Innholdsfortegnelse for 21-Sep-2022 i Shooting Times & Country

I must confess that last week, while watching Clare Balding on the box, as crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace, I was a bit put out. There was plenty of mention of HM The Queen’s love of horses and a fair bit on her love of dogs, but there was also something missing. “She had a great connection,” Ms Balding said in a number of different ways, on a few different occasions, “with country people.” What she meant, of course, was that our Queen was mad keen on fieldsports. In last week’s issue, Richard Negus wrote that if you were invited to Balmoral for the grouse, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh would issue the invitation, whereas if you were invited stalking, The Queen herself would be in touch. I wondered, as…

Cumbria Constabulary has said it will not accept new firearm and shotgun certificate applications. The force is the latest to step back from fulfilling its duties under the Firearms Act 1968 and its decision was met with severe criticism from BASC. Martin Parker, BASC’s head of firearms, said: “Cumbria’s public announcement is symptomatic of the failings being seen in firearms licensing departments across England and Wales. Again and again, we are seeing grant applications being sidelined and new entrants to shooting are being unfairly blocked from participating through no fault of their own.” Mr Parker added: “We are further aware that in Cumbria, delays in renewal applications are reaching breaking point, with Section 7 temporary permits being heavily relied on.” Cumbria Constabulary provided Shooting Times with a statement, which said:…

Many years ago, I was at a talk given by Robert MacFarlane. Robert is co-owner of the MacFarlane game farms in the US and is credited with introducing the Michigan blueback pheasant to the UK and Europe. The talk covered the history of the MacFarlane farms and how stock was hatched, reared and overwintered in the US, plus the differences in management techniques between the US systems and those in the UK, and the importance of biosecurity. When Robert sent his staff on a course on gamebird health, they came back and told him that the biggest threat to the biosecurity of their farms was him. He travelled between sites and he oversaw the overwintering of the stock, egg production, hatching, rearing and moving of birds to the ranches and…

Game cookeryThe Field Kitchen: Pigeon brunch To shoot is to be part of a global sporting community, but the way that we do things over here differs a fair bit from how people do things abroad. One thing that I’ve noted recently is that in other countries, there’s a much stronger tradition of cooking in the field. In Africa, hunters like to cook antelope liver for breakfast after a successful stalk, and in the US they often cook duck in the field. Over here, field cooking is less common, which is a shame, and I reckon we all ought to give it a go. Shakshuka, which originates in North Africa, is a favourite dish of mine. It’s simple and quick to make. Although traditionally a smoky tomato, pepper-based dish of…

Gundogs THE BEST PICKERS-UP aren’t simply good dog handlers, they need to know a fair bit about shooting and farming, too, while if they’re a good naturalist, so much the better. This was the firm opinion of a retired gamekeeper, one of the best dog handlers I’ve ever met. He was right, for there’s far more to picking-up than simply sending your dog out to retrieve birds. A detailed knowledge of shooting would, you might think, be essential, but there are a lot of people who come into the sport through dogs rather than shooting. As a result, they know little about guns and shot sizes, or even the basic etiquette of a shooting day. They don’t appreciate the effective range of a shotgun, while some struggle to tell a…

While pest control is the main practical reason for most airgun shooters heading out into the field, I make no secret of the fact that I get a lot of pleasure from my shooting. I enjoy being out in the countryside and watching wildlife; I enjoy helping farmers and foresters to keep pests in check; and I particularly enjoy the reward of tasty free-range meat when targeting edible quarry. The simple fact is that, for many, many reasons, shooting is an incredibly fulfilling pastime. So I was frustrated when a recent pigeon decoying trip was scuppered by a forecast of heavy rain and violent thunderstorms. As much as I relish my shooting, the thought of being out on the open fields with rain lashing down and lightning bolts flashing around…

The experts THE ULTIMATE SHOOTING QUIZ TEAM 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 Shropshire gamekeeper, keen wildfowler and amateur naturalist 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…

NEWS CHECK Shoot-hut maintenance. Make sure your shoot hut is ready for the winter. Unblock gutters, fix slipped slates (if you are competent and equipped), check that windows and doors close properly and that locks and seals are working. Lag pipes and outside taps well ahead of the first frosts and if you have a heating system, give it a good run to check it will fire up when needed. DOG-IN Dog-in. Most birds will now be strong enough to be carefully dogged-in. The careful use of dogs to bring birds back towards their pens and to steer them away from boundaries is a time-consuming but important task, especially if you have neighbours who enjoy the odd shoot day at your expense. Done well, dogging-in can be a great opportunity…

The low number of partridges has inflated their prices both in-feather and processed, leading some dealers to conclude they will offer cash for high-quality shot game later in the season. As ever, the pressure will be on to produce the high-quality birds for which a processor might pay. The long-range forecasts are for a warm autumn, and if that turns out to be correct, then everyone must pay attention to proper chilling. “The pressure will be on to produce high-quality birds” This turns the spotlight back to standards. Chillers are one of the most frequent areas of non-compliance on a BGA audit, usually highlighting some easy wins on-shoot that make a huge difference to the quality (and often the legality) of the game handling. The percentage of ‘green’, unusable birds…

Travel to trade events has been off the menu for several years, but things are getting back to normal and it was a great surprise to receive an invitation from the optics brand Swarovski to attend a Hunting Summit with the theme of ‘Communicating the passion of hunting’ over a weekend in the Apennine Mountains of Italy. The other participants had varied backgrounds. A few, like myself, were professional wildlife managers, a small number was made up of the sporting press and the remaining majority were individuals who are passionate about hunting in their recreational time. Of course, there was the usual selection of Swarovski binoculars, riflescopes and spotting scopes, including a soon-to-be released compact spotting scope product launch, but the summit was heavily workshop focused, rather than being a…

I’ll lay my cards on the table. I’m a wildfowler and the concept of shooting driven duck sits uncomfortably with me. We must be able to defend all of what we do on the grounds of sporting ethics, welfare and sustainability, and if any branch of shooting doesn’t meet with the exacting standards we set ourselves, then perhaps we should consider some pruning. I’m also a rough shooter, so you may assume that I harbour the same reservations about driven pheasants or partridges as I do about driven duck. But you’d be wrong. Although I haven’t shot a driven day for years, I do attend a number of such days each season when pheasants, partridges as well as ducks make up the bag. I’m entirely supportive of driven shooting when…

TWO PART SERIES 2 of 2 WAS IT AN unmitigated disaster? Well, no. It wasn’t. In fact, from a social perspective I would say that it was rather successful. Met some nice people. Compared notes. Looked at guns. Watched some stylish shooting. Had a lot of fun. Ballistically? Could do better, as Nanny would say, but we’ll come to that in due course. I told you that I had entered the British .410 Championships as part of my training for the British side-by-side event, so we’ll begin at the West Midlands Shooting Ground in Shropshire with a handy little Lincoln over-and-under and cartridges to match. As an unassociated shooter I was assigned a squad, whom I found loitering outside the clubhouse. We were a mixed group, ranging in age from…

Northern stalker Late August marks the end of the rut in the roe deer management calendar. Wounds and egos have started to heal, albeit in private. It is always shocking how fast roebucks disappear for weeks right after the rut. Weeks of gladiatorial battles and sexual conquests have taken a heavy toll on their bodies. These testosterone junkies must now slow down and go cold turkey for a few weeks. The hot weather has made this year’s rut memorable, although the proverbial cull bag does leave much to be desired. For one of my final outings, possibly my last in fact, I opted for a lowland stalk on the outskirts of Newcastle — I’d been tempted by a forestry block elsewhere, but the midges were out and, in my book,…

A pal of mine, in anticipation of a forthcoming visit from the head of the Greek shooting organisation KOMATH, decided it would be good to entertain his guest with a dinner of game. There are no grouse in Greece, so it was thought that the king of gamebirds would be a special treat and two brace were ordered from his upmarket local butcher. The latter wasn’t confident that he would be able to source any grouse, which is understandable as they’re not a bird that’s shot in the area where my friend lives, but after a couple of days, he called to say that he had managed to get a brace. My friend’s wife collected them that day, though she was somewhat taken back to be charged £32 for two…

September seems to have been all about roe for our measuring service. While we haven’t had huge numbers of heads pass through our hands, there have been some seriously impressive, and indeed significant, heads submitted. Let’s start with R Aitken’s silver-medal buck. A lovely example of the species in its own right, but of more importance is that this is the first medal roebuck we have measured that comes from Derbyshire. Evidently our smallest native deer are gradually populating the county, and clearly doing quite well when they get there. Moving on, I’m sure the two platinum-medal bucks from Aberdeenshire caught your eye as much as they did mine. I had the pleasure of chatting with A Johnstone, who let me know that this was the biggest roebuck he has…

A reader was intrigued by my brief mention (Sharpshooter, 31 August) of a massive US study comparing the performance of lead and steel shotgun ammunition on live mourning doves. He was surprised that I said the study had found no increase in wounding with steel. Well, I was quoting the researchers, whose findings were based on observations in the field. The official title of the study was ‘A comparison of lead and steel shot loads for harvesting mourning doves’. It was commissioned by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and cost half a million dollars. You could buy a mountain of ballistic gel for that, but why settle for modelling when you can have the real deal? The researchers measured the results on real birds under typical hunting conditions. The…

GWCT’s 2022 Grand Grouse Draw opens The GWCT’s 2022 Grand Grouse Draw is now open. One lucky winner will enjoy a day’s driven grouse shooting for eight Guns at the Burncastle Estate in the stunning Lammermuir Hills, plus a night’s accommodation for 16 guests. The draw closes on 24 January 2023 and tickets are £40 each, with proceeds supporting the GWCT’s scientific research programmes for game and wildlife conservation. Buy your tickets now at gwct.org.uk Thousands attend Welsh Game Fair More than 10,000 people attended the GWCT Welsh Game Fair at Vaynol Hall in Gwynedd on 9-11 September. Visitors enjoyed fishing, clay shooting, gundogs, game cookery, falconry, horses and hounds, and rural crafts. There were also displays, live debates, shopping at hundreds of trade stands and family entertainment. The event…

I walked down the western ride of Flea Barn wood and waited before a hedge we laid last winter. Behind me hung berry-flushed hawthorn, fissured oaks and shining cherry. Crowing cock pheasants and hissing blue tits added their soundtrack. I was soon joined by a throng of more than 80. We were at the halfway point of a Flea Barn tour as the hosts of the GWCT East Anglian Grey Partridge Walk. The assembled array of farmers, keepers and practical conservationists treated us with either well-feigned patience or genuine interest, listening to Ed Nesling, Richard Gould and me tell the story of this place and its wildlife. “Let’s see the strength in our similarities and be a little blind to our differences” My phone buzzed in my pocket. I slid…

Let me take you to a favourite place: a narrow oak plank that spans a creek on the River Stour estuary. Four times a day — twice incoming, twice outgoing — the tide scours the chestnut posts on which it is nailed. A wildfowlers’ summer working party secured it here 30 years ago. It marks for me the point at which arable land becomes the wilds of the marshes. This is likely to be the footbridge’s last season. The inexorable action of the murky brine has rotted the posts and rusted the nails. But this morning it served me well enough. As a base on which to perch while preparing a brace of early-season mallard, it is both a chopping board and a seat from which to watch feathers drift…

Offering world-class sport, Bettws Hall is among Britain’s most prestigious estates. Founded in 1988, when owners Gwyn and Ann Evans decided to diversify from beef and sheep farming, the shooting and game rearing business has grown from humble beginnings. The hatchery has gone from setting 500 eggs a week in an old manual turkey incubator to in excess of 750,000 today. The premise of ‘setting’ is simple — creating an appropriate environment for incubation to begin — but Bettws Hall has taken the process to the next level in the UK’s most modern game farm facility. As a result of 30 years of continued investment, the state-of-the-art hatchery now produces in excess of 1.5 million poults a year over 60 different sites around Mid-Wales and Shropshire, giving them total traceability…

The Pulsar Merger XP50 LRF is the first of its kind. While the previous model (the Pulsar Accolade 2) was close, the Merger is the ultimate in thermal binoculars.They incorporate the most advanced features, with superior optics. The first thing that strikes you is the clarity. The overall ergonomics are outstanding. Although the number of buttons has increased from four to six, they are situated so that they can be operated with ease. The best feature by far is the battery system. It is powered by an internal battery and a removable secondary battery. Both can be charged with a USB-C port. It is good for 10 hours of field time, but one can easily plug in a standard power pack to extend that for days. You can also charge…

We are back in the fallow deer season and I have been looking to take some young bucks to add to the larder. However, due to an extremely busy season with events and weddings, I haven’t been able to head out at all. Luckily, I have some frozen haunches and loins from the back-end of last season. This is perfect timing; I can use the last of my vacuum-packed stock before replenishing it in the coming weeks. We’ve needed a lot of venison for the backlog of weddings and events this year and we were extremely busy last year harvesting enough to see us through. I am fortunate to have a close group of friends who all have all helped out this summer when needed. We have a fully functioning…