Innholdsfortegnelse for 11-Jan-2023 i Shooting Times & Country

A new row has broken out over one of Scotland’s most politicised deer herds. The deer that roam the Assynt Peninsula in Sutherland have long been a source of tension between local residents, a large national charity and government agency NatureScot. The Assynt Crofters’ Trust, an organisation that undertook a pioneering community buyout in the early 1990s, has led a determined campaign to protect the Assynt deer herd and to maintain it at a level where it supports jobs on their estate and on the neighbouring traditional sporting estates. Meanwhile, the John Muir Trust, which owns the Quinag Estate, has found support from NatureScot in its effort to reduce deer numbers dramatically. The controversy has rumbled on for almost a decade. However, the John Muir Trust has now left the…

Welsh government agency Natural Resources Wales (NRW) has been accused of trying to inflict “death by 1,000 cuts” on wildfowling in Wales. The accusation was made by long-standing Welsh wildfowler, Shooting Times contributor and GWCT staff member Mike Swan. It follows the seemingly arbitrary decision by NRW to remove pintail from the quarry list on the Morlais Valley Wildfowlers’ ground. Mr Swan explained that “wildfowling is not about killing ducks so much as a magical, spiritual experience of attempting to outwit some real wild birds in their own environment, and as part of this most of us value pintail more highly than any other duck. They are the wildest and most challenging, as well as being the most delicious.” The club has harvested a modest average of 22.7 pintail between…

Many of us can wake up on a shoot morning, pop our heads outside to look at the weather and almost instantly know whether our birds are going to fly or not. That’s not to say that they won’t fly if the weather conditions are less than perfect, it is just that they do tend to fly better on some days than others. My preferred days are dry, cold and grey, with a cloudy sky and a light wind. If I open the door and it is one of those mornings, I know the birds are going to go. Any wind wants to be with you and not too strong. Much over 15mph and the wind can actually work against you, throwing the birds in odd directions and making things…

Sport abroad A good friend of mine, Jan Fiala, recently invited me out to his estate in the Czech Republic. The main purpose of the trip was to help Jan and his team develop new ways of carcass preparation and larder etiquette, but also to try my hand at some European stalking. On the way to their estate, 45 miles outside of Prague, we discussed the region’s stalkable species; red, roe, fallow and sika, as well as wild boar and mouflon. I was particularly hopeful of taking the latter. I went out a few times on my own, covering large areas of ground, but although I saw many signs of wild boar, I never spotted one. I saw plenty of mouflon on the other hand but they were nearly impossible…

I smiled the other day at an advent calendar produced by some witty journalist. Instead of a bauble or Christmas tree behind each window, there were details of which public-sector body was going to be on strike that day. The strikes have caused a considerable level of disruption to everyday lives — as, of course, they are intended to do — and it seems unfair that they most inconvenience those who have no influence on the outcome. I have found it increasingly difficult to empathise with the strikers, especially when they are allied with an ever-decreasing level of service and standard of workmanship. Waiting times for public-sector services seem to be growing exponentially and, even when there aren’t strikes, train services are cancelled left, right and centre. One public-sector body…

It seems an age, almost, since I last fished in anything like a normal water. Two recent visits to the River Nidd near my home found the water too high for perfection, whereas in earlier times it had been too low to get on to terms with the grayling. By hounding one small piece of quiet water, however, I did manage to come home with five modestly sized grayling and I am eagerly awaiting the chance to get on to terms with some more. In the interim, I have not been idle. There have been lots of office chores to attend to before the year end and I have managed to sneak away for three very interesting days’ shooting. For the first my wife, Grace, and I drove down to…

NEWS A hunt saboteur has escaped jail after being convicted of an attack on an 81-year-old man. Alexandra Dennis was fined over the attack on retired fine art consultant Richard de Pelet. The brutal assault, which sent the victim crashing to the ground, occurred in Dorset in December 2021 and took more than a year to come to trial. A shocking video shows the victim picking up an object from the ground. His assailant then runs up to him, seizes the object, identified as a camera lens, and forcibly strikes him on the head with it. Mr de Pelet then falls to the ground, where he lies for several seconds before being helped up. Dennis was fined £959 for the attack, of which £100 will be paid to Mr de…

Landscape-scale measures to tackle predation are the only hope for the curlew. This is the stark conclusion of a new scientific paper. Scientists from the British Trust for Ornithology, the RSPB and the University of East Anglia studied 80 pairs of curlew at eight locations across Breckland in Norfolk. The birds were nesting on lowland grassland and arable farms, and the scientists found that out of 136 nests, 86% failed due to predation — with foxes being the chief culprit. The scientists looked at what strategies were effective for increasing the numbers of young to fledge from each nest. They found that when nests could be fenced with predator-proof fencing they were more likely to succeed but that it was difficult to get curlew to nest inside the fenced areas.…

Through the season I had been seeing a surprising number of woodcock in the most unlikely of locations, but had thus far kept my powder dry. It had been unseasonably warm and I did not feel the true migratory fall had got to us. So, after the huge moon at the start of December and a prolonged patch of hard frosts and clear night skies, the time of the wondrous wader felt upon us. The week had held at a chilling-5ºC, but rather than hide away I craved to be out in the crisp silence of the freeze, gun in hand and dog at heel. Saturday could not come too soon and as the sun glowed over the blue horizon, I hit a road that glistened with black ice and…

This is a prime time of year for a pigeon shooter. Not in terms of numbers but rather that we can employ all three shooting methods — decoying, roosting and flighting — to control the numbers causing crop damage. Each is highly effective if carried out correctly, during the right conditions and if you get the timing right. Weather plays a huge part in dictating the way pigeons behave and I spend a lot of time studying it. This is more important than ever in the winter months, and if you want to have success in the field then you have to get this right. For decoying, a perfect wind is around 15mph up to 25mph max. No wind spells disaster as the birds will remain flocked and travel as…

SsangYong launched the Musso pickup in 2018. It’s recently undergone another facelift with a long-wheelbase (LWB) version being added to the range. The Musso is available in four specs; the entry-level Ex, the Rebel, the higher-spec Saracen and the new LWB Rhino, which is the one we have on test. From the front, it certainly looks like a beast, with its massive bumper, black grille and bonnet. The ruggedness is paired with sleek, modern lights and 17in alloy wheels. From the side, the Rhino looks a bit low slung at the back and rather like an estate car with the roof cut off. I would prefer it with a canopy. But it has a reasonable ground clearance at 220mm — lower, certainly, than some competitors but it should be adequate…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD On 11 January 1954, meteorologist George Cowling gave the world’s first televised weather forecast. The BBC dedicated five minutes of airtime to the former Bomber Command crew member’s inspired climatic guesswork. Cowling concluded with: “Tomorrow will be rather windy, a good day to hang out the washing.” In this instance he was correct, as much of the country endured near-gale-force winds. As readers of a certain vintage will remember, not all TV weather forecasters are as accurate. In 1987, Michael Fish on breakfast television dismissed a viewer’s concern that a hurricane was approaching with a cursory: “Don’t worry, there isn’t!” That evening, the ‘Great Storm’ broke. An estimated 15 million trees were lost and countless homes plunged into darkness as power systems failed. Storm damage totalled…

Shooting Times has launched an investigation into an alleged ‘cover up’ of a serious safety incident at a gundog trial late last year. Readers contacted Shooting Times to express concern after a member of the gallery was allegedly shot and injured at a spaniel trial in mid-December. No statement concerning the event was issued by the Kennel Club or by the trial organisers, and readers said they were concerned about what they called a “cover up”. The Kennel Club refused to confirm any details of the incident when contacted by Shooting Times, instead issuing a short statement. This read: “We are following the robust processes that we have in place, further to an incident at a spaniel trial in Lincolnshire in December. We are unable to comment further at this…

NEWS A fresh bird flu crisis may be looming for gamebird supply as the outbreak in France shows no signs of abating and key gamebird-producing areas remain the epicentre of the spread. Despite radical measures by the French government, the most deadly form of bird flu — high-pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) — has continued to tear through poultry units in the country’s north-west. The latest figures show that there have been 256 proven positive cases in France since August last year. This puts the country on track for its worst-ever bird flu season. Particularly worrying for the UK shooting community is the continuing heavy concentration of cases in gamebird-rearing areas. France’s largest gamebird producer, L’envol de Retz, is based in Loire-Atlantique, a department that has confirmed 12 cases. This alone…

The marsh was as silent as I’ve ever known it to be. A distant brent called with a guttural ‘unk unk’ and the choking yelp of a herring gull seemed to be the estuary’s answer. But neither bird could be seen in the pre-dawn blackness and, besides their far-off calls, the wind and the water, the saltings and the frozen splashes seemed lifeless under a suffocating frost. Many years ago, a veteran wildfowler told me about a flight he’d once had on the point of land that protrudes into the estuary where I live and where I now stood, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness and listening for signs of life. “It was bitterly cold,” he remembered. “The weather had been in the north-east for weeks. The whole…

Pembrokeshire is lifting with woodcock. The recent baltic weather has pushed them in their droves to the county in search of unfrozen ground. Despite being known as the ‘snipe of the woods’, I’ve been flushing woodcock from the garden and adjoining scrubby field on an almost daily basis, something I haven’t done since the cold winter of 2010/11 when I was just a schoolboy. There is a little stream that runs through the garden that, even in the hardest frosts, prevents scraps of land from freezing. Teal and snipe are frequent visitors, and it makes sense for the woodcock to be feeding here too. As for nearby covers, I dare not venture into them for fear of causing disturbance before we shoot them, but I’d guess they are bursting with…

It has been a long time coming, but the grey squirrels have finally started to take a serious interest in my feeding stations. The sudden rise in activity follows a long quiet spell caused by a bumper crop of beechmast and acorns in my locality. The simple fact was that squirrels had little reason to visit my feeders when they had such an abundance of natural food available. Things changed quite dramatically during the prolonged cold spell through the early and middle part of December. The sub-zero temperatures coincided with the inevitable reduction in natural pickings, and the result was that the squirrels started to hit my feeding stations very hard. The tree-wrecking rodents actually hit my feeders much harder than I had expected. One feeding station produced bags of…

Celebrating our best gunshops If I am ever in need of any retail therapy I head for Leyburn, a small market town at the foot of the Yorkshire Dales, where in 1985 Gilbert Fenwick established Gilsan Sports. Gilbert was an all-round fieldsportsman, shooting game and clays and he was a fine hand with a rod, too. His experience served his customers well, as Gilbert was able to pass on his knowledge to those who needed any guidance when purchasing an item for their chosen pastime. Although it may not be ‘old’ compared to some of the well-established names, Gilsans has become very much a place to go for the majority of gamekeepers and those with any sporting needs in the north. As Gilbert’s son Simon joined the business, the store…