick or sniff them and to get a shock. The manual said: “For foxes people have tried using some dripping or meat or gravy residues eg from the Sunday roast or wrapping strips of bacon around the wires at regular intervals around the fence, about the height of a fox’s nose. For badgers try honey, syrup, peanut butter or treacle.” The investigation came after an intervention by noted RSPB critic Lord Botham. The former England cricketer suggested that the charity may be responsible for encouraging…

In an attempt to spread the word of shooting,beating and picking-up to a wider audience, I invited my granddaughter to come out on a local shoot. As she was born and brought up in a town and visited our farm on occasions for holidays and short breaks, this was a chance to further her (and her friends’) education of what goes on during a shoot day. On this particular shoot, there is an estuary drive complete with rather sticky silt. This drive is one of my spaniel’s absolute favourites. There are plenty of excellent opportunities for high flyers and we are always very busy. We met at the gun bus for elevenses and I asked my granddaughter to hold on to my spaniel while I helped hand around the goodies.…

We have access to the five species of deer found in East Anglia — red, fallow, roe, muntjac and Chinese water deer — and a highlight of December, other than overindulging on food and drink, is the Chinese water deer rut that runs throughout the month. Chinese water deer are not dissimilar to roe in their rutting behaviour, with unpaired bucks roaming their ground looking for a doe and the paired bucks chasing the does around aggressively. We don’t have water deer at Euston but instead, when we want to stalk them, travel up to an area on the Broads made up of open pasture used for grazing in the spring and summer. It’s left empty due to waterlogging in the winter, at which time the deer get the run…

Golden plover have long been prized for the table, especially in Essex. At both the Royal Hunting Lodge in Writtle and at medieval Hadleigh Castle, bones of the birds have been found in modern archeological digs, suggesting that they have been food fit for a king (or queen) for hundreds of years. In 2018, the menu for the first ever meal served on the ill-fated RMS Titanic was sold for a cool £80,000. As well as salmon and peaches imperial, golden plover on toast was offered. Perhaps the Titanic’s chef was following the advice of the father of wildfowling, Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, who wrote in Letters to Young Shooters that “a fat golden plover is quite as good eating as that much overrated bird the woodcock”.…

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 MIKE SWAN Conservation expert and head of education for the GWCT 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 ELLENA SWIFT Award-winning gundog trainer and canine behaviour specialist 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…