Innholdsfortegnelse for 16-Nov-2022 i Shooting Times & Country

The Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) has maintained its total opposition to a ban on the use of lead ammunition. The association was the only one of the country’s shooting and gamekeeping organisations not to back the voluntary five-year transition away from the use of lead put forward by Aim to Sustain. A phased ban on the use of lead ammunition is being consulted on under the UK REACH chemical regulations framework. Over the past fortnight, shooting organisations have been publishing their responses to the consultation, and the SGA has reaffirmed its stance of complete opposition to the ban. Opening its response, the SGA said: “The Scottish Gamekeepers Association disagrees with the premise behind the move to ban lead ammunition. While acknowledging risk, the extent of the risk, we believe, is…

Shooting Times has learned that unlicensed and unregulated worming products are being offered for sale on Facebook groups. One advert posted in a large shooting and countryside group on Facebook offered a herbal remedy that, it claimed, is “suitable for: dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, reptiles, birds, poultry, ferrets, all pets”. The remedy was described as “the cheapest way to worm your pets”. Vet and keen game Shot Neil Laing told Shooting Times that while the product was not illegal, “it has absolutely no science behind the claim it is an ‘easy, natural way to deworm your pets’. There is no evidence it deworms animals. The second part may be true, in that it may improve or maintain gut health, but so does a healthy diet.” Mr Laing advised gundog owners…

"Hurry up or you’ll miss your chance,” were the encouraging words from my friend Will Martin as I struggled with my gun slip. I was in search of red grouse and had travelled deep into the Grimersta Estate on the Isle of Lewis for the opportunity. After finally extracting myself from the slip and cartridge bag, I padded forward, drawing in line with Snipe (a pointer, confusingly), who stared dead ahead. Just as I was getting set, a hen bird broke, flitting off low to my left. First impressions? Both smaller and faster than anticipated. Will was right. I missed my chance. “Just as I was getting set, a hen bird broke, flitting off low to my left” This was different from shooting grouse with my Norwegian family in the…

The stag season has come to an end here in Scotland now, and while in years gone by I’ve spent this time of year among the heather listening to the reds roar, this season I found myself in quieter company under the shady canopy of sitka spruce. The company I speak of is a scowling stranger to these lands, introduced during the 1800s, a stealthy beast that dwells in the places folk rarely go. Lurking in the deepest of plantations, these ghosts of the forest go unseen by most, and as a result have built themselves a reputation as one of the UK’s most challenging and most enjoyable quarries to pursue. I am, of course, talking about sika. Up until last year I had only had fleeting experiences with this…

"I’m going to cook snipe next weekend,” I found myself boasting. “There’s been a decent fall of them on the marsh and Coatsy’s coming over. It’s 20 years since Operation Snipe. What better way to celebrate?” The children, Mrs G and I had just finished a Sunday roast of assorted game. It had been edible — which when I’m cooking is a triumph. The success had gone to my head. Mrs G raised an eyebrow. She remembers Operation Snipe as the one when I asked her to send silly string, that squirty, colourful stuff that gets sprayed around at parties. It was useful for finding tripwires in Afghan caves. Operation Snipe had been fun in its own way in 2002. Twenty years on, surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to…

Crop protection keeps me busy right through the year. Woodpigeons can be troublesome where I live in the West Country, but corvids have definitely overtaken them in the ‘agricultural enemy’ stakes over recent years. Flocks of crows, rooks and jackdaws are quick to descend on new drillings, and also cause serious problems around farmyards. My latest outing saw me tackling scavenging corvids that had homed in on a freshly drilled field. The birds had initially been drawn in by the smashed-up kernels left among the stubbles of the previous maize crop, but were now gorging on the scattering of wheat on or near the soil’s surface. When the assorted corvids aren’t out scoffing crops, they drop in at the adjacent farmyard to wash down the feast with water from the…

I was a little unsure what was going to turn up as I waited for delivery of the DS 7 Crossback E-Tense Hybrid 4x4. No, that’s not a typo, DS is a stand-alone brand now, much like Cupra. The DS 7 is the brand’s mid-size SUV, which boasts some eco credentials and could tick some Shooting Times boxes. It’s available in five specs: Performance, Performance+, Rivoli, Opera and La Premiere. We’re taking a look at the Rivoli hybrid, which is in the middle of the range. So, without further ado, let’s see how the suburban family wagon gets on around the shoot — just remember not to call it a Citroën. On first impressions, it’s a bit white. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; other colours are available. Despite the…

NEWS One of the UK’s leading gamebird scientists has found that shoots are acting to protect the UK’s breeding woodcock by shooting fewer birds and by shooting them later in the year. Dr Joah Madden of the University of Exeter used gamecards and adverts to try to establish the truth about woodcock shooting. The sport has become the centre of an active debate in recent months, as anti-shooting campaign group Wild Justice pushes to have the season restricted to the months of December and January (News, 12 October). Such a move is seen by many as a step towards an outright ban. Dr Madden’s clearest finding was that the number of shoots targeting woodcock has dropped significantly. Using gamecard data from 1880 to 2020, he was able to determine that,…

The essence of a truly wild sporting challenge is to engage in the pursuit of your chosen quarry, whether fur, feather or fin, when the odds are stacked in favour of the prey. You have to be blessed with a degree of luck in order to triumph. It was with this ethos in mind that I decided to head out for a late-season attempt to catch bass on the fly, at one of my favourite spots off Pen Llŷn, Anglesey. The forecast for my morning wasn’t the best, and recent autumnal squalls meant that my usual marks on the south-facing coast were unfishable. With a gentle southerly breeze predicted for Saturday morning, I’d have to find a mark on the north-facing coast in order to cast a fly into calm,…

"Now she asks the trees,” my guide Petri Kokkonen tells me. I smile and reply how poetic that sounds. Unintentional, perhaps, but it somehow captures the magic that is embedded in these seemingly enchanted forests. Ella the Finnish spitz has been silently hunting while we sit and wait, giving her space to work. Our ears pricked up to her rapid barking, the indication that she had located a capercaillie. Petri can tell from the rate of her barking whether she has found a male or female capercaillie; for that dark silhouette of the male she cranks out close to 150 barks per minute. The barking stops. I look to Petri; he is looking at his phone, which is tethered to Ella’s GPS tracking collar. “She is making a circle,” he…

The pink-footed goose, or pinks as they are known round here, are not a species I was familiar with when I lived in Devon. I knew of them of course, but they don’t tend to make it that far south on their annual migration from their breeding grounds in Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard. They prefer the rugged, open landscape of the Scottish coast to the rolling hills of south-west England — and these days, so do I. It feels a little incautious to be extolling the virtues of wildfowling when we are potentially staring down the proverbial barrel of a wildfowling moratorium in light of the worsening bird flu outbreak, but I will endeavour to do so — a joyful task indeed for the most part. Let’s start with the…

Some years ago, while based in Norfolk, I carried out quite a number of sorties on the Wash at the RAF bombing range of Holbeach. I had even come to terms with the geese, and the first sight and sound I had of them is indelibly imprinted on my memory. My friend Arthur, although experienced in inland wildfowling, had never been on a coastal marsh, and I was determined that he should be initiated. I knew that the marshes were not as free as on my previous sorties but, after some letter-writing, all was organised. And so it was on a Friday evening that we found ourselves driving in the direction of Holbeach Marsh. Our headquarters for the weekend was a wooden cottage built by our host’s husband many years…

Across 6 So don’t regret replacing the gundog (6,6)9 After seven years of marriage, it’ll bring dogs up to scratch (4)11 The lad went crazy on wildfowling terrain (7)12 When the final whistle blows, keepers are thus employed (4-4)13 A tedious task on the hunt? (4)15 Those in need of protection from loud guns during rehearsal (4)17 Our trim pal messes around in a hole in the ground (4,3) 19 A snipe, for one, gets the boot (5)20 Gun cleaning dispenser with floral arrangement (5)21 One that’s bowled over by a Japanese pheasant (5) 23 Deer tracks lead us to casino attractions (5)24 A duck for Sir Francis (5)25 The right Russian mountain range is typical of country life (5)28 One who crawls through water? The labrador is a natural…

More than 100 cases of avian influenza have now been confirmed since the bird flu season began in October. The entire season last year produced 134 cases, suggesting that the UK is likely to experience its worst-ever outbreak of the disease. The epidemic has continued to spread rapidly across the UK. While cases remain mainly concentrated in the east of England, during the past seven days there have been new cases right across the country. New control and surveillance zones have been imposed from Cumnock in Ayrshire to Torpoint in Cornwall. A national housing order remains in force across England (News, 9 November). This requires poultry keepers to house their birds. The order also prevents the release of gamebirds that are currently held in captivity, so that shoots cannot ‘top…

NEWS Wildfowlers have raised concerns over very low numbers of pink-footed geese in Scotland. The bulk of pinkfeets should have arrived on the northern and eastern coasts by now, but there appears to be low numbers of the birds at several key sites. Wildfowler Gary Bruce was among those raising the alarm over the small numbers. He told Shooting Times: “We are seeing far fewer pinks than we would normally expect. Some of the farms on which we shoot are practically deserted, and others are a long way down on the typical counts for this time of year.” Counts from the Montrose Basin do appear to support these concerns. Over the past three years, goose numbers in the basin have typically peaked at between 65,000 and 84,000 pink-footed geese in…

It’s big country. Huge. The High Country station stretching ahead of us covers 50,000 acres on the map. Throw in the guts, gullies, creek beds and river catchments, and the number scales up — dramatically. Fortunately, we were mainly interested in the front lowland area. Still more country than I could cover with a good horse and a few fine days up my sleeve, but huntable. The high ridges, burnished like steel in the dawn, towered over hoary gullies with a crackling of frost covering the grassy patches. The thorny bushes known as Matagouri were charcoal smudges on the hillside, while tall pines on an opposite terrace stood stiff like palace guards. A creek burbled politely as it shouldered through the crowded vegetation, and three red deer looked quizzically at…

Several years ago, I was on a trip through France and stayed a night in a hotel in the Sologne region, several hours south of Paris. It was one of those relatively rundown and unloved sort of places with interiors dating back several decades, owned and managed by a charming old lady and her not-quite-so charming husband. I was sitting at the bar with a gin, when two Germans came in dressed head to toe in that paradoxical attire of luminous orange camouflage pattern. The indecision over which gin they wanted with their tonic gave me a small window of opportunity to break the ice, as I recommended to them the one I had on the bar in front of me. It didn’t take much to get them on to…

I confess to disliking shopping. I always have done. It probably dates to my early years when, each Saturday morning, I had to walk across the fields from my grandparents’ remote cottage with Gran to catch the Yorkshire traction bus into town. I hated the morning I lost each week dragging around the market to pick up the week’s provisions — I would much rather have been raking about in the hedgerows. That was, until I was old enough to have an air rifle. My pride and joy was a .22 BSA Meteor, which I spent every waking hour using. From that moment, the weekly trip into town meant a few minutes in the small gunshop where Gran would buy me a tin of 500 Eley Wasp pellets. I still…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD Anyone who has ridden to hounds in the Shires will know of the roller-coaster thrill when galloping over ‘ridge and furrow’. Although largely long-vanished in Britain under modern cultivation, the fine old grass on the Lowesby, Quenby and Ingarsby estates in Leicestershire still ripples with the crests and dips of farming times past. These ‘waves’ are a visible legacy of medieval and late-Saxon period ploughing. Each family in a farming community was given a strip, which they tilled with a one-sided plough. These single-horse ploughs tended to heap the soil towards the middle. Soil would build up over generations, resulting in ridges and furrows, providing good drainage for the crops which were grown atop the ridge. Each furrow was a standard length of some 220 yards.…