Innholdsfortegnelse for 17-Aug-2022 i Shooting Times & Country

A successful grouse season could help protect struggling rural households from the worst effects of the cost-of-living crisis, according to Scottish Gamekeepers Association chairman Alex Hogg. The grouse shooting season opened last week and a steady shooting calendar is expected in most places. “In a stable year, grouse shooting brings over £30m to remote communities in a short window, helping a range of spin-off small businesses at a quiet time after the summer holidays,” said Mr Hogg. “The recent Scottish government-commissioned study indicated just how important that income and household wages can be in these remote areas.” The revenue boost from grouse shooting will be important not just because of the difficult wider economic picture, but also because many partridge and pheasant shoots will not be going ahead this year…

Ten months ago, when we set out on a house renovation, the idea of my shotguns living away from me never felt like any sort of hardship. In fact, I didn’t give it a second thought. Stored at work, they still felt within arm’s reach, but I hardly saw them. So much of my shooting, as it turns out, is through stolen moments when stars align, toddlers behave and my wife is feeling particularly kind-hearted. On these occasions, I steal away on the premise of “just popping out for an hour”, to lose a half a day in the wilds. I always know I’ll return to a wagging finger, but my love knows how lost I get in my sport. Without my guns to hand, running out the door within…

OUR VERDICT Almost two years ago, I was approached by the Editor of Shooting Times to write gun reviews. Those two years have seen the shooting industry face disruption and challenges not witnessed since the war years. There have been winners and losers in the gun trade, so I wanted to highlight what is, in my opinion, the standout gun of the past two years. Appealing to the masses with exceptional value for money and a product range catering for every conceivable taste, budget and sporting use, the Turkish manufacturer ATA Arms has disrupted the gun trade in a way not seen since AYA’s arrival on the UK scene in the late 1950s. The latest addition to the ATA SP range of over-and-under shotguns is the 20-bore Elegant Game —…

Soldier Palmer Red kites are common again. Once persecuted to the brink of extinction, these birds have enjoyed a tremendous resurgence across the country during the past 20 years, particularly where reintroduction projects have taken place. Where I live, it’s not uncommon to see 15 birds in the air at once, cruising behind silage mowers or watching for the next spread of slurry to be flung. It’s no more than half an hour’s drive to an official red kite feeding station, where more than 100 kites can be seen diving for scraps of meat at lunchtime. It’s an extraordinary spectacle and when the birds were still a novelty here, I sometimes took visiting friends for a look. There’s something extraordinarily graceful about that swoop and dive, and the clattering din…

I pay my gamekeeper every other Friday night in the tap room of the Drum and Monkey. He is to be found, with monotonous regularity, studying his hand of dominoes in a never-ending game of five and threes. Outside in the shed, which stands on one side of the inn yard, he tidily stacks his working tools; obviously his barrow, shovel and broom are clearly stamped with the name of the county council. A pint of old and mild settles my fortnightly account and in return the old boy gives a full report of any activity that may have occurred on my 200-acre rough shoot that borders his stretch of the highway. It intrigues me how he manages to do a first-class job on his road, for it is always…

Across 5 Hunting excessively but missing the runway (12)8 Where lumberjacks carry their air rifle? (5)9 Gunmaker Gamba sees one rat running wild (6)10 Are they waiting to hatch, possibly all in onebasket? (4)11 The goose seems dull-coloured when we trailbehind (7)13 Weekend game-shooting breaks? (7)15 What gundogs clock up in scurries, on the hour (4)16 Those accommodating foxes get their hearts broken (6)18 Assemble a hide — you’ve been framed (3,2) 19 The emotionally stirring goal of many a shooter? (6,6) Down 1 Show a real mean streak as regards sporting statistics (8)2 Heading to that man with a stock system (4)3 The coot’s cousins’ hormones are disrupted (8)4 Get your message acrossin the field, without all the verbals (6)6 Passes judgement on the dos and don’ts of clayshooting…

NEWS Email your stories / shootingtimes@futurenet.com An end to close seasons for stags and bucks, the use of night-vision scopes to cull deer and compulsory testing for deer managers are all under consideration in a major overhaul of how England’s booming deer population is managed. The proposals are included in a consultation launched by Defra and the Forestry Commission. Explaining the need to update the regulation of deer management in England, Ian Tubby, head of policy and advice at the Forestry Commission, said: “In England, due to several factors including land-use changes and a lack of natural predators, deer density and distribution have dramatically increased over the last century, and at such levels pose a significant risk to our woodlands, other animals that rely on this environment, and deer themselves.”…

At the heart of it, rough shooting is about getting out there and finding your own sport. Often that means wild birds — and you often end up in wild places. You could be shooting over spaniels or you could be shooting over pointers, or even a few old labradors and a terrier. While the concept itself is simple, the appeal is delightfully hard to pin down. For me, it’s about understanding your quarry and even thinking like your quarry. To shoot well on a rough day, you need good fieldcraft, so you need to be able to read ground and understand where birds might flush from, and you need good knowledge of birds themselves. Was that a snipe or a jack snipe? Is that duck too high? What even…

To see a fox nowadays is a common occurrence, as the species has adapted equally to life in town as well as country. However, in the first seven decades of the 20th century, the sighting of a fox in many districts of the eastern counties was almost cause for hysteria. Despite carrying a gun by day and night for much of his adult life, Elijah James had never shot a fox, his few sightings being limited to fleeting nocturnal meetings as both hunters went furtively about their business. Lijah always considered himself unlucky not to have shot a fox in the early 1940s. He had been completing some work at Lilac Farm, rounding up sugar beet stored in a hale (clamp) near Chandler’s Lane. As always, Lijah had his double-barrelled…

Having just returned from the Game Fair, where my Pugs and Drummers stand continues to go from strength to strength, it’s clear to me that few outside of the rabbiting bubble realise precisely how serious the undertone of the title really is. The word ‘pug’ was slang for ferret and ‘drummer’ the rabbit. This was concocted at a time when ferreting was frowned upon by the landed gentry. Those who practised ferreting were persona non grata and permission to work the land was seldom granted. The local hostelries were full of men and women talking about their sorties with their pugs after the drummers — and the police, watchers and keepers had little idea what they were talking about. We must not forget that people lost their lives, freedom and…

Having covered the topic of oyster mushrooms in my previous missive, (Foraging, 20 July), bracket fungi seemed an obvious sequel. For the sake of this article, I define ‘bracket’ fungi as being any fungal fruiting body that grows on trees and that is not any sort of mushroom. Diminishingly few of these are edible, but as far as I know, none are seriously poisonous. You are likely to be safe, apart from eating something that is unpleasant in flavour, or so tough that you would fare better eating the tree on which it grows. I will start with a fungus that is barely edible and work up to the best. The dryad’s saddle, Polyporus squamosus, is a magnificent and very common bracket that grows on a number of broadleaved trees,…

The history of keepering WISDOM AND TRADITIONS GATHERED OVER A LIFE AT THE COAL FACE, THIS WEEK WITH LINDSAY WADDELL We are pretty good at frowning on others regarding their sporting practices and culinary habits, but what exactly were we doing on this island of ours not that long ago? These things are always set in their time and we must remember that it was a different time, if not place, and that is the crux of the matter when it comes to criticising others. We are rather better off now than our ancestors were and, more to the point, rather better off than many of those we now criticise. Nevertheless, it must be said that even in many cases today, people do not have to do what they are…

I started with a hammergun. It was a long time ago, of course, and boys then were not considered responsible enough to muck about with guns that only had an ‘off/on’ switch style of safety catch. No, indeed. We sat in a pigeon hide with the gun pointing out at a sensible angle — very often it was not even shut at this stage — and only when an identified and shootable quarry hove into view would the order be given to snap the gun shut and cock the hammers. Or, in my case, hammer because I began with a single-barrelled gun. “A gentleman should not need two shots to kill his dinner,” I was told. Since I was financing my own cartridges with car washing, apple picking and straw…

A grouse shooting estate is playing host to the first brood of osprey chicks hatched in Yorkshire in living memory. Gamekeepers at Bolton Castle first noticed the birds visiting the estate three years ago and were keen to see them nest. In order to encourage the birds, ponds were stocked with trout and nesting platforms were constructed. The estate team were excited to see evidence that the birds were sitting on eggs early this summer, and were delighted when two chicks were spotted peeking out of the nest. Tom Orde-Powlett, whose family owns the estate, said: “I feel incredibly lucky as well. There are other people who have been working with ospreys, trying to get them to nest, and who are probably more deserving. The important thing is they are…

NEWS Countryfile, Springwatch and even The Archers have been slammed by rural audiences for their unbalanced portrayal of life in the countryside. A survey conducted by the Countryside Alliance found that the overwhelming majority of the rural population do not have faith in the BBC’s coverage of rural issues. Springwatch and Autumnwatch were among the least well-regarded programmes, with more than 90% of respondents saying that they did not properly represent rural issues. BBC news was also heavily criticised, with 92% of those completing the survey expressing their dissatisfaction with the reporting of rural issues. The flagship rural affairs programme Countryfile did little better, with 89% of viewers criticising its coverage of country life. The best-performing BBC show was Farming Today, which is broadcast on Radio 4 during the less-than-prime-time…

I had the perfect day planned — decoying woodpigeons over wheat during the day and fishing for trout in the evening on one of the most famous Test beats. I planned it months ahead and though I was expecting a perfect southern summer’s day, it was bad luck that it happened to coincide with a period of high temperatures. It was hot, sultry and extremely bright — a real dog day of summer. Almighty task Such days are traditionally connected with heat, drought, lethargy and, the worst of it all, bad luck. As I was walking out of the door, weighed down with kit, Mrs Lawson politely reminded me that she was expecting some game for her surf-and-turf-themed church barbecue at the end of the month. I told her: “I…

When I was a student, I believed bowhunting was bad, because someone in a position of authority told me that “bowhunting is bad”. Their reasoning was that an arrow was inhumane in comparison with a bullet and that bowhunting would encourage poaching. However, over the years, I have seen plenty of information contrary to that belief and my own opinion has evolved. So much so that I am saving up for my own bow and I’m planning to sit the International Bowhunter Education Program course. I have no doubt that plenty of Shooting Times readers will think that the idea of bowhunting is absurd, but there is also no doubt that plenty of people in your nearest city will have similar views on deerstalking. As a species, we have been…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD Hurry now, the season is nearly over. Samphire has a taste similar to young asparagus and its season runs from June to late August. Marsh samphire is found in many UK coastal regions, but the hotbed for this succulent, salt-tolerant plant is in the marshy shallows of Burnham and Brancaster in North Norfolk. The word samphire is a corruption of St Peter, the patron saint of fishermen, highlighting the reverence in which it was held by coastal communities, adding greens to the fish-centric diets of those who made a living from the sea. Pickled samphire was an iron-rich taste of home for seafarers on long voyages. Chefs in high-class restaurants serve it in all manner of ways. True Norfolk dwellers, however, say the only way is…