Innholdsfortegnelse for 12-Oct-2022 i Shooting Times & Country

Firearms law in Scotland may be set to change. The Scottish Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament has begun an evidence-gathering exercise looking at how well firearms law is working north of the border. The exercise follows a shooting on the Isle of Skye in which one person was killed and another three were harmed. Firearms law is a ‘reserved matter’, meaning that the Scottish Parliament cannot change the law on it and that new legislation or changes to the existing law must be made at Westminster. However, in the past, the UK Parliament has given special authority to the Scottish Parliament to introduce its own restrictions; this led to the introduction of mandatory air rifle licensing in 2016. The committee has asked for evidence on the adequacy of firearms…

LETTER OF THE WEEK A welcome return First, may I congratulate Shooting Times on its 140th anniversary. It is an outstanding achievement and I hope the magazine continues to provide exceptional content for many years to come. I would like to echo the sentiments of Sir Ian Botham, in that my son and young grandson read the magazine most weeks. I hope they will have plenty of sport to enjoy in their lifetime. This brings me to my point about the future of shooting. Having read Richard Negus’s article on rough shooting (Is this the return of the wandering Gun?, 5 October), I wholeheartedly agree with his views. While few of us may be lucky enough to afford (or be invited to) prestigious shoot days, the vast majority of Guns…

As we stood on the dock watching the flooding tide ease gently over the lower mudflats, the shapes of the Isle of Grain industrial area were mirrored in the waters. It was not quite oily calm, but the light northerly breeze hardly ruffled the surface. Meanwhile, the sun shone brightly from a blue sky with just a few bubbly cumulus clouds. Colonel Hawker’s “butterfly weather” came to mind as I contemplated our chances of a shot or two, concluding that an empty gamebag and clean barrels were on the cards. Busying ourselves with sorting our kit and carting it off down the old marsh road to the boat on its mud mooring, my fowling partner Robin Egerton and I kept peering out across the flats, hoping to spot a duck…

As the nights draw in and the evenings lengthen, many of us will find ourselves operating under cover of darkness. Whether you’re chasing Charlie, checking up on livestock or bagging a brace of bunnies for the pot, a good light is a vital piece of kit as we head into winter, so I was delighted to get a chance to put a handful of the best torches for the jobs described through their paces this month. 1 Streamlight Wedge RRP: £125 streamlightpro.com 7/10 This is a neat little unit from a well-known manufacturer that makes some of the best lights around. Extremely compact and weighing in at just 90g, the Wedge fits easily and unobtrusively into a pocket. The flattened, slimline design is tactile and sits nicely in the hand,…

OUR VERDICT When I first saw a picture of the Invictus, I must admit I was worried. No gunmaker has been brave enough to make a production gun with deep relief style engraving since the Beretta Gold Pigeon II, one of the few ‘Marmite guns’ that Beretta ever produced, so this was a bold move. In my hands, however, it is a world apart from the photos. A still image does not give the depth of the engraving the justice that it deserves. This is a 12-bore over-and-under, fitted with 32in chrome-lined, multichoke barrels, that weighs in at a ‘modern’ 8lb 3oz (30in barrels are available). The barrels feature a 10mm to 8mm tapered rib, which has a front and mid bead and a small line cut the full length…

The autumnal chill enveloped me as I walked to the moor. Dotty and Tawny piaffed towards the lush green grass. In the distance, we could see the scuts of the bothersome bunnies bobbing about without a care in the world. It was a wise move to have the dogs on a lead, preserving not only their energy but, more importantly, my sanity until we reached the field I wanted to work. This is an important page in my rabbiting calendar. A time of year when I have no option other than to try out my young ferrets, tweak my dogs’ fitness and blow away any internal cobwebs. I had everything that I could possibly need close to hand: two keen dogs, two boxes containing four ferrets, a harness full of…

Vintage TimesCELEBRATING OUR BEST WRITERS It doesn’t always happen, but when I am up in Sutherland I expect the unexpected. I went up during the last 10 days of September to try various waters for sea trout, with a probable salmon. I had a pleasant time drifting Loch Naver trying dap and wet fly, not unsuccessfully, for sea trout. But after my Altnaharra fishing, I went over to try my luck on Loch Brora. It proved a difficult water and by Friday evening, I was feeling that I ought to give it a break. I had a gumboil giving me trouble anyway, and I thought I might just as well have a day off the loch. We were sitting in the hotel dining room at breakfast when Rob Wilson looked…

NEWS Gamekeepers and land managers have expressed bafflement after RSPB Scotland blamed wet spring weather for the catastrophic decline in capercaillie numbers. The claim follows the publication of the results of the organisation’s latest capercaillie survey, which found that just 542 of the birds remain in the wild in Scotland. This year’s survey is the sixth national count of the birds, with counts having taken place every six years for nearly four decades. The survey team searched for feathers, droppings and the birds themselves in Badenoch and Strathspey, Easter Ross, Morayshire, Nairnshire, Deeside and Perthshire. The survey adds to the already large body of evidence that capercaillie are in serious decline with almost three quarters of the population having disappeared since the 2003/2004 survey. RSPB Scotland blamed the declines on…

Gamekeepers and gundog trainers have taken their dogs to Edinburgh to try to persuade MSPs to change a proposed law. The representatives from Scotland’s regional moorland groups, along with BASC Scotland and the Kennel Club, took a motley crew of labradors and spaniels to Holyrood to explain how the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill would lead to a ban on rough shooting and field trialling. The proposed legislation would ban the use of more than two dogs to flush rabbits from cover. The keepers pointed out that because rough shooting and field trialling involve the use of larger numbers of dogs, they would become illegal under the bill. The dogs were introduced to MSPs at a reception, where a new film was screened and the politicians were given the chance…

It was a fine, fresh morning when Simon Philips and his sons, Ben and Ollie, met their friends in the village for a day on the moor. Although it was pleasant in the shelter of their home, I had a feeling, looking at the movement on the trees in the churchyard, that we were in for a challenging day once we hit the heights of Claybogs, the beat we were to walk. My thoughts were realised once we reached the track car park at around 1,800ft, where, given the clarity of the atmosphere, we could see for miles out to the east coast and well over into the peaks of the South Lakes. It was a great day to be in nature, but with the brisk north wind and distinctly…

People often ask me when a young person might reasonably be introduced to the proper use of guns and my answer is that it depends on the kid; and on the kid’s parents; and on the kid’s household up to and including the budgie and the family cat. I know some fantastically concerned parents who took every precaution they could conceive of to protect their little one from the horrors of firearms and almost the first words their offspring uttered were, “Pee-ow! Pee-ow!” And if you think that guns might not be attractively packaged for the young in these enlightened and sensitivity-aware days, then you should check out the Super Soaker 600 water pistol or immerse yourself in the world of Nerf. One thing that I have long felt is…

Across 4 Leave the car at Weston’s fair venue (4)6 One type of fore-end that a dam-building rodent can follow (10)8 Gunfire from Belgium’s capital goes the distance (6)9 A feeding container none of us want to kick! (6)10 Waders we wear might lead to a cold (5)11 Shooters jump on one leg at the firearms stockist! (3,4)14 Giving game meat some added flavour is a risky habit (7)16 Put it underground, say, the fruity bird treat (5) 19 The stoat’s winter coat at the emergency room belongs to me (6)21 Rifle handlers are real belters! (6)22 Gun parts taken from former farm vehicles (10)23 Writers in gamebird enclosures (4) Down 1 Sam Healy is confused about the terrier (8)2 A national terrier in the air is hairy (5)3 Safe…

The peak of the stag season has seen big beasts taken, but wild weather has made things tricky for some stalkers. A succession of low-pressure systems rolling in across the Atlantic have brought rain and gale-force winds to the UK, making for difficult shooting conditions. The remnants of Hurricane Ian, which battered the US Atlantic coast, made landfall in the UK just as the red rut was reaching its peak. Deerstalker Lachlan Scolt was out in pursuit of a stag on his ground in Galloway when the wind and rain arrived. He said: “It certainly made the day interesting. The weather meant the deer were deep in the trees, which never makes the job any easier, but at least you know where your scent is going and the wind makes…

NEWS In order to keep readers up to date with the rapidly changing picture on avian influenza in the UK, Shooting Times will publish a weekly update, beginning this issue. The bird flu outbreak, which began in October 2021, is continuing, with significant numbers of new cases in late September and early October this year. This is an extremely concerning situation with serious implications for shooting. Most new cases are clustered in two areas. When an area has a large number of cases, a regional Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (AIPZ) is declared. At the time of going to press, a regional AIPZ is in force for the whole of Suffolk and Norfolk and parts of Essex ,and a second regional AIPZ is in place for the whole of the counties…

There are many different factors that contribute to making an estate what it is. Estates are unique businesses, each with its own place in a community, its own objectives and landscape to oversee. There are few business types in this country that can offer such breadth of opportunity to the community in which they are based: office space, employment, leisure activities, spin-off ventures and long-term outlooks. A well-run estate business can have far-reaching impact and drive positivity. At the heart of an estate, though, no matter how big or small the business, are the people. Estates are often the lifeblood of the local community and bastions of homegrown trades and traditions. Modern estates must be staunch defenders of these traditions while simultaneously embracing progress. Estates are great enablers, offering not…

Solitude is defined as ‘the state of being alone’, and the word doesn’t exactly have desirable connotations — and why should it? The COVID-19 pandemic has subjected us to more ‘alone time’ than any person would wish to endure. So why, when we can be with others, do those who participate in fieldsports still relish the time to be alone? I’m not referring to those who only partake in driven days — it is arguably the company and camaraderie that create much of the enjoyment of driven shooting — but rather those people whose fieldsports are predominantly a solitary experience, such as the deerstalker, the fisherman and the wildfowler. There’s a lot of good things that can be said for being busy, and for most of us the summer months…

A river runs through the town below my house. Back in the 1970s, huge numbers of salmon would run upstream, and the water would lead them up between the narrow streets. It must have been strange for these fish, which had grown fat and limber in the impossible depths of the North Atlantic off the coast of Greenland. They would not only have had to contend with a shift from saltwater to fresh, but also a shift from the deep, silent sea to a shallow rumble of rocks and bridges, all lit up with electric lights. During periods of low water, these salmon were held in a pool below the pub. It became a game for patrons to pour outdoors on summer evenings to look for fish. The local fishmonger…

I cannot say for certain whether collecting wild oysters is foraging or hunting, but the simple fact that they do not run away, fly away or even swim away seems, for all practical purposes, to place them firmly in the foraging category. Still, they require a certain amount of skill and luck to find, and a good knowledge of the sometimes dangerous places in which they can be found. The native oyster, Ostrea edulis, is in season from 1 September to 30 April. I fancy it is always a mistake to call yourself edulis; it is just asking for trouble. For the native oyster, however, trouble came in battalions. Once a common food, famously one that the poor could afford, it is now a rarity. Overfishing, pollution by agricultural run-off…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD Arthur Ransome is one of our nation’s favourite authors, writing adventurous tales of derring-do and outdoor hardiness. His tale We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea was published this week in 1937. Although most readily associated with Lakeland, Ransome based this and three other books in the wilderness of the Broads after the writer moved from the north to Suffolk in 1935. The Ransome name is an important one in East Anglia. Robert Ransome, a direct forebear of Arthur, was an agricultural engineer of note. He founded a company, based in Ipswich, that was to become the most important manufacturer of farming machinery of the 19th and 20th centuries. The company produced the first commercially available lawnmower powered by a petrol engine and exported its threshing…