Innholdsfortegnelse for 5-Apr-2023 i Shooting Times & Country

I don’t want to be accused of pot calling the kettle here, but last weekend, while drinking a coffee with my new cocker pup, I had a bit of a panic. I realised that round about us, there were four other cockers. One lovely Portuguese man even detained me for 20 minutes with a long tale of taking his dog to Porto, where they were going on holiday. Talking of tales, or tails anyway, my dog was the only one that was docked and I’m fairly certain the only one too who will ever work cover, put snipe up and sit by a flightpond at dusk. It’s not that I have anything against those pet cocker owners, but are they actually doing anything for the good of the breed? I…

One observation from Holts’ sale in March was the remarkable statistic that 91% of lots were sold on the day. The auction house is really powering on as demand from the US in particular boosts a generally flagging market. Classic rifles are in big demand, with Lee Speed models (made famous in film by Val Kilmer, as Col Patterson, in The Ghost and the Darkness) doing particularly well. The Lee Speed was a Sporting version of the military Lee-Enfield service rifle. Chambered in .303 British (as the Americans call it), it is a classic rifle for which hunting grade ammunition is still available. It is reliable, evocative of the glory days of African hunting and apparently much sought-after. Holts estimated the rifles they had variously between £500 and £900. They…

It has the potential to be the next bird flu or myxomatosis, scientists warn. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) affects deer populations and is already rampant in parts of the USA and Scandinavia. CWD is a highly infectious ‘prion’ disease, meaning it affects the brain by causing malformed proteins to replicate themselves. It is similar to mad cow disease but so far targets deer, elk and moose only. In the UK it is a notifiable disease, even though the risk to humans is extremely low. Despite that, the World Health Organisation currently recommends excluding venison from infected animals entering the human food chain, and therein lies the greatest threat to our deer businesses. So far, there have been no cases of CWD in the UK, but experts believe that cannot last…

The most enjoyable way to spend a day I fully agree that quail shooting over dogs is a wonderful and most enjoyable way to spend a day (A sporting quarry to make you quail, 22 March). The most exciting part is when a covey explodes in all directions. The Gun on the left shoots between 10 and 12 o’clock and the Gun on the right between 12 and 2 o’clock, with the remaining area left for the swing, to keep it safe at all times. The trick is to concentrate on only one bird. If you see more, all are missed without fail. Quail accelerate at an incredible pace. This wears them out and good plantations will not pursue a covey once it has been flushed, to give the birds…

A couple of weeks ago I attended a rural crime seminar, which was organised by a very driven West Mercia police sergeant from our local Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT). The aim of the meeting was to improve further the relationship between the SNT and rural businesses, and to raise awareness of their ongoing crime prevention tactics and the importance of reporting incidents. Rural crime is nothing new and it is easy to fall into the trap of assuming things are getting worse, when things are simply not getting any better. There have been incidents here for as long as I can remember; thankfully, not a huge number and we are far from the levels of rural crime being experienced by some of my gamekeeping colleagues whose estates border large towns,…

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…

I was reading a fascinating new book called The Inuit Way — an account of an expedition from Greenland across the Canadian Arctic — when I stumbled across the following passage. “A bigger impact, I was told, had been the in the 1970s when Greenpeace led a campaign against the import of sealskins to the EU. While its intentions were positive, its implementation was naïve and ill thought through…the campaign was deemed a success by the broader international community at the time. They had targeted mass-scale commercial seal hunting, but they had failed to consult many of the smaller communities that relied on sealskin exports to support a subsistence way of life. “For many Inuit in Qaanaaq who lived in modern Danish housing, with the accompanying heating and water bills…

JOIN In an Oxfordshire pub recently, a well-known pigeon shooter and farmer said he reckoned that everybody who shoots should join the RSPB. Rather than conservationists falling out, why not sit with them and ask them questions, he reasoned. It was a very interesting way of looking at things. Sometimes you’ve got to think creatively. After all, a former secretary of the RSPB (the CEO essentially) became Editor of this magazine. Admittedly, that was a while back. PLAN Make plans for Easter – why not get out stalking or cook that long and messy game recipe you’ve been thinking about for a while? The ST team were at a famous Norfolk wildfowling spot recently and the amount of rubbish on the beach was quite extraordinary. Why not get a few…

British Game Assurance recently attended the annual Hospitality, Restaurant & Catering show at ExCeL London, a captive audience of professional chefs and kitchen operators to whom we could broadcast the value of game. The day was a qualified success. Our director, Louisa Clutterbuck, met many companies interested in working with game. More significantly, however, Louisa came away with a warning to share. Most hospitality pros see feathered game as a creative twist on chicken, and time and again Louisa was told that most of the processed chicken that enters UK professional kitchens comes from Thailand. “This is one of the biggest obstacles to game” This is one of the biggest obstacles to getting game into restaurants. We are promoting an assured British product into spaces that have not even committed…

The daylight seeps in earlier, the morning chorus has grown louder and the trees are laden with buds. The early days of spring are here and the doe season has almost come to an end. Though it’s been a good one, it’s also been a long one and I’m looking forward to a summer of roebucks. But there is something to be said about stalking in March. It’s a good opportunity for deer managers to mop up any individuals that have come out this side of winter in poor condition. It’s also grand for its foraging opportunities, as March often marks the return of the wild garlic and a fair few other treats. These past few weeks I’ve rarely finished a stalk without a pocket full of something or other.…

Quiet, accurate and comparatively low-powered, the air rifle is as close as you can get to the perfect tool for controlling small pests around the confines of a farmyard. Many of us served our airgunning apprenticeships by sniping rats, feral pigeons and corvids that were making a nuisance of themselves around barns and other farm buildings. Although I now have the privilege of being able to target rabbits and pigeons on open fields and in mature woodland, I still do a lot of farmyard pest control and I still enjoy it. There is much satisfaction to be gleaned from helping farming friends when pests are causing problems around the yard. There are also times when it’s simply nice to have somewhere sheltered to shoot. A farm close to where I…

There’s controversy in the USA, where two of the National Audubon Society’s chapters want to drop the name Audubon. The National Audubon Society, the USA’s equivalent of the RSPB, was established in 1905, taking its name from the pioneering ornithologist best known for his work The Birds of America. However, John James Audubon, apart from being an avid collector of birds (he painted the specimens he shot), was, according to the society’s own website, “a complex and troubling character who did despicable things”, including “enslaving Black people”. There’s an increasing belief that using Audubon’s name taints the society, and there are many who would like to see it renamed. There are also a considerable number of members who believe that a name change isn’t necessary, as we shouldn’t judge Audubon…

Information called for in kite killing The shooting community was angered last week when news broke that a red kite had been found shot in Grantown-on-Spey. The species was extinct in Scotland in the 19th century but is now booming after various successful reintroductions. The red kite is a protected species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Some conservationists and gamekeepers believe that red kite numbers are too high in places, which is starting to have an impact on prey species. However, the general mood was one of great frustration. Dee Ward, a grouse moor owner in the Angus Glens, said that this “sort of stuff hurts us all”. He echoed Scottish Land & Estates and called for anybody with any information on who shot the bird to get…

At the time of writing, the skies are blue and there is a hard frost on the ground, which — after a few grey, rainy days — makes for a positive start to the week. But best of all, the trills of curlew and the synthesiser-like calls of peewits fill the air. There are oystercatchers peeping loudly as they fly past, and all our garden birds are chattering. My mind always turns to the work our gamekeepers do at this time of year in relentless vermin control. Checking the New Zealand DOC (Department of Conservation) traps on trap lines, setting snares for foxes, recording buzzard and gull predation, not to mention the grey squirrel and rabbit control that has to be kept on top of and the nights spent looking…

Fieldsports and conservation have always gone hand in hand, and they have more in common than some naturalists might care to admit In 1931, as the world began slipping inexorably into warfare, a book was published in the UK that was to have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences. Max Nicholson, the founder of the British Trust for Ornithology, launched his “practical guide to field observation”, The Art of Bird Watching. In a new hardback, Passions for Birds: Science, Sentiment, and Sport, Professor Sean Nixon describes Nicholson’s work as a “manifesto for a new kind of birdwatcher. At its core was a plea for a more organised and scientific approach. No longer should the birdwatcher be someone ‘who rambles about the countryside until chance puts something in his way’. Rather, they should…

Gundogs HERE’S A QUESTION I can’t answer: why, when a labrador is crossed with almost any other breed, do the resulting puppies invariably show the greatest similarity to their labrador parent in both looks and temperament? Over the years I’ve met lots of labrador cross-breeds, some the result of accidental matings, others deliberate, but almost always the cross-breed dog looks much more like a labrador than anything else. Take springadors for example, the classic cross between Britain’s two most popular gundog breeds. Assuming that the cross is between a black labrador and a springer, the chances are high that the offspring will be solid black, though often with a splash of white on the chest. The texture of the coat is most likely to resemble a labrador, even the shape…

If you read part one (Making it pay? It’s a load of pollack, 8 March), you saw me brave the waves and head out to sea. With some success, my freezer was filled with whiting. Whiting is delicious; fried, deep-fried, baked, in fish pies or even a kedgeree. However, three weeks later, the whiting is out and I am sick of it anyway. My next protein hit and freezer filler was supposed to be venison, but bad weather put paid to that and our household returned to pheasant. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I went out to ‘brunch’. I’m not a general grump but neither am I a big fan of combining an excellent breakfast with a disappointing lunch. Which, let’s face it, is what brunch is and that…

Pheasant Post-shooting season, I tend to have a lot of pheasant vacuum-packed in my freezer. It’s an excellent substitute to chicken and can also be a cheaper option if you can perform the plucking and preparation process yourself. When the weather starts to warm up I tend to do a lot of grill recipes, and with pheasant it would be hard to beat a tasty set of skewers straight from the barbecue. In particular, these delicious yakitori pheasant skewers should be on the top of everyone’s barbecue list this summer. Of course, there are lots and lots of different marinades to experiment with, and honestly this is all part of the fun. Quite often I go through a jerk pheasant phase as I absolutely love the strong, spicy flavours. Mixing…