Innholdsfortegnelse for 9-Nov-2022 i Shooting Times & Country

Members of a shooting party have been injured in a helicopter crash in North Wales. Shooting Times understands that the party were leaving after shooting on an estate near Ruthin when the accident occurred. Media reports indicate that racehorse owner Dai Walters and trainer Sam Thomas were among those aboard the aircraft when it came down. Remarkably, none of those on board suffered life-changing or threatening injuries. A Welsh Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We were called shortly before 17.30 last night, Tuesday, 1 November, to reports of a helicopter crash in woodland near Llanelidan, Ruthin. “We sent a paramedic in a rapid response car and three emergency ambulances to the scene, where crews were also supported by emergency medical retrieval and transfer service colleagues and a duty operations manager. Two…

The Gamekeepers’ Welfare Trust (GWT) has used All Souls Day to launch its Memory Tree. The Memory Tree is an online space to allow friends and family to preserve the memory of gamekeepers, stalkers and gillies who have died. Gamekeepers do not have a national memorial anywhere in the UK to give a focal point for the collective mourning of the community when a member dies, and so the Memory Tree will serve that purpose. Collective memorials to the dead extend back at least 4,000 years, with Syria’s white tower the oldest proven example, and almost all towns and villages in the UK feature a war memorial to act as a focus of remembrance. The GWT’s chief executive Helen Benson said: “The Memory Tree is an important part of the…

Duck flighting When duck approach Little Oakley and District Wildfowlers Association’s (LODWA) 50 acres of meadowland and lagoons, they come from all directions. It’s late October and as daylight slips away, I can hear wigeon calling overhead; a wedge of mallard is silhouetted against the glow of Harwich Harbour to my front, looking likely to pitch into the shallow waters; and somewhere to my right a single teal has landed unseen and is piping a thin whistle. Canadas are calling from the open water in the east, and behind me I can hear more teal inbound. Sitting alone in a potato box wouldn’t be most people’s preferred location on a Saturday evening. I associate them with a faint odour of rotted spuds. But for the 100 members of LODWA, it’s…

I often find that shooting in light drizzle can be quite refreshing. So, not one to be put off by the inclement conditions forecast, my good friend Robert Fretwell and I organised a last-minute day on a new shoot for our team of nine Guns. There is certainly something very special about visiting a new part of the country and shooting at an estate for the first time. For me and many of the others shooting, this would be our first day at the Corwen shoot in North Wales. Wales, alongside parts of Devon and Yorkshire, is famed for its topography. Having shot extensively in this part of the country, I can tell you it’s pretty much perfect for presenting high and fast driven birds. It’s the start of October,…

In the good old days of black powder muzzle-loaders, those who wanted to shoot simply walked-up, mainly over pointers. Large kennels were kept on estates and many a mile was walked for the bag. Any thought of standing at a peg for driven pheasants was still a few years off and those who have been near a muzzle-loader when it has been discharged will be aware that, if there were nine Guns in line, after a few shots you would not have been able to see a pheasant if it flew over you for the smoke. Muzzle-loaders were simply too slow to reload for driven shooting. It was not until the advent of the breechloader that Guns realised they could make bigger bags by simply standing and having the game…

For the past two years it has been Covid that has had its impact on shooting and trialling: this season it’s an equally serious virus that also has its origins in Asia: avian influenza. As I write this, I have yet to hear of shoots or trials being cancelled because of bird flu, but I have just received a press release from the Kennel Club (KC) detailing the precautions that have to be taken by handlers planning to run their dogs in trials. Maintaining biosecurity is vital and, according to the KC, this means scrupulous cleaning of boots, cars, equipment and even dogs must be undertaken before and after attending any trial. This presumably means that if you turn up at a trial in your unwashed pick-up truck you might…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD Today’s TV weather-forecasters delight in using the floweriest of English with which they litter their meteorological-inspired guesswork. However, using esoteric language to describe whether it rains or shines is no modern phenomenon. Old English is filled with words and phrases to describe the weather, most of which have now sadly fallen into disuse. For example, in 18th-century south-east England, an overcast sky was described as being ‘bengy’, a word thought to be derived from the word ‘binge’ — what it feels like to have a hangover. In the 19th century a ‘gleamy’ day was intermittently sunny, and ‘foxy’ weather was misleadingly bright. ‘Hunch’ weather meant a day of drizzle, presumably named after the body shape employed to keep out the leaks. The king of all onomatopoeic…

NEWS An England-wide housing order has been put in place, forcing all birdkeepers to house poultry and captive birds indoors and prohibiting the release of any gamebirds. The order has come as the avian influenza outbreak continues to worsen. East Anglia remains by far the most severely affected region; however, over the past seven days multiple new outbreaks have been detected in flocks of birds across the country. There are now control zones in place from the Orkney Islands in the north to Plymouth in the south, and from the Isle of Lewis in the west to Lowestoft in the east. Announcing the introduction of the housing order, the UK’s chief vet officer Christine Middlemiss said: “We are now facing this year the largest-ever outbreak of bird flu. Scrupulous biosecurity…

Wheat prices have gone through further turbulence after Russia withdrew from and then rejoined a vital food supply plan. Prices initially rose steeply after Russia withdrew its support for the Black Sea Grain Initiative. The internationally brokered deal had allowed ships carrying wheat to leave three key Ukranian ports without risk of Russian attack. Ukraine is a vital source of wheat, particularly for the Middle East and North Africa, and the introduction of the scheme earlier this year led to a significant reduction in global wheat prices. However, a Ukrainian attack on Russian warships in Sevastopol led to Russia withdrawing from the scheme, and global prices surged in response. UK wheat prices track global prices, and feed wheat rose almost immediately. However, shortly before going to press, Russia announced that…

Watching the London Marathon had me thinking back to my own action-packed weekend in early September, perhaps the last before proper autumnal weather descended. My understanding of marathon running is that to break four hours is good, but to break three hours is the gold standard. So let me break this weekend down into marathon-sized chunks. Norfolk is the destination and reducing an overpopulation of muntjac is the objective. More specifically, on a farm that was once arable, but is now mostly grass leys, fruit canes and large rewilded swathes. It has become a wildlife oasis. The rewilding ideology has much good in it; however, I don’t believe we can truly leave flora and fauna to their own ways. There are just too many outside influences. On this farm, the…

The mushroom season is nearing its end, but mushrooms will continue until Christmas and beyond if the hard frosts keep at bay. I have written about many fungi in these pages, all of them front-runners in the gourmand stakes. This time, however, it is the rank outsiders and also-rans. My fanciful racing metaphors do fail rather, however, as some of these unfancied species are well worth an each-way bet. First in the parade ring are the waxcaps. These are extraordinarily bright fungi, running their own rainbow of white, brown, yellow, scarlet, crimson, green, purple and pink. Few are edible and many are rare, so care must be taken when collecting for the table. I restrict myself to three relatively common species: the snowy waxcap, scarlet waxcap and meadow waxcap, but…

It has been far too long since I had a walk out with my pal Macca and our dogs. Last time we were out together was brilliant. That said, I remember Tawny catching a rabbit and careering off down a steep hill, tumbling head over paws on to the ground below. Luckily she landed in the reeds, which cushioned her fall, but she gave us the shock of our lives. Six years later, I was not only with the ‘ginger ninja’ but also her daughter Dotty. Recently the weather has been unseasonably mild. In fact, the dogs have been feeling it at points. The warmer weather has unfortunately helped the explosion of insect life. This may be great for wild birds but not so for our rabbit population, as insects…

OUR VERDICT In the sub-£1,200 new shotgun market, most guns look either very vanilla or their designs and style derive from more expensive brands on the market. When I saw the new Webley & Scott Vantage, it was clear that they were being brave and trying something new, and that should always be celebrated. The stock is where we start. At the back there is a rubber recoil pad, the wood is plain but has a little more figuring than many other lower-grade walnuts. The stock also features a cheek piece — this is a bold move. Raised cheek pieces are more often found on rifles and on Continental shotguns, having never been a popular feature in the UK. Times have changed, however, and people are more willing than ever…

Cutting heather, widely promoted as an environmentally friendly alternative to burning, damages vital peat-forming mosses, according to scientists who have studied the practice. Increased restrictions and intense political pressure have led to a reduction in the use of burning to manage heather and its replacement with cutting using tractor-mounted ‘swipes’. The scientists looked at the mix of mosses and heather on two grouse moors in Upper Teesdale. These moors both had multiple sites where heather had been cut. They compared the cut plots with uncut ‘control plots’, which were next to them. The scientists carefully recorded the depth of the moss and also its microtopography — the mix of hummocks and hollows. They found there was less moss on cut sites than on uncut ones, and that there were fewer…

NEWS A major political effort is under way to save rough shooting in Scotland from a ban (News, 19 October). Provisions to restrict the use of dogs to control rabbits were included in the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill, to stop illegal hare coursers claiming they were hunting rabbits. However, there is concern the legislation may be used against rough shooting. The current wording of the legislation is unclear. It includes a general ban on the use of dogs to hunt wild mammals, then sets exemptions. One of these exemptions is for the use of dogs in game shooting. However, to use the game-shooting exemption, certain conditions must be met. One condition states that the activity must “not involve the use of more than two dogs”, while another condition says…

Duck flighting Ducks are some of the most controversial birds we pursue in the sporting year. For a start, the word ‘duck’ covers a wide range of species with a dizzying variety of habits and habitats. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to duck shooting, and no sooner is variety introduced than people begin to rank the variants in order of preference. Controversy always ensues. There used to be a trend for releasing mallard and shooting them in drives off ponds, but this kind of shooting takes a steady hand and a fine sense of balance. All too often, the ducks become difficult to flush; and when they do go, they’ll rise in a single flock and simply circle round and round above the Guns until everybody’s had their fill. The gamekeeper’s…

There are few certainties in life, but one is that if you book a clay shooting lesson, you’ll be handed an over-and-under. You can understand why. To begin with, a best British game gun will be like learning to drive in a track car with a finely tuned race-spec chassis — the sort of machine that exacerbates your every mistake. For a beginner, the same may be true with a side-by-side — you need some skill and knowledge to use one. Once you learn the basics of technique and the fundamentals of how to make a successful shot, then a side-by-side can open up new heights of performance as long as you understand how it moves. Yet we so often hear: “I can’t shoot a side-by-side.” For the majority of…

Next to wildfowling and the occasional grouse, the focus of my sporting year centres around woodcock. There’s one place I shoot each winter, where woodcock are the primary sporting objective of the day. It was formerly a sheep farm, but in 2000 almost all of it was planted up with a variety of hardwood trees. With 20 years for the trees to grow and expand their cover, the former farm has matured like a fine wine. Surrounded on all sides by boggy pastureland, the birds not only have an abundance of cosy cover to conceal them in the woods, but plenty of access to worms under veil of darkness. The best of the shooting usually takes place in January, when an informal mini-driven day is held for a group of…

I was talking to a shoot manager about the season so far.“Obviously,” she said — and if you’re surprised that she was a she, then get with the programme — “I couldn’t get our usual partridges, but we caught up enough hen birds to fill our incubators. So we are having a season, though it’s a bit different.” After one season mostly cancelled and a second largely disrupted by Covid restrictions, the bird flu outbreaks in France — where the bulk of partridges for early season game shooting in this country are sourced — have meant that many shoots have been obliged to curtail sharply their programmes for the third season in succession. For some, perhaps many, it has been the final straw. Anecdotal reports have been filtering in of…

John Anderton brings to his game shooting the same verve and boundless energy with which he tackles the secretarial problems of the Wildfowlers Association of Great Britain and Ireland (WAGBI), the design and planting of his lovely garden or an invitation to a party. It is this enthusiastic management, backed by the loyal efficiency of keeper Dick Humphrey, who is so dedicated to his job that he never takes a holiday, and the co-operation of as friendly a bunch of syndicate members as you could wish to meet, that has transformed what 10 years ago was a vermin-ridden, game-starved tract of Welsh countryside into a game preserve where it is now possible to shoot 200 driven pheasants in a day. The shoot comprises some 3,250 acres, of which, the syndicate’s…

Across 6 Relating to horses, thenew Queen has insideinformation (6)7 One leaves Iberia to reviewthe Basque gunmakingtown (5)10 Coloured like a retriever,the peeper reveals a duck(9)11 Carry some clay ammofor a Spanish gun (3)12 Net material for a maleMember of Parliament? (4)14 Failing to achieve a cleankill with gun down, I amupset (8)16 Charlie may relentlesslypursue the hunting dog (8)17 & 20 across Got yourhands on a stack of cash forthe cartridge (4,3)20 See 17 across21 At the end of the motorrace, this flag means gunsare finished (9)23 The owl will want to shiftby the first year (5)24 Add some spice to ashooting period (6) Down 1 Barrel specification is herefor the duration (6)2 Control species numberswith customary skill, fromstart to finish (4)3 At home, rent out an airrifle valve…