Innholdsfortegnelse for 7-Dec-2022 i Shooting Times & Country

Last Saturday, I had the great pleasure of shooting in Norfolk. It was a bit of a sporting tour. On Thursday, I’d been flighting ducks in Lincolnshire, and on the Friday morning I was out after a fallow buck. I’m a great advocate of not working too hard and having a good time and, for those three days, I practised what I preach. The happiest moment came just before lunch on Saturday, when a covey of greys broke over the hedge to my right. We’d been told we could shoot one if we wanted to take it home, but I was too slow. Listening to them noisily flying by, the underside of their wings flashing silver in the sun, was excitement enough for me. The relationship between shooting and grey…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Restrictions on pistols are not right I must respectfully disagree with Sharpshooter (23 November) regarding butchering guns to comply with the two-shot regulation for humane despatch pistols. When I had cattle and ponies, I possessed a .357 revolver that had been so ruined because the police wouldn’t allow me to have a six shot. It should go without saying that no one requires a cylinder or magazine full of cartridges to kill a cow unless they are totally inept, but that is not the point. This restriction has been imposed simply because politicians and the police don’t trust us; they treat us as though we are all potential mass murderers. Make no mistake, they would remove even these if they thought they could get away with…

The woods in which I currently work are new – sitka and Norway spruce planted by man in the present and not-so-distant past. However, it is not uncommon to find remnants of an older Earth beneath the canopy; craggy spines of rock and great boulders erupting from the ground like teeth — glacial reminders of a time when Britain was covered in ice. Technically speaking, the first humans to set foot in Britain were not the same species as us. Stone tools and a trail of footprints left in mudflats indicate Homo antecessor may have been present between 950,000 and 700,000 years ago. Another species, Homo heidelbergensis, is confirmed to have lived in Britain around 500,000 years ago, and they left evidence of hunting in tool marks on many horse,…

100 years There are very few people who are employed in the countryside, or anywhere else for that matter, who are doing what they did a century or more ago — at least in the same manner. The thatcher, farrier and hedgelayer are perhaps three that have witnessed little change, although even there, modern implements have eased their way into the toolbox of some. With a few exceptions though, the gamekeepers in the old grainy black and white photographs would hardly recognise the day-to-day work their modern counterparts do or, for that matter, how they are employed to do it. In the dim and distant past, every gamekeeper was employed by either a landowner or a tenant who had taken the lease on the land. If there was a change…

Stalking dogs It wasn’t long after the opening of the deerstalking season in Belgium (1 October), when I received a call from a member of our group asking me if I could help him locate a deer calf that had been shot during a hunt he was on. He could not conduct the search himself because his young Bavarian mountain hound was still in training. The phone was then passed to the Gun, who told me what he recalled of the event: “It was last light when I made the shot over a distance of around 150m,” he began. “The deer definitely reacted to the shot and ran straight towards me. I didn’t have a chance to take a second shot before it disappeared to my left and into cover.…

There were rumbles of discontent among the access lobby recently when Tony Juniper, the pragmatic chair of Natural England, declined to support calls for yet more public rights of access to private land. He explained that there was already a lot of public access on this crowded island and nature needed places where it could be undisturbed. He was referring to the situation in lowland England specifically. This seems to mark a sea-change in the official attitude to public access. And about time, too. The parts of the countryside where wildlife can breed and rear young have dwindled, with predictable consequences for local species populations and biodiversity more generally. Undue disturbance at certain popular sites by people and their dogs has long been a problem. But for years it was…

NEWS SHOOT The start of December sees the opening of the informal woodcock season. Shooting woodcock from 1 October is legal, but strongly discouraged. However, just because you can shoot them, doesn’t mean you should. If you have breeding woodcock in your area, consider a full ban. If you do shoot them, impose strict limits on the number each Gun can take. CHECK If the action has been slow or slowing on your flightpond, it might be tempting to chuck a bit of extra feed around — but don’t do this. Extra feed is more likely to attract extra vermin than ducks. Instead, try giving the pond a rest and hit the shore, or walk up some marshy ground for a snipe.…

The days of proper rough shooting appear to be over, and it’s a shame. Guns these days seem to prefer driven shooting where you are presented with birds that are either so high that the first few birds over the line are ignored in mistake for starlings, or by clouds of low partridges that flock out of a game crop in an otherwise featureless landscape and bumble over the line, some birds so exhausted, or inexperienced, that they hurry down the field border below hedge height. The Guns don’t seem to mind, they bang away regardless. At the end of the drive someone will say: “Gosh, that was good fun!” Well, no, it wasn’t. A good day is getting up early with a thick head and going into a dining…

In his book Tales of a Wildfowler, Arthur Cadman relates the story of a flight made long ago under the moon in the hills of Wales when he managed to shoot both a fox and a goose. He doesn’t specify the species, but mentions that both pinkfeet and common whitefronts (Greenland whitefronts, when they were legal quarry) were feeding in the area. Reading the passage brought to mind one of my recent wildfowling adventures. It was a blustery September Saturday, so I decided to try a flight on a nearby foreshore where I’d have a chance of a shot at ducks, or the Canada geese that frequented the foreshore at that time of the season. The strong wind meant that fowl should be moving and be at a reasonable height.…

Driven shooting In a place where time has had little impact on the traditional way of life, it was an honour to spend a day with a group of lady Guns. I was on my way to a picturesque family-run shoot called Northumberland Sporting Game (NSG) in Bellingham. Driving in on the foggiest, stillest of days, I feared the birds might not want to play ball. Nonetheless, for an avid deerstalker who rarely participates in driven days, the invitation to watch one was set to be the highlight of my week. A special let day had been put together at the shoot for a roving all-woman syndicate called The Game Birds. NSG’s father-mother-daughter team — Colin and Michelle Anderson and their daughter Tracy Turner — had worked very hard for…

Gundogs FOR THE FIRST TIME in 39 years, there’s not a black-and-white spaniel in the Tomlinson household. Last month my Rowan went to the happy hunting grounds, at the venerable age of 16 years, six months and three weeks. Remarkably, she remained active until the very end, managing a 40-minute walk every day. Equally remarkably, she never suffered from any illness that required a visit to the vet. If all dogs were like her, most veterinary practices would go out of business. Losing a dog is always sad, and for many people it’s a more traumatic experience than losing members of the family. I admit that I was stricken with grief when Rowan’s grandmother died before her ninth birthday, but my sadness with Rowan was tempered by the fact that…

IS A FERRET MORE THAN JUST A FERRET? It sounds obvious, but ferrets are the cornerstone of this sport. Without them, you are simply going for a walk with a spade, a dog and some nets. With them, you are experiencing a world like no other. But is a ferret just a ferret? I get asked this all the time, especially during the breeding season, but my answer has changed over time. I look at my ferrets as a squad. They are a collection of individuals that all have their place and time to work. Failure is the best teacher and I still learn from it to this day. It is the warren that dictates to me, as well as the size of the rabbits I am ferreting for. I…

Grouse Ingredients PREP TIME: 1 HOUR, 15 MINUTES COOKING TIME: 20 MINUTES 12 OLD GROUSE THIGHS 1 CUP OF MILK JUICE OF HALF A LEMON 1 TEASPOON GARLIC POWDER 1 TABLESPOON SMOKED PAPRIKA 1 TEASPOON CAYENNE PEPPER (OPTIONAL) 1 TEASPOON CELERY SALT 1 TEASPOON DRIED MIXED HERBS 6 TABLESPOONS PLAIN FLOUR FOR THE BARBECUE SAUCE 350G TOMATO PASSATA 2 GARLIC CLOVES, FINELY CHOPPED 50ML GOOD SHERRY VINEGAR 50G DARK BROWN SOFT SUGAR 1 TEASPOON TREACLE 1 DESSERT SPOON SMOKED PAPRIKA 1 PINCH CHILLI FLAKES 1 TEASPOON MIXED DRIED HERBS 1 TABLESPOON SOY SAUCE 1 TEASPOON GROUND CORIANDER 1 TEASPOON GROUND FENNEL SEEDS 1 GOOD PINCH OF MACE 1 GOOD PINCH OF CINNAMON POWDER 1 DESSERT SPOON HENDERSON’S RELISH BLACK PEPPER TO TASTE Old grouse, much maligned in my opinion, do…

Councils join forces to beat wildfires More councils in the North of England are using their powers to help prevent devastating moorland fires. Chorley, Bolton, and Blackburn with Darwen Councils have agreed to join up to use public spaces protection orders to ban barbecues, open flames such as campfires and camping stoves, fireworks and Chinese lanterns from moorland to reduce the risk of wildfire. Under the proposals, anyone caught lighting up one of these devices on the moors could face a £1,000 fine. Hen harriers return to Salisbury Plain Hen harriers are to return to Salisbury Plain after a scheme the RSPB tried to stop got the go-ahead. Re-establishing hen harriers as a breeding species in the English lowlands has been part of Defra’s hen harrier action plan. In 2019,…

Our first drive always shoots nicely with a moderate southwesterly and, if all goes to plan, we can follow on well for the second drive. That’s all very well if Mother Nature follows the script, but when morning comes and the wind has swung right around, then even the best-laid plans are squandered. Not to worry, we have options and can turn things around to suit. Sometimes in this job you have to think on your feet. There are so many variables involved in producing a day’s shooting. Most of the time you think you have covered all eventualities, but I bet you haven’t. There’s always something waiting in the wings to kick you up the backside when you least expect it. Superstitions I’m not at all superstitious — apart…

Obituary It’s often thought that a magazine starts and ends with the person in the editor’s chair, but sadly that’s far from the case. Above them sits the publisher, usually a money man, often in fashionable jeans and a white, ironed T-shirt. They tend to know nothing about the magazine’s subject but they’ll tell you they make up for it by knowing everything about the cost of paper, where to find cheap printing deals and ‘subscriber retention’. When I took the helm at ST, one such bloke called me into his office and told me I had to trim the spend on contributors. “Nick Fisher is your most expensive writer,” he said, looking up from an Excel spreadsheet. “Start there.” Nick took it well; the readers less so. “The thing…

When it comes to euthanasia, dogs have a much easier time than we humans. The day after Rowan died, I read a report in the newspaper about the father of MP Paul Blomfield, who had committed suicide after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. Mr Blomfield wants a change to the law that gives people a choice, so that those with a terminal diagnosis of six months or less can choose the point at which they die, rather than living out a miserable ending. Apparently, 81% of people support a change in the law. I’m one of them. I’m sure more dogs have a vet-assisted death than die naturally. I remember a shooting friend bemoaning the fact that he had never had a dog die naturally, but had always been…

OUR VERDICT There are two things you need to know about this gun. The first is that the 2022 update to the 486 Parallelo is an aesthetic one, with the engraving now being done in a much deeper and more modern style. Mechanically, the action has been the same since it was launched in 2012, and as we will discuss, this is a good thing. Secondly, this gun has a gravitational safety and so will not work upside down or on its side. So I’m sorry to inform you that this rules it out as your next trick shooting toy. Engraving is subjective and so every time I hear of an update, I have mixed feelings. If it’s a gun that I find pleasing to the eye, my anxiety builds…

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…