Innholdsfortegnelse for 28-Dec-2022 i Shooting Times & Country

Nominations for the BASC council elections are closing on 30 December. The council is the governing body of the association, and its members are drawn from the BASC membership. This year, two national seats are up for election. BASC’s Dr Conor O’Gorman explained what was involved, saying: “When I joined BASC, its elected council was mostly made up of people who had spent decades serving on wildfowling club committees. Those skills were a strength for a rapidly growing association. “Today, BASC continues to have wildfowlers on its council, as well as those with other shooting disciplines as their primary interest. “What binds the council together is a shared desire to protect and promote of all forms of shooting. Council members bring to the table a mix of skills and experience…

Genes that give resistance to the most commonly used rodenticides are now found in 78% of rats and 95% of house mice, according to research by the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use (CRRU). Most worryingly, a small number of animals have two different genes for resistance, a situation labelled ‘hybrid resistance’. In rats during the two sampling years, 2020 to 2022, the surveillance also found a proliferation of one resistance gene in particular, Y139C, to 30 widely spread new sites in England. Dr Alan Buckle, chair of the CRRU, said: “Continued use of anticoagulant rodenticides against resistant rats or mice has serious downsides — incomplete control with consequent ongoing threats to human and animal health; faster geographical spread of surviving resistant individuals; and lengthy survival of resistant pests carrying persistent…

Somewhere between the last mouthful of breakfast and the second spent round of the day, I began pondering quite how much stalking differs when in the company of a guide. I was enjoying my annual trip to stalk fallow with a friend in South Lincolnshire, one of the few times this year I’ve tailed another person in pursuit of deer rather than go it alone. It had me thinking — how can we get the most from such outings? A stalk is a series of decisions; the dynamic changes when you’re not the one making them. For many of us, the appeal of stalking as a solitary activity is tied to the sense of escapism. We become engrossed in predicting the movements of deer in various circumstances. We think about…

As November came to an end, I was lucky enough to be returning to Lockton in the North Yorkshire Moors to join a team of blackpowder and muzzle-loading fanatics. Driven shooting with blackpowder has always been on my wish list — this was going be my fifth year shooting on this day and it has played a huge part in shaping the way I feel about driven shooting. I guess the reason I first became drawn to blackpowder was the light show. Shooting with blackpowder is akin to battling a Jedi with a lightsabre, a real, dramatic dragon’s-breath flame that licks out, chasing whatever is in its path. We were lucky the weather had finally started to turn cooler. With plenty of leaves on the trees it had still felt…

Aidan Hartley is a farmer, keen Shot and fisherman Alcohol is cheap in Juba. As the moon rose over dusty Equatoria, I drank good whisky with a veteran of the Black Watch while watching France defeat England in the FIFA World Cup. Generators thrummed among the shanties, and UN personnel raced home along potholed streets to beat curfew before they got shaken down by Dinka militias. From the air, Juba is a smudge of corrugated iron and unfinished concrete that hugs the Nile, surrounded by marshes extending into grasslands, forests and curtains of smoke from bushfires. Brick-red tracks zig-zag across a vast territory of green or watery nothingness, dotted very rarely by a herd of cattle or a circle of huts. The pilots overflying this blank space of Africa call…

The incomerA beginner’s diary: a solo venturePart 3 of 6 I’m a long way from home, trying to part with some money, but my bank is not cooperating. I’ve been its customer for more than 20 years. Sadly, the day I’m buying my first shotgun seems to be the day the bank has chosen to have some fun at my expense and pretend it’s never heard of me. I try another card. The transaction is declined like those before it. I start to feel a little hot. The patient staff of Gilsans gunshop smile reassuringly, as if this sort of thing happens every time they make a sale. “If you like,” says Simon Fenwick, the owner, “you can take the gun now and sort out payment when you get home.…

A rule that hampered the import of gamebird chicks and eggs after Brexit may be altered. When the UK left the EU, a number of the Union’s laws were incorporated into UK law. One of these rules prohibited the import of chicks or eggs from areas that had been affected by avian influenza until at least 90 days had passed since the disease was contained. Now there are hopes that a proposed rule change in the EU will mean the limit is reduced to 30 days for international trade with all non-EU countries. If the UK Government were to make a reciprocal arrangement, it would make it much more likely that areas currently hit by bird flu in France would be able to export chicks and eggs in time for…

As temperatures plunged towards -20ºC, Deeside estates and local businesses have rallied to make sure everyone has access to hot and nutritious meals. The Deeside towns of Braemar and Ballater saw some of the coldest temperatures anywhere in the country during the December cold snap, when the cost of living crisis forced families to choose between heating and eating. Fortunately, local estates, butchers and big-hearted councillors were on hand to help. Councillor Geva Blackett and estates from the Grampian Moorland Group teamed up to help the crisis-hit families. The royal estate at Balmoral and its neighbours Invercauld and Glen Muick provided venison and pheasant. Deeside chefs and butchers — including Braemar’s NG Menzies Butchers and Ballater’s HM Sheridan — prepared and cooked the meals while Councillor Blackett organised deliveries. Lianne…

The little dog turned to me, ears cocked, awaiting my command to ‘hunt on’. We had scrub to blank-in and an hour in which to do it before the Guns arrived at 9am sharp. My son Charlie and his pal Marley flanked me. I waved Mabel forward and we tapped our way through a new plantation, then scrambled into a belt of thuja, thorn and bramble. Pheasants erupted from hiding places; the cocks took to the wing with a crow, wild hens jettisoned a squirt of guano as they whirred up. “The birds set their wings and flew resolutely away” My plan was to push the birds forward into the welcoming embrace of the cover slated for the first drive. The hen birds flew wherever they chose. Bar from a…

Sadly, as I write, the cold snap that looks set to be with us for some time has caused us to cancel a day for the first time this season. It is amazing because only six weeks ago I was writing about how difficult it was hunting in 20°C heat. Now we have been forced into putting the handbrake on the season by a hard frost. The contrast is stark and very frustrating. It would not be so bad had we had some meaningful snow in Leicestershire but, while there has been some up north and some to the south of us, here in the Midlands none whatsoever. Frozen ground is treacherous for horses and hounds alike, but with a covering of snow hunting can at least take place on…

OPTICS TESTBuy with confidence Being able to shave some weight off a rifle and scope set-up can be a huge advantage. And while there are plenty of lightweight guns on the market, the weight savings they offer can easily be undone by bulky optics. BSA’s Ultra SE airgun has been my go-to lightweight option for farm and woodland pest control for almost 10 years. It weighs in at 2.6kg and has served me well on roving sessions when I need to cover some ground and don’t want to feel bogged down. So it seemed the perfect choice to pair with the Hawke Airmax 30 SF Compact riflescope which, in 4-16x44, tips the scales at 621g. At 296mm, the second focal plane Compact is fairly short and made for a very…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD Anglicans and Roman Catholics mark the Massacre of the Holy Innocents, or Childermass Day, on 28 December. It remembers the children said to have been slaughtered by King Herod in his efforts to kill the infant Christ. From the early Middle Ages until the dawn of the 20th century, Childermass was considered to be an extremely unlucky day for adults — known as a ‘dismal’ (dies male means ‘bad day’ in Latin). Fishermen stayed in harbour and it was said any task begun on Childermass would go catastrophically wrong. Even doing the laundry on 28 December would guarantee a death in the family. It was also thought to be unlucky to wear anything new on this day — which does at least provide an excuse to…

Night-time and out-of-season deer culling will push the last of the ‘hill people’ out of Glencoe, warn Scottish gamekeepers. National Trust for Scotland contractors have begun the authorised shooting of deer, out of season and at night, as part of a forest regeneration scheme. Horrified gamekeepers have warned that stags exhausted by the rut will be corralled by snow in the floor of the glen, where they will be easy prey. It is unclear where or how the cull will end, as deer from the neighbouring Glen Etive and from Rannoch are expected to be sucked into the space created by the cull. “We are deeply concerned for the future of our members and their families,” said Alex Hogg, chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA). “This is a fragile…

Shooting and conservation organisations have called for a voluntary pause to the shooting of wildfowl and waders as severe winter weather bites. ‘Blocking highs’ over Greenland and Russia have forced a stream of cold air from the Arctic down over Britain, bringing a prolonged spell of cold temperatures. In the Southern Uplands, where temperatures sat below -10ºC, farmer Sarah Blackie told Shooting Times: “It has been exceptionally cold. We are busy feeding and watering livestock but the wildlife will soon really start to struggle.” Among the birds that are severely affected by cold weather are woodcock and snipe. The GWCT’s Chris Heward explained: “Woodcock are unable to feed when the ground is continually frozen and GWCT research shows that, during such periods, the average woodcock’s fat reserves allow it to…

Standing at the top of the game larder steps, the keeper leant against a wooden rail and rolled a cigarette. The lingering scent of Holland House tobacco from the squire’s cherry wood pipe had put him in the mood for a smoke. The squire and his guests always paid the game larder a visit at the day’s end. One by one they had thanked the keeper with a generous handshake, received their brace, wished him and his family a happy Christmas and, with a port-induced complexion, headed home. The keeper’s young spaniel worried a mouse that had scurried across the wooden floor. She now scratched furiously at the hole. “Whist,” he uttered under his breath; the noise was somehow spoiling the magic of the moment. She immediately left the mouse…

We have a little over seven acres of land here at Garryloop, and I often wonder what the likes of Chris Packham would make of my efforts here over almost 20 years. I have planted trees along with wildflowers and even the garden shrubs have been selected for the bees and other wildlife-friendly benefits. However, the fruit trees have had a bit of a tough time of it recently. This is not through poor soil but simply down to the deer and, to a lesser extent, brown hares. I have found that the deer have a real taste for the bark of fruit trees and particularly favour my apples and Victoria plums. Some years are worse than others, with damage usually occurring between November and January. I reckon around half…

Of all my rough-shooting permissions, Ronnie’s farm has long been one of my favourites. Other than to top-up the feeders — and the regular predator-control activities necessary during the close season — we don’t venture near the farm to shoot until late November. Although sugar beet is not as popular a break-crop as it once was, we are fortunate that a couple of our farmers are still on good terms with British Sugar. So the early season is spent with the young’uns walking-up the beet once our friendly farmers have part-cropped the fields. They leave several strategically placed strips of beet, which allows us to organise an afternoon or two of small drives, giving us older boys a few stands. Once the beet is harvested, we turn our attention to…

Recently I spent four consecutive days, apart from a Sunday halfway through, out with my dogs, my gun and my friends, searching for pleasure and sport. In their own way, these days provided lots of both. They were all different sorts of days, although they had this in common: they did not send clouds of pheasants over the Guns, they ended with modest bags and were thoroughly enjoyed by all those involved. The first of these days was at Forest Hall. The weather smiled upon us and it was a pleasure to be out under the sky with a gun and a spaniel. My performance with the Beretta can be described in very few words. On the first drive I missed a high woodcock with both barrels; later, on the…

Thomas Love Peacock, who a century ago wrote those lines about the mountain sheep being sweeter and the valley sheep fatter, once said of landscapes that their most attractive feature was unexpectedness. The same applies to shooting days. Not everyone would care to be telephoned at 9am and asked to shoot “forthwith” because someone has cried off at the last minute. They think it invidious, like those unattached bachelors who are bidden at an hour’s notice to make up a bridge four or save their hostess from “sitting down 13”. But such umbrage is stupid. We who are old and slow, and perhaps lack shooting of our own, rely — far more than some would admit — on such uncovenanted gifts of invitation. Driven partridges In the past 20 seasons,…