Innholdsfortegnelse for 23-Nov-2022 i Shooting Times & Country

As I write, there are two hen pheasants in the slow cooker. I plucked them yesterday and shot them the day before at a new syndicate in Sussex. The shoot is only a year old and they are still working things out — nobody would pretend that every drive went as planned but what really struck me was the happy sense of community. There were people who didn’t know each other before the shoot came into being who stood chatting and laughing, like great friends of old. The new shoot has truly brought people back together in a post-Covid world. It was a very happy reminder that in rural communities shooting is hugely important. Some weeks ago, a woman wrote to tell me how much this magazine means to her…

LETTER OF THE WEEK We must garner more public support During November, I will be working at a mountain film festival. There will be many voices heard, predominantly about protecting the environment, but I fear few will engage with shooting people such as ourselves. In fact, some outdoor clothing companies I’ve worked with ask me not to tag them on social media when I speak about my love of fieldsports, as they feel it may alienate their customers. We need to engage more. We need to talk more. We need to educate more. Opinions are one thing, but science and the real world count. Many a time I have found myself in a room filled with more weekend environmentalists than Richard Negus can shake a billhook at. Many of them…

With the stag season having closed in Scotland, it is time to catch up on the tasks and discussions that had been shelved as we focused on the highlight of the stalking calendar. The stag rut was good. The last three weeks were damp, but we’ve certainly had worse. We, and one or two others, noted that the rumens, right up until the end of the rut, were unusually full and few beasts had much of that pink fat that is associated with well-run stags; as the rut draws on, the rumen becomes less full and the belly fat turns pink. But this might not be a bad thing, as stags need all the condition they can get to survive the winter. Memorable stalks Every season has memorable occasions or…

100 years of keepering Our wildlife and countryside has changed enormously in my lifetime, with the population of some species of fur, feather, fin and fauna crashing while others have boomed beyond recognition. My father and grandfather both said the same, so perhaps this is just a typical old man’s moaning about the inevitable changes that ‘progress’ brings. Humankind has added and removed species to our islands for more than 2,000 years. The Romans bought us the brown hare, pheasants, fallow deer and the domestic cat. They are blamed, too, for the introduction of the black rat, which indirectly wiped out much of the human population by carrying a flea-borne plague. The introduction of certain species have had a negative or even devastating effect, prime examples being the grey squirrel…

Gundogs WHEN SHOULD A SHOT bird be retrieved? As soon as it hits the ground? With rough shooting this is the usual rule because the longer you leave a bird, the more likely you are to lose it for one reason or another. If your bag is unlikely to be more than two or three, losing a bird is serious. On driven days it is standard practice to do the picking-up at the end of the drive, though hopefully any runners will have been collected during the drive. It’s not that long ago that even runners were left to the end of the drive, a practice that is frowned upon today. If you are picking-up behind a Gun with a dog, it’s always a good idea to ask them whether…

Venison Our Christmas this year will be select and grown-up — that is, without small children. So we rise late, make cocktails and toast, not having to prepare a giant roast. We might have some canapés, then bake these pre-prepared pies filled with a creamy mix of mushrooms and delicate venison fillet. Pithiviers resemble a sort of upside-down pie, not dissimilar to a Wellington but very decorative. They need a little patience to make, but can be prepared the previous day, refrigerated and then baked. “They need a little patience to make but can be prepared the previous day and baked” VENISON PITHIVIERS THE METHOD Serves 3 to 4 Ingredients PREP TIME: 1 HOUR 15 MINUTES COOKING TIME: 20 MINUTES 15G DRIED WILD MUSHROOMS (MOREL, PORCINI) 2 TBSP BUTTER 2…

Some years ago, a firearms certificate holder complained that the police had allowed him a pistol for the humane despatch of sick or injured livestock, but insisted that the magazine should be restricted to two rounds. I ventured to suggest that this seemed reasonable. He disagreed, pointing out that another force allowed a friend of his to have a pistol with an unrestricted eight-shot magazine. “Oh well,” I said, “they obviously think you’re a better shot.” My attempt at humour went down badly. The chap thought I was being unduly flippant about a serious issue — the inconsistency of police firearms procedures. I suppose I was. And yet, do you really need a fully functioning Glock to deal with an ailing sheep? I can understand why the police might look…

NEWS CHECK Wet, muddy footwear is all but inevitable at this time of year. You should clean, dry and condition leather boots before putting them away. Putting boots away wet or drying them too quickly are both routes to ruining them. Wet boots should be cleaned thoroughly and slowly dried before being treated with an appropriate leather care product. GARDEN Leaf and brash piles make excellent winter homes for hedgehogs, so if you can leave a few about they will be grateful. Equally, if you intend to burn any, you should carefully check for hibernating hogs first.…

The Kennel Club has launched a major investigation into the health of cocker spaniels. The joint study between the Kennel Club and the University of Cambridge will look at intervertebral disc disease (IVDD), a serious spinal condition affecting dogs. After dachshunds and French bulldogs, cockers are the third most likely breed to develop the problem. Symptoms of IVDD include abnormal posture, shivering, panting, unwillingness to move and difficulty jumping and going up and down stairs. In more severe cases, there may be difficulty walking and incontinence. In 2017, researchers were able to identify a specific gene that is strongly linked to the problem in cocker spaniels. Now the Kennel Club wants to understand how lifestyle factors affect the disease and whether it is more common in working or show-bred cocker…

There is so much hysteria about climate change that I try to avoid writing about it, but I think it is worth recording that we had lunch out on the terrace on Remembrance Sunday and the youths swam in the sea. I’m not sure what you can read into that, but I’m sure there is a correlation between a warm autumn and pheasant density. Not due to their feather-brained lack of intelligence — we all agree on that — but there are low numbers of pheasants per square acre in south-west Scotland at the moment. This is contributing to extreme host anxiety. Owing to bird flu, we couldn’t get our hands on many poults to start with. I optimistically imagined that, with fewer birds on the ground, there might be…

A CLASSIC SERIES REVISITED The plan was to get out on the estuary for morning flight, bag a duck and be back in time for work. Then after work, I planned to tie a couple of sea trout flies using nothing but the feathers from the duck from the morning’s outing, then head to my local river for an attempt at a sea trout. This had been the plan for a number of years but for several reasons it hadn’t come together before. The weather needs to be right and, come October, the river is often out of action. This year was perfect, though; it had been settled, meaning the river was low and clear, a stable pressure gauge and a dark, muggy night was forecast. These are textbook conditions…

When the percussion cap was perfected around 1820, there was enthusiastic take-up by many sportsmen keen to take advantage of the enhanced reliability that this new source of ignition brought. However, it was not until the mid-1830s that most governments conducted evaluation trials of percussion caps. The efficacy of the cap was not in doubt; what weighed on the minds of military officials was whether the existing inventories of many millions of flintlock muskets could be converted to percussion without bankrupting the nation. Eventually, bureaucracy yielded to progress and by about 1840 most of the world’s major powers had adopted percussion ignition for their small arms. There were three ways this happened. Flintlocks could be converted by removing priming pans and steels, installing nipples and substituting heavy hammers for cocks.…

Though I’ve read the reviews in the pages of this magazine, until last month I’d never actually looked through a thermal-imaging scope. It was quite a revelation. Using it in daylight allowed me to spot game that even with binoculars would have been almost impossible to see otherwise. It was quite uncanny and very clever, though using it took some practice. Some falconers now use thermal-imaging devices rather than dogs to locate game for their hawks. It’s easy to see the advantages. Dogs have to be housed, fed, watered, exercised and trained, whereas a thermal-imaging scope or binoculars requires none of those. And though a top-quality device might be expensive to buy, it’s probably no more costly than a pointer puppy. Falconry may be the most ancient of sports, but…

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…

MSPs sample the best of Scottish game Scotland’s politicians have been given a taste of the country’s finest wild foods at a dinner celebrating Scottish game. BASC and Country Sport Scotland co-hosted the event at The Taybank hotel in Perthshire. Murdo Fraser, Alexander Stewart and Rural Affairs Committee convenor Finlay Carson enjoyed local Kinnaird Estate mallard with a salad from its new walled garden and a fallow venison chop with kohlrabi and girolles. Antibiotic use in gamebirds falling The overall downward trend in antibiotic use for gamebirds continues despite a small uptick last year, according to a new report. Dr Kenny Nutting of St David’s Game Bird Services said: “We have been working with various shooting organisations and other vets to achieve a continued reduction of antibiotic use, as can…

The unmistakable shape and flight of a barn owl greeted me as I began my rounds. I paused briefly to observe the owl, a juvenile, quartering a large grass ride near a deer tower in recently planted woodland. A sense of pride swept over me. The tower was my chosen site for an owl box positioned a couple of years ago. This season, youngsters were enjoying a near-perfect habitat. What a wonderful scene. A buzzard appeared moments later, I suspect from a lookout branch high in mature woodland that fringes the grass ride. Diving at full speed, it intercepted the passing owl and they both collapsed to the ground. I could barely believe what I had just witnessed; the juvenile owl stood no chance. The buzzard made a rapid exit…

Covid will leave behind many traces. In 1,000 years’ time, archeologists will find a layer of disposable face masks, or in a few decades grandparents will point to lines on the pavement and say to grandkids: “That is from when we had to queue 6ft apart during the pandemic.” Deep in the archives of some American states another trace will remain — a curious spike in hunting licence applications. With workplaces closed and indoor recreation opportunities limited, Americans took out their guns and went hunting. As the world’s health suffered, the health of hunting blossomed, but as with lockdown puppies and the Netflix series Tiger King, the fad passed. Hunter numbers dropped back down and the world returned to something like normal. But what is normal for hunting across the…

I have held the same permissions for many years and when I am stealing away into the wild, I always know where I am going, what quarry I will find and how to make the most of my chances. Though the sport is not ‘easy’, there is something inevitable about the success and some of the magic has been lost. So when a friend told me he’d chatted up a new landowner on my behalf, I was more than excited to explore this new territory. A quick call to my brother-in-law, Jonathan Padgett, and the date of the mission was set. He had played a key early role in encouraging my shotgun shooting, so it felt only right that he should join the venture and bring a second pair of…