Innholdsfortegnelse for 11-May-2022 i Shooting Times & Country

Hunt saboteurs have been reported to police after they posted images online of traps they claimed they had stolen and vandalised. The Hertfordshire Hunt Sabs used their Facebook page to display photographs of 17 traps which they said “won’t be killing any more”. They also posted an image of two smashed Larsen traps from which several corvids had been released and claimed: “This Larsen trap won’t be trapping any more wildlife. These three magpies live to fly another day.” Older posts also implied that they had destroyed a feeder used to bait and shoot invasive grey squirrels. The self-described ‘wildlife defenders’ justified this by citing the damage “caused by drilling holes into this tree” and by “the repeated pellet impacts from shooting at the squirrels with an airgun”. Conservationists and…

The government of Botswana has reacted with fury to claims made about the country and its system of regulated hunting by Sir Roger Gale. The 78-year-old Conservative MP for North Thanet took part in a video debate on trophy hunting with Swedish hunting advocate Jens Ulrich Hoch. Sir Roger is a leading anti-trophy hunting campaigner and in the video he attacked the government of Botswana and particularly its president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, claiming he had a financial interest in hunting tourism. The claims were addressed in a furious official statement from the president’s office. A senior official accused Sir Roger of a “rampage with disinformation aimed at undermining Botswana’s very pragmatic and sustainable conservation policy and practices”. The statement added that the claim that the president benefited financially from hunting was…

IS STEEL IN GAME MEAT SAFE? It would be of interest to your readers to help them to make their minds up as to whether steel shot is safe for their stomachs, as Terry Butcher states (Letters, 27 April). Let’s have more on the safety of ingested steel shot and its effects on human health. I for one, who has shot and eaten most game, would like to know this after 66 years of eating game shot with lead It does not concern me whether I use steel shot or lead — I use both — but a recent video worried me. Having seen it, I will not eat any game shot with steel until the science on this matter is proven. Better the devil you know, as they say.…

“Good fieldcraft is good fieldcraft wherever you are” In 1999 and 2000, I was fortunate to spend many months in the jungles of Brunei and Belize as part of my Royal Marine training. Both were wonderful environments in which to soldier. For the previous two years, I’d spent most of my time wet and cold — on Dartmoor, the Brecon Beacons and in Scotland. Now, at least, I was only wet; it’s rarely cold in a tropical rainforest and I was never thirsty. With movement beneath the canopy very limited, it was also a welcome opportunity to catch up on sleep and I found a hammock to be a comfortable place to recoup after the rigours of the commando course. It was during these times that fellow trainees and I…

Few birds have left a more lasting impression on me than the first buzzard I saw. It was dead, spreadeagled on its back with wings stretched out, its yellow legs broken. The body was sprawled in the courtyard of the Cornish farm where my family was staying for our summer holiday. It had been caught by a pole trap; the farmer killed it because he believed that buzzards preyed on his lambs. It was 1958: the Protection of Birds Act had been passed four years earlier. Aged eight, I was fascinated by the dead bird, so I came home and read all I could about buzzards. I soon discovered they hadn’t bred in my home county of Kent since the end of the 18th century, so my chances of seeing…

In recent columns, I’ve written about sheep worrying by dogs, a serious problem that has become worse in recent years. However, until now, I’ve never written about dog worrying by sheep. OK, this report is somewhat tongue in cheek, but my sprocker, Emma, recently had an encounter that might well have left her somewhat worried. Her memorable meeting took place last month, when I was visiting a shooting friend in Sussex. He has rather more than 20 acres surrounding his house, most of it woodland, but he also has a three-acre rough paddock, much used by hunting barn owls and kestrels. Though he has no livestock of his own, he likes to have the paddock cropped by sheep and he currently has a small loan flock of half a dozen…

When Britain adopted the Lee-Metford rifle and .303 cartridge in 1888, the British gun trade immediately saw the potential to add a new type of sporting rifle to its ranges. However, there were some obstacles to this in the rifle’s early years. Initially, the .303 cartridge was loaded with blackpowder, but Sir Frederick Abel and Sir James Dewar’s new smokeless propellant, cordite, was substituted after 1891. That burned with too much heat for the shallow Metford rifling, causing bore erosion that led to inaccuracy. “It would deal with soft-skinned game, such as sambar deer, wild pig or a tiger” The whole rifle was redesigned by the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield Lock in Middlesex and, from 1895 onwards, the Lee-Enfield rifle came into British service. It was to be…

I took my young labrador for a good walk last week. When I say ‘walk’, I mean I was riding my quad while she galloped alongside. The flaw is that she gets fitter, so she needs ever more exercise, while I become steadily less fit. Anyway, on the recent dog-exercising trip, we went to visit a local bothy on the edge of the forest. This old stone cottage is maintained by the Mountain Bothies Association (MBA). According to the MBA’s website, the organisation “exists to maintain remote buildings for which the owner has little or no use, yet remain important to walkers and others who make use of the shelter that they provide”. Anybody can stay overnight in an MBA bothy free. There are more than 100 of them, mainly…

A legal change lobbied for by Shooting Times contributor Ed Coles has passed its final hurdle and only now needs a minister’s decision to bring it into force. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill received Royal Assent on 28 April and is now an Act of Parliament. The act amends some existing legislation by increasing the maximum penalty for the historic crime of “trespassing in pursuit of game” under the Game Act 1831 and the Night Poaching Act 1828 to an unlimited fine and up to six months’ imprisonment. The act also creates two new criminal offences: “trespass with the intention of using a dog to search for or pursue a hare” and “being equipped to trespass with the intention of using a dog to search for or pursue…

CHECK Fox and crow control is essential for the survival of our ground-nesting birds, so now is the time for a maximum predator control effort. Targeting corvids, mustelids and foxes in the next few weeks will have a much greater effect on safeguarding nesting birds than efforts at other times. Hit them hard and hit them now. FISHING A high crossing pheasant folding and tumbling, a Royal stag in a riflescope and a trout sipping down a dry-fly are among the finest sights for a fieldsports fan. May brings the peak of dry-fly fishing on the country’s rivers and modern fly patterns have radically altered the game but patience, stealth and accuracy will always be rewarded.…

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has opened its public consultation into restricting the use of lead ammunition. The use of lead in shotgun and rifle ammo is being scrutinised as part of amending the UK REACH (UK Registration, Evaluation Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) framework of chemical regulation. Significant restrictions on the use of lead are expected at the end of the process. BASC announced that in certain situations it would oppose restrictions. “Depending on what restrictions are proposed, BASC and the other shooting organisations will need to seek exemptions where there is evidence that there are no viable alternatives to lead,” it said last week. Some shooters oppose BASC’s approach to lead. Game Shot and wildfowler Gary Bruce,a keen Shot who has been a persistent critic of the…

Lindsay Waddell says “the pine marten, with foxes and crows will see capercaillie vanish from Scotland” (Gamekeeper, 20 April). He might have added “and uncontrolled people”. All these points were clearly made in 1978 at the first International Grouse Symposium (IGS) organised by the World Pheasant Association. Field scientists from all countries with grouse populations — including Europe, Canada and even China — were brought together to give papers on all matters to do with grouse, particularly capercaillie. Not one blind bit of notice has been taken of the findings of the world experts since by our leading bird charity, the RSPB, despite having, I believe, received £5 million for capercaillie conservation. Only last year the IGS had the very good idea of electro-fencing a large area at Abernethy and…

“Deer are hell-bent on munching every crop in the district” The sea of bright yellow flowers appearing and the accompanying sweet smell of oilseed rape pollen surely signal a turning point in the year. The heat can finally be felt in the sun as it climbs higher in the sky and all around us the warmth of spring is evident. There are stunning cones of horse chestnut flowers, rapidly growing cow parsley and dozens of little rabbits. As April ticks towards its conclusion, though, the end of the fallow stalking season makes a steady countdown and with it the last chance of managing a population of deer hell-bent on munching every growing crop in the district. There had been a particularly disruptive group of fallow bucks, 13 in total, which…

About three times a year, I pick up the phone and there’s a hesitant voice enquiring if I’m me. I don’t recognise the caller and immediately suspect it’s someone trying for the 721st time to book two rooms in the local pub (wrong last digit) or some ground-heating contraption “that’s almost guaranteed to reduce your energy bills in 10 years’ time” and so put the phone down and resume feeding the terriers. Then the phone rings again and before I can end the call, the caller manages to splutter: “Blue Zulu, we met, four seasons ago, it’s John/James/ Charlie.” That doesn’t help much with identification. Far more convenient all round if they’d been a Marmaduke, Archibald or Ziggy (and there must be some Ziggys who shoot). In younger, more optimistic…

It’s an interesting time to be a salaried deer manager in the UK. The wild deer population is widely considered to be at its highest level for 1,000 years, stalking is thought to be one of the fastest-growing forms of fieldsports, and our understanding of deer and their relationship with the natural environment is constantly improving. John Senior has been managing deer full-time on the Thoresby Estate in Nottinghamshire for nearly 10 years. Central to his role, it would seem, is an open mind. “I have many theories about deer behaviour, based on my own experience, but I never consider them fact,” he says. “There’s always something new to learn.” As you’d expect, John knows this parcel of the Midlands intimately. And yet, the role and impact of deer in…

Muntjac hiding in brambles STALKING Q One of my permissions has a good population of muntjac but they are very hard to get on top of. The area has large patches of bramble that the deer seem to stay in most of the time. The height of the bramble and its density makes them very hard to see, even when using thermal spotters, and it’s not possible to get into the clumps without getting torn to bits. What could we do to try to improve things from a shooting point of view? A Muntjac are predominantly browsers rather than grazers and brambles are an important food source for them. Because they favour dense cover, the plants give shelter as well as providing food and cover. When bramble has taken over…

this troubadour is an experienced, and therefore diligent, father. Males and females share parenting duties, so it is a sensible precaution on the hen’s part that she chooses a doughty Tom Jones-like partner rather than an unreliable Justin Bieber. Once cock nightingales have partnered up, their song diminishes. The boys left on the shelf will continue to sing their solitary adolescent tune until July, when they return to Africa to learn a few more notes. Richard Negus The finer things Trinidad Coloniales RRP £26.99 cgarsltd.co.uk Slimmer, shorter cigars are not really my cup of tea. However, on occasion a quicker cigar is preferable to rushing a larger one. I recently tried this stick from the Trinidad factory and was pleasantly surprised. With a stronger smoke, it had leathery coffee notes…

The avian influenza outbreak in western France appears to have ended. An unprecedented epidemic of the most dangerous form of the disease swept through the region’s poultry units, with devastating effects on poultry farmers and on the supply of gamebird chicks and eggs for the UK market (News, 27 April and 4 May). But the latest figures show that a combination of warming weather, lack of migratory wildfowl and draconian measures by the French government have finally broken the epidemic’s grip on the important Pays de la Loire region. A single new case was recorded in Vendée and no new cases were recorded in Loire-Atlantique between 26 April and 3 May. An outbreak in Maine-et-Loire, which experts had feared would become a new epicentre for the disease, also seems to…

British Game Assurance (BGA) has launched a free option for any shoot wanting to try membership of its assurance scheme. Joining will allow shoots to advertise as being ‘associated with British Game Assurance’. This allows them to explore accreditation without the financial outlay or need for an audit. A move towards self-regulation through BGA has been heavily promoted by both shooting groups and the Government. BGA chief executive Liam Stokes said: “Defra has told us what we need to do; we need as many shoots as possible to register with BGA. We at BGA have had to think about how we can deliver this at a time when shoots are under enormous pressure. “We believe that broadening access to our associate scheme, and making it free to participate, is the…

The two helicopters take off almost simultaneously, leaving us in pristine mountain wilderness on the far side of the world. We’re a full day’s hike from civilisation in one of New Zealand’s most remote regions, drawn here to hunt for wild tahr. Our survival for the next six days will depend on our ability and nature’s whims. There are four of us in the hunting party: my Danish friend Henrik Pedersen, his boss, another hunter who goes by the name of Doctor Schou, and me. We quickly set up camp. It’s tiring work in the deep snow, but the scenery — white mountain peaks that slice razor-sharp into the sky — makes us forget our burning muscles in our eagerness to explore. As soon as our base is established, we…

In these days of thermal imaging and night sights, pigeon magnets and whirligigs, and when you can book a day’s shooting and confidently expect a bag of several hundreds of pheasants or partridges, it is probably more important than ever that those who shoot also go fishing. Not, I would venture, to a lake stocked to the brim with trout or a pond stuffed with carp, but to a proper river or stream, or the sea, and cast a line towards a wild fish. The Atlantic salmon — the king of fish — used to be called the ‘fish of a thousand casts’. I haven’t counted how many times “We worked out it had taken us 20 days of fishing to connect with a fish” I cast in a given…

MOST OF US WILL have to face it one day. After a lifetime with dogs, what do you do when you get to an age when you feel it’s unfair to have another puppy because it may well outlive you, but you desperately miss canine companionship, as well as the social side of working your dog? This rather sad line of thought was prompted by an email from a reader, Margaret, who told me she has had dogs all her life, including working spaniels and labradors, and has always enjoyed picking-up with them. Last year, she had to have her senior labrador, a 12-year-old bitch, put down because her back legs eventually gave up. However, she did still have a fit and strong seven-year-old black labrador. He had worked tirelessly…

OUR VERDICT Some might find it odd that a firearm would claim to be environmentally friendly, but the new Haenel Jaeger NXT claims to be exactly that; a sustainable rifle with three environmentally friendly credentials making up its design. It is certainly intriguing. First is the stock, which is made of a sustainable lightweight laminated wood for tough hunting trips in all weather conditions. Next is the use of bioplastics for the trigger-guard and magazine, which are made from tree resin, thus reducing the carbon footprint of the NXT further. Thirdly, an optimised barrel allows for nontoxic ammunition to be used, which is the way the shooting world is going. In terms of functionality, the Jaeger NXT utilises the popular straight-pull bolt system for fast, dependable and reliable cartridge operation…

Foxes eat more pheasant and partridge poults than all the other predators put together. You don’t always see what they kill and eat, but they are continually chipping away at them; now, when the hen birds are sitting, in a couple of months’ time when the poults go out, and at each and every opportunity they get for the rest of the year. If you are a part-time keeper, it is difficult to put in the hours unless you live on site, and you shouldn’t run a snare line if you are not there to check them early, before work. Lamping and using a thermal — or a night sight — becomes more difficult as the cover grows, as does sitting out with a rifle at dawn and dusk. While…

If I took a rather more tender farewell than usual of my wife it was because, as I told her, I did not know when I should return — if ever. For I had sworn by the fat little bellies of all the grinning idols I had ever known that I would destroy the one nesting crow on the shoot — and stay out until I had done so. Although this threat made me feel something of a ‘martyr brave’, I had, in the back of my mind, an idea that, if this unspeakable crow could not be brought to book during the 12 hours of daylight left to me, I would steal up to her under cover of darkness and blow her up at short range. That is, if…

HOLLAND & HOLLAND This paper and ink label comes from the case lid of a ‘Royal’ rook rifle. Like many gunmakers, Holland & Holland used the label to promote its achievements. This label was used from 1876 until 1883. It sports the Royal Warrant as well as a target facsimile of a group achieved with a Holland & Holland rook rifle. At this time, Holland & Holland was especially well respected as a maker of rifles. This was the first label to bear the name ‘Holland & Holland’, after founder Harris took in nephew Henry to form a partnership. Previous labels were styled ‘H Holland’…