Innholdsfortegnelse for 8-Feb-2023 i Shooting Times & Country

Chris Packham CBE, the naturalist, nature photographer and television presenter is threatening to sue the YouTube shooting broadcaster Fieldsports Channel, which was set up by Charlie Jacoby, formerly Shooting Times’ news editor. Shooting Times has seen correspondence from Packham’s lawyers to Fieldsports Channel. According to that correspondence, the claim concerns what Packham’s lawyers describe as Fieldsports Channel conveying “the following defamatory meaning: Chris Packham has written a fake death threat letter to himself and has dishonestly claimed that it was sent to him by an anonymous member of the fieldsports community.” The alleged libel took place in a post published on Fieldsports Channel on 1 June 2022. The post has since been removed. The action follows on from similar letters sent to Country Squire Magazine, which published a disputed…

Game experienced soaring overheads throughout the 2022–23 season, yet prices to consumers managed to beat rampant food inflation. Food inflation in hospitality reached an unprecedented 24% at the end of December, whereas game prices rose between 10 to 15% on restaurant menus. In the shops, food in general was up 13.3% year on year, with game experiencing a much more muted 4.55% increase. Some of this increase has been attributed to price indexing, in which a product’s price is matched to the value of something else, which would explain the additional inflation seen in the cost of game in hospitality. The game sector has, however, proven vulnerable to many of the same pressures driving food inflation in general. British Game Assurance commercial director Mark Staples said: “Having spoken to dealers,…

If you mention the word muntjac after a couple of jars in any local Devon pub, everyone, it will seem, has a story of a sighting. The muntjac that escaped just outside of Exeter, the muntjac hit on the link road, the cousin who saw a muntjac kicked up by a pack of beagles. While muntjac in Devon may be considered on par with the Exmoor Beast in local tales, muntjac are not new to the UK. The genus Muntiacus has 12 recognized species. Reeves’ or Chinese muntjac originating in south-east China were first captured and released into Woburn Park by the 11th Duke of Bedford in the early 1900s. The Duke, while serving as the president of the Zoological Society of London, was a notorious spreader of invasive species.…

Anyone who carries out a significant amount of grey squirrel control using air rifles will know how effective peanuts are when it comes to luring these rodents away from their treetop hiding places to where they will offer a clear shot. This super-effective bait does have one serious downside, though, and that is that it’s pretty expensive — especially when you have dozens of squirrels tearing into your feeding stations. Wheat and maize are more affordable options for loading your feeders. They aren’t quite as effective as peanuts when it comes to pulling in the tree-wreckers, especially when there are other food sources available to them. But their appeal does tend to increase when the weather is cold and natural pickings are less abundant. Of course, the best way to…

The power of the volunteer is quite extraordinary and I wonder where estates would be without them. Enthusiastic volunteers are so often the main driving force behind conservation projects; river clear-ups, bird counts and tree planting, among many others. Several years ago, a team of almost 200 volunteers arrived on the estate for a company awayday. Within a few hours they had planted more than 3,500 trees and were asking what else they could do. So after a hog roast, off they set into the woods and came back later in the afternoon with close to 5,000 old tree guards from a long-established plantation. How long would that have taken estate teams on their own? Months, I would guess. Estates can deploy volunteers everywhere, from the expansive gardens of grand…

Toyota has led the way with electric vehicles for 25 years and it’s come a long way since the launch of the Prius in 1997. The Japanese manufacturer has since expanded its electric range and its latest offering is a dip into the SUV market, the all-electric bZ4X AWD. The bZ4X is available in three trim levels — Pure, Motion and Vision — and is available in two- or four-wheel drive. We’re trying the middle-spec Motion AWD which, on paper, could be the perfect blend of a town-and-country SUV. The first word that comes to mind is sleek. The verdict’s not in yet on the plastic arch trims, but the overall silhouette grabs the attention. From a certain angle, it reminds me of a mini Aston Martin DBX. While sleek,…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD The 14th of February is linked to St Valentine, patron saint of beekeepers, epileptics and happy marriages. However, National Hunt racing fans more readily associate Valentine’s with the brook of that name at Aintree, home of the Grand National. Valentine’s, a 5ft high fence with a 5ft 6in wide brook, is jumped twice in the National, acting as both the ninth and 25th obstacles of the 4m 2½f race. Originally known as the Second Brook, the fence received its moniker following the 1840 renewal. A 25/1 shot called Valentine, ridden by John Power, made all the running, leaving the field trailing in his wake. Arriving at the Second Brook, Valentine refused, yet such was his forward momentum that he still cleared the fence, albeit rear-end first.…

NEWS Alexander Darwell, the Dartmoor landowner in the news recently for successfully restricting wild camping on his land, has, according to a report in The Guardian, been warned by Natural England not to release pheasants on his ground near Dendles Wood. This wood is a surviving fragment of temperate rainforest, a rare and endangered habitat in the UK. It is protected as both a national nature reserve and as a site of special scientific interest, while it is also within the Dartmoor special area of conservation. It is directly adjacent to Darwell’s 4,000-acre Blachford Estate. Temperate rainforest is hardly natural pheasant habitat, but pheasants are said to be one of the most numerous birds in the wood. Natural England’s concern appears to be the fact that the wood is one…

Social media has erupted over the past few weeks with the news that several would-be wildfowlers may have been scammed. Having bought goose shooting days, Guns have found themselves having their days cancelled at the last minute or being stood up completely. One typical post read: “Booked one of those goose shooting mornings, arranged to meet at 6am, still sat there at 6.50am, unsure if it’s a scam or not.” Posts on Wildfowling UK and Pigeon Shooting UK Facebook groups have received hundreds of comments, with many people posting similar stories. In the majority of cases seen by ST, the money paid out for the days has yet to be refunded. If you are planning a wildfowling day with someone you have not met before,ST recommends seeking references and only…

Wildfowling Why would anyone go beyond the sea wall? That’s always been my thought process when it comes to shooting ducks. My entire shooting career has been based inside the sea wall, in a freshwater marsh that on its good days is teeming with wildfowl, snipe, plover, rails, lapwings and curlew. Here in the freshwater bog, ducks come to you, zipping over the sea wall and splashing down around you. It’s wonderful, testing shooting, and you could spend many happy lifetimes waiting for pintail or teal to materialise in the gloom. “On good days it’s teeming with snipe, plover and rails” What went on beyond the sea wall was of no concern to me. Out there, in the windswept estuary, where mud comes in its most viscous form and everything…

For my business partner Richard Gould and I, our autumn and winter is spent largely buried deep within a hedge — laying and coppicing, staking and binding. The summer months, meanwhile, involve us creating hedgerow management plans for farmers and landowners. Our plans detail the condition and health of the hedges, and we make lists of future management prescriptions and interventions that we may need to make in rotation over the next 10 years. We jot all of our findings down on paper then laboriously put these details onto a spreadsheet. On nearly every hedge noted down in every row that we fill in, the letters ‘DD’ are entered. This stands for ‘deer damage’. The height of browse lines along hedges indicate which species are the chief culprits, as regrowth…

The past few years have seen a huge change in our winter arable cropping. Winter oilseed rape, since its introduction in the 1960s, was the go-to crop alongside winter wheat for decades, but that has all changed. Historically, winter oilseed rape was an expensive crop to establish, and with the banning of neonicotinoids to control flea beetles, the cost of fertiliser, wet weather, desiccating issues and a general swing in the direction of pro-wildlife and habitat enrichment on estates and farms, it is rapidly becoming a crop of the past. Financially, I completely understand the arable farmers’ point of view. If they are going to make more money by entering into various Government schemes and diversifying their cropping plans, why would they want to struggle trying to establish a crop…

The Purdey Awards is to shooting and conservation what the Tour de France is to cycling. Established in 1999, it celebrates shoots that make outstanding contributions to conservation. The awards ceremony took place last week in the Purdey Long Room, and it was particularly gratifying to see a number of friends of ST rewarded for their efforts. Dee Ward at Rottal was highly commended with a bronze award for reaching out to those who tend to object to shooting. The Duke of Wellington, the chairman of the awards, listed the RSPB and the League Against Cruel Sports as being just two of the stakeholders he’s invited over to see grouse moor management at its best. Meanwhile, George Ponsonby, of the Great Lemhill and Greenwood Shoot, took the gold award for…

NEWS Defra has finally released full details, including actions, payment rates and timescales, of its ambitious new Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs). This wide-ranging programme of financial support for farmers and landowners aims to improve environmental sustainability and was described by Janet Hughes, the programme director for Future Farming and Countryside, as “straightforward, flexible and workable”. The Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI), which launched in pilot form in June 2022, has been expanded. This programme is designed to reduce costs, improve farm efficiency and enhance the natural environment. Pilot standards initially related to moorland and soil health for grassland and arable areas. A further six areas have now been added, including nutrient and pest management and hedgerows, with set standards for each. In addition to the SFI, Countryside Stewardship (CS) will…

With the spread of avian influenza leading to a national shortage of birds and the continuing possibility of another Covid-related lockdown, there was justifiably widespread concern for the 2022–23 game season. Consequently, there was much talk of the season being ‘different’ due to a change in emphasis from large commercial driven days to small-scale shoots. As I write, 1 February is fast approaching and thinking back to those uncertain days has made me reflect on what has been another enjoyable season. Fortunately for me, it hasn’t differed greatly from any other year. When given the opportunity, I do shoot the occasional large driven day. But, much as I enjoy them, my heart lies in small, walked-up, shooting-for-the-pot-style days. I would describe these sort of days as being grassroots, which are…

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Scottish red deer hinds are, from 16 February, now enjoying their first legalised close season under the Deer (Scotland) Act 1959. A measure long overdue, but what a pity that roe deer are still excluded. It seems that we can shortly expect some similar form of legislation on behalf of English red deer, which are at present unprotected. Many estates always held to an ‘unwritten’ law as to close seasons; I personally finished hindstalking by the end of January. As far as my hindstalking went, if the early part of it was mild, the latter half made up for it. And yet we did not have anything like the depth of snow we had last season, at least around the Caledonian Canal area of Invernessshire. To our east, and in…