Innholdsfortegnelse for 29-Mar-2023 i Shooting Times & Country

The Scottish parliament has introduced the much-anticipated Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill, which will now be read by MSPs and then voted upon. The bill’s key proposals include making the use of glue traps an offence, increasing the powers of animal inspectors, the licensing of all bird culling on grouse moors and the introduction of a muirburn licence, without which no burning may occur. Environment Minister Mairi McAllan said: “The illegal killing of Scotland’s magnificent birds of prey cannot be tolerated. This bill will seek to tackle the destructive minority who would continue to commit these wildlife crimes.” Scottish Land & Estates’ chief executive Sarah-Jane Laing called the bill a “legislative sledgehammer”, adding: “This legislation was originally considered to address the issue of raptor persecution — even though Scotland…

Stalking optics Lessons are often best learned the hard way, something my father never tired of telling me. I think I may be morphing into him because I frequently hear myself offering the same advice to my own, now grownup, children and my grandchildren. Many years ago, having bought a rifle and paired it with a budget scope, I found myself in a tower in deepest West Sussex, having paid a not inconsiderable sum to be there, waiting for what would be my first fallow buck. Said buck duly obliged, emerging out of the trees in the half-light as fallow are prone to do. I eased the rifle to my shoulder for what should have been an easy shot, only to be confronted by blackness. What followed was some serious…

“The territory in northern Spain was a vein of pure gold for premium roebucks” The dream of shooting a gold-medal roebuck had already led Frank Olsen to Romania a couple of times. On the first occasion, he didn’t get a sniff at a deer worthy of any honour, but his second trip to the country — which is famed for its specimen beasts — was a different story. Frank bagged a magnificent beast. The guides on the trip were certain the buck would score gold, but making a judgement in the field is tricky. Ultimately it was assessed at 126 points: a handsome silver-medal roebuck, for sure — and very much appreciated — but still four points shy of Frank’s deep ambition. Before long, the golden dream had lured the…

It was a bitter day; the wind was strong and it carried with it the threat of snow. The avenue of ancient stone walls channelled Tawny, Dotty and me to the grassy field on the other side, with rabbits to the left and rabbits to the right keeping both dogs on their toes. The silence was abruptly broken by my gargantuan polecat hob, Gator, scratching urgently at the lid of his ferret box. It is a sound that never fails to raise my hackles and transport me back to when the excitement and anticipation of a day out was often better than the actual ferreting itself. It was a time when I was constantly questioning what I was doing and the decisions I was making. Tens of thousands of words…

When I took the first steps in my gamekeeping career way back in the 1960s, there is no doubt it was a much simpler life. No internet, no social media, no shoot sabs, a plentiful game market with decent prices — the list goes on. There were also very few diseases in gamebirds: the old irritations of coccidiosis, gapeworm and blackhead — and that was about it. The troubles, though, had already begun, as intensification was under way. With it came many of the problems that the poultry industry had produced following mass intensive rearing of all breeds of poultry and ducks. I use the word ‘produced’ creatively, as the diseases had always been there. But intensification, allied to poor hygiene at times, allowed them to proliferate. Excessive numbers of…

NEWS As reported last week (News, 22 March), a ban on the import of some hunting trophies into Britain became a reality with a unanimous vote in favour of the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill after a Commons debate on 17 March. Introduced as a Private Member’s Bill by Crawley MP Henry Smith, the bill was given Government support as a result of a commitment in Boris Johnson’s 2019 Conservative Party election manifesto to ban imports from trophy hunting of endangered animals. It received support from all sides as members queued to congratulate those who campaigned for the new law, in particular anti-hunt activist Eduardo Gonçalves. Defra Minister Trudy Harrison was almost breaking with emotion when she told MPs that Cecil the lion had not died in vain. The debate…

Bones were scattered all over the ground. This was sure to be where the two foxes were dining at least — but I felt pretty sure this was also their home. I was reminded of the scene from the film The Ghost and the Darkness, where the characters find the cave of the two men-eating lions. These foxes had been regularly killing lambs a little further down the valley. The farmer had seen the pair on several occasions; each time they would quickly make their way up the steep hillside for the safety of this crater. The local hillsides are dotted with such craters, created in World War II when enemy bombers — damaged by allied fire and returning from raids over London — would drop their remaining bombs before…

I met an old Yemeni friend in London after many years of being out of touch. He is an Ashraf, a family who claim descent from the Prophet Muhammed. His grandfather Sharif Hussein was a great friend of my father’s and his best friend Peter Davey, a political officer during British rule in Yemen. During our conversation I remembered the saluki, Haddab. It’s well known that many Muslims dislike dogs, which they consider dirty, but salukis are an exception. Traditionally, it is not done to sell a saluki, and Haddab was a gift to Davey, who first saw him in Beihan, a sultanate on the edge of the Empty Quarter desert. Haddab and Davey became inseparable and they would go out hunting hares and bustards in the desert. In those…

Buy with confidence OUR VERDICT On a recent quail hunting trip to North Carolina (A sporting quarry to make you quail, 22 March), I was lucky enough to shoot not one but two different guns with 28-bore titanium barrels. The first was a limited-edition Longthorne Valkyrie trigger-plate action weighing 6lb 4oz, and the other was a sidelock over-and-under weighing in at 5lb 2oz. Both were incredible in their own way, but it’s the sidelock we are going to look at today. The Longthorne sidelock has been around for some years in 12, 16, 20 and 28-bore and has seen some development over that time. As issues arose around any aspect of the design, Longthorne has worked to iron those out with slight changes here or there, including coating the majority…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD On 29 March 1869, the architect Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens was born. Among the dozens of his notable installations, houses such as Great Dixter, Knebworth and Munstead Wood are considered the pinnacle of his craft. His civic buildings are similarly regarded, including the Indian Parliament and the Australian National War Memorial. However, it is in London where Sir Edwin’s work receives daily recognition. Military personnel, whether marching or riding down Whitehall, give a smart ‘eyes right’ to the Cenotaph – a Portland stone pylon draped in the flags of the Union and the services. Since its erection in 1919, it has been the focal point for Remembrance Day parades. Despite later calls for grander updates, the monument has retained its simple lines, memorialising rather than glorifying…

A move to eradicate red deer from the Hebridean island of South Uist (News, 8 March) has been decisively defeated. Members of the community-controlled company, Stòras Uibhist, which owns the South Uist estate, had proposed the measure in response to an increasing problem with ticks and damage to crofts and gardens. Deer management has been a contentious issue on the island for some time. However, as tension has increased between the company board and some of its members, the debate over how to manage the animals has become increasingly rancorous. The motion to eradicate the deer was debated at an extraordinary general meeting of the company, held in a local sports centre. More than 500 people voted on the proposal, with 140 voting in favour of eradication and 379 voting…

NEWS The UK’s increasing deer population is as much an opportunity as a challenge. That is the message from stalkers and rural residents. The inexorable rise in deer numbers has been observed by country people for some years, and now a drive to increase woodland cover has brought the issue to public and political attention. Oxfordshire farmer James Whittle told Shooting Times: “Fallow deer have become an ever-increasing problem for us; we lose significant amounts of maize and other crops to trampling and grazing. Over the time I have been here, the population has risen significantly.” Recently published figures suggest that there are now more deer in the UK than there were when William the Conqueror invaded in 1066. It’s estimated that more than two million deer now live in…

The .270 Winchester cartridge was first made 100 years ago and, in our modern age, a century feels like a very long time. It seems everything that existed in 1923 has now been rendered obsolete; optics, vehicles and communications have all radically improved, so surely the century-old .270 has been surpassed too. Or has it? When it comes to calibre, one of the most important considerations is the intended use, and the intended use of the .270 is medium to large game. For me that means sika, fallow and red. In Ireland there was a time when the largest calibre you could licence was .22. This changed in 1994 following a legal battle to allow a maximum calibre of .270 Win. This remained the maximum calibre an individual could licence…

Flask fillers Having first appeared in its modern form sometime in the 18th century, the hip flask was, for a while at least, the reserve of the gentry. This is probably because they could afford them and afford to fill them, as well as being in possession of leisure time, unlike most of the lowly peasants. Drinking in the field has always been a hot potato — relying on people to be sensible and not overindulge clearly has potential issues. On almost every sporting day out there will be that moment when a little nip from the hip flask is at its most appropriate. Perhaps there is a lull in proceedings or maybe after a particularly bitter session flanking in the wind. But what is in the hip flask these…

Soldier Palmer The start of the new year brought a major change of circumstances and opportunity on the farm. A piece of land came up for sale across the boundary and, after a terrific amount of wrangling back and forth, I was finally able to buy it. In agricultural terms, it’s no great powerhouse of productivity. One half of the 60-acre patch is a knuckle of hard granite and the remains of an old Victorian quarry. The other half is a wet meadow next to a heavily drained and badly degraded watercourse, which is more like a canal than a river. It doesn’t look like much, but three pairs of curlew come to breed there every year and I have been looking enviously at this place for a long time.…

This, the last of three articles that deal with the edible creatures caught on the seashore, is about those bivalves that live in the sand and the mud — the clams. The part of the seabed that is accessible on foot, the intertidal zone, is a difficult place for creatures to live due to the trials of wave action, so the calmer waters of estuary and bay are where most clams will be found. Collect them on an ebb tide from an exposed seabed or, on a calm day, in up to 1ft of water. Check permissions and landing sizes with the local authorities. With a life spent in hiding, clams are not always easy to find, but the distinctive marks they make in the sand or mud will often…

A shooting season that leaves no vivid memories must be abnormally humdrum. Although this last one was, for me, sadly curtailed, it produced four pheasants that will linger in my mind’s eye. The first was a hen on a dry, sunny day in late October when I was hunting a kale field with black labrador Rhuna, nearly 14, and golden retriever Lulu, not yet three. Lulu’s exotic Kennel Club name is Holway Sonata, but her arrival in the Atkinson family who bred her coincided with a Eurovision Song Contest won by a beautiful blonde called Lulu. Therefore Sonata, being both blonde and beautiful, was nicknamed Lulu. A good enough name — was it not that of Musetta’s dog in La Bohème? — and much easier to use than Sonata. Anyway,…