Innholdsfortegnelse for 31-May-2023 i Shooting Times & Country

“What does a keeper’s job entail?” It’s a simple question, though the answer is anything but. I suspect that if you asked 200 people, some would tell you they had no idea, a few might mention pheasants, and I have no doubt that there would also be some pretty negative stuff. Last week, I had the privilege of visiting the headkeeper at Arundel in West Sussex. The grey partridge shooting there is as good as it comes, but what really makes the place exceptional is how far the keepers’ remit extends. They rear curlew, there are skylarks everywhere and lapwings in abundance. Charlie Mellor, the headkeeper, is leading the charge to save some of Britain’s most endangered birds. His job is vital and the evident passion he has for what…

LETTER OF THE WEEK How can we protect Scotland’s grouse? I attended the recent one-day symposium at which your contributor Patrick Laurie was both authoritative and generally amusing. Learning things from all speakers, I was impressed by the knowledge in the room and the joined-up, empirically based view of regional habitat and species conservation. However, I left feeling that the best intentions, scientific study, hands-on measured and proven experience will be insufficient to counter prejudicial regulation. I was amazed at the way in which walked-up grouse shooting has been ’captured’ in pending Hollyrood regulation, which had primarily been concerned with driven grouse. This spirit of making the best of a bad situation, improving flawed regulation rather than resisting its every tenant, this decorum and high-ground moral sensibility will not afford…

Liam Bell is headkeeper on a family-owned estate in South Shropshire and a keen naturalist We are just about to start planting our game cover. This year, in stark contrast to last year when we were worried about a lack of moisture, we have had to delay the planting by a week or so to give the ground time to dry out. The maize was due to go in about now anyway, and if we were to go by calendar dates and soil temperature we would probably be a little early to drill the small-seed crops. We have, however, decided to plant the cereal and millet mixes now instead of holding off for another three or four weeks until it is warmer. We’re working on the principle that it is…

Rough shooting A good friend of mine, who I won’t name for fear of embarrassment, has been shooting for many years, spending much of his time standing on a peg and plucking high birds from the sky. When he’s on form, he has an excellent ability to connect with pheasants that others won’t even raise a gun to. I was therefore excited and full of expectation when he accepted an invitation to come for a low-key rough day last season. We’d be out with some spaniels, exploring some hedgerows, then mooching across some boggy land and there’d be some woodland in the mix too. We’d have half a dozen shots and hopefully take home a handful of assorted game. There was a problem though; when it came to it, he…

Big John drew back with a little gasp, ‘My gracious, look at that!’ Robin, who was close on his heels, stopped dead. ‘What’s the matter, have you seen somebody?’ ‘No, rabbits, millions of ’em!’ “As far as the eye could see rabbits were dotted everywhere; on the riding edge, among the bushes, on the short green grass of the ride itself. Some were busy feeding, others sat up washing themselves like cats, or chasing each other in circles. The boys had never seen so many before.” As a boy, I remember reading these words from BB’s wonderful children’s novel Brendon Chase with disbelief. Millions of rabbits in Britain? Surely not. Although just starting my shooting career, I was yet to mark the ‘rabbit’ column of my gamebook. My native Pembrokeshire…

Gundogs I STARTED MY shooting career as a rough-shooting pot hunter, an apprenticeship that affected my attitude to game for the rest of my life. Woodpigeons were my staple quarry. None were wasted: I used to pluck and dress surplus birds to sell to friends, the revenue raised paying for more cartridges. Pheasants and woodcock rarely featured in the bag; if they did they were never sold but were always cooked with some ceremony. In later years I became involved with working and training my spaniels, but using dead game as training dummies never felt right. There was something intrinsically wrong with using a pheasant, partridge or duck that I had shot for retrieving practice. Game was something to be both respected and valued, so chucking it about like a…

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…

NEWS EMAIL The Gamekeepers Welfare Trust is creating a gallery of the tweeds worn across the gamekeeping community. The charity is asking all those in gamekeeping professions to send a square sample of their tweed, or a close-up photo, to be included in an online gallery. The charity plans to update the gallery annually, but longer term it aims to create a tweed quilt for display. CEO Helen Benson said: “Tweed is such an iconic material for the gamekeeping family. It’s been the hardy, practical stuff of working life for many years.” Email enquiries@thegamekeeperswelfaretrust.com ATTEND The World Gunmakers’ Evening returns for 2023 on Wednesday, 8 November at Armoury House in London. Originally founded in 2015, the event brings the very best gunmakers and shooting brands from around the globe together…

There has been a significant increase in the venison cull in England this year, doubling from 350,000 to 700,000 due to a 10% rise in the deer population during Covid. The venison market has already been affected by the increased supply, leading to decreased prices. However, it remains to be seen whether these lower costs will be passed on to the consumer. As game meat producers, we need to adapt our strategies to encourage people to eat more venison. Accessible We have recently partnered with Wylde Market, which connects hunters directly with consumers and charges only a small fee. This platform can make venison more accessible and affordable to consumers, as the hunters themselves set the price for the meat. If you’re interested, check them out to get involved. So…

Charlie Blance is a stalker, fishing gillie and conservationist working across Scotland Last Friday, I was out stalking in one of my favourite forests — it was a wee bit cloudy, the sky a pale shade of pinky-grey. Golden beams of sun broke through here and there, the light of which illuminated the insects that lazily drifted by in the windless air. I was hoping to pick up a big-bodied buck that I had seen haunting the abandoned site of a house that once stood in the forest; though no remnants of the actual building remained, its garden was still noticeable. It was a wide space encircled with willow and still lush with grass, a small trickling burn meandering through — it was a perfect spot for a mature buck…

Judging a field trial is a challenging experience, especially for those who are doing so for the first time. The Kennel Club has long offered a helpful Guide for Field Trial Judges, which you can find on line on the club’s website. I would recommend competing handlers to read it too, as it’s invaluable to know what the judges should be thinking and doing. You might be amused to note that judges are forbidden from smoking and drinking alcohol when presiding over a trial, so that tempting sloe gin at lunch is strictly off limits. The guide has recently been updated, with a whole new section on social media. It points out: “Their ease of use and pervasiveness make them attractive channels of communication. However, these tools also hold the…

I am not a pescatarian, and with both my past forays into discovering which sport provides most bang for your buck being positively fish-based, it was time to find some proper red meat. In the UK, this means venison. Venison comes from the Latin verb venari (to hunt) and the old French venesoun, meaning “meat of a game animal”. When the Normans invaded England in 1066, King Harold lost his eye and William the Conqueror took the throne, bringing his language with him. French was, in fact, the official language of England until 1362. Interestingly, venison was a sort of catch-all word to describe hares, rabbits, boar and other game that landed on the plate of the early British monarchs. But of course venison is now taken to mean the…

Getting together on our glorious moors Last week, Tarquin Millington-Drake, the sporting photographer and fishing agent, took a varied group of rewilding, shooting and conservation interests up to a grouse moor in Yorkshire to discuss everything from collaboration to what people want out of the uplands. Chris Horne, the managing director of Guns of Pegs, said that the experience of chatting to people who want the same ends but who come at things from different places was immensely rewarding. “We are so much closer than we think,” he said. Aragon está muerto At the grand old age of 29, Aragon the red kite has died. He was found having suffered injuries believed to have been inflicted on him by other birds outside a school in Carterton, Oxfordshire. He was rescued…

Picture this. The first glimpse of summer in the North York Moors on a Saturday in May: blue skies, the perfect temperature with a gentle breeze, verdant green grass and abundant hawthorn blossom. My husband, children and I had a rare weekend of just us as a foursome, so we decided to go for a bike ride with the dogs. Our children are still too young to go off-road biking over the moors on the bridleways, so we opted for a local reservoir with a brilliant little hard track going all the way around. The only flaw in this plan was that we failed to realise the masses would also be heading out to enjoy the countryside, and said reservoir is a well-known fair-weather honeypot. As we got out of…

Since a wildfowling friend of mine told me about its history, I’ve wanted to explore Leadenhall Market. For 700 years, it’s been the site of game and wildfowl sales to the City of London. A Victorian survey reckoned that an average of 1.3 million wild birds were sold there every year. On top of these numbers were huge quantities of domesticated geese, some of which were led to their slaughter by Old Tom, a gander that lived at the market and acted as decoy for the live birds. I recently got my wish and enjoyed a drink at the bar named in the old goose’s honour. Then, because one wasn’t nearly enough, I had a very good meal of saltmarsh lamb and another few drinks in the tavern above. The…

Anyone tasked with controlling grey squirrels will know that numbers can quickly bounce back if you take the pressure off. These destructive rodents often have two litters per year, and that, combined with others moving in from surrounding woodland, means that the vacuum you create will soon be filled. If that happens, your past efforts will be rendered almost pointless and the damage to trees and impact on other wildlife will simply carry on as before. Quiet, accurate and, in the right hands, capable of consistently delivering swift kills, the humble air rifle is a great tool for controlling grey squirrels. The job can become more challenging during the warmer months when dense foliage makes it difficult to spot the bark-stripping rodents up in their treetop haunts. Frustratingly, this problem…

Well, summer is knocking on the door. For us, we have a packed schedule of wedding events and game fairs running all through summer until early autumn. Although weddings make up the bulk of our business, we do get to undertake other events that are a whole lot of fun, and festivals are one of them. This recipe is one of our signature foods. “In the past couple of years, these venison flatbreads have overtaken the lamb sales” We have been doing our venison flatbreads for a number of years now, and they are always extremely popular. We often run them parallel to our lamb flatbreads, but in the past couple of years they have overtaken the lamb sales, which is great news — I am always pushing and promoting…

Head measuring May saw the second major show of the season with the fantastic Northern Shooting Show in Harrogate. Always a favourite of mine, it’s a great way for the northern shooting community to get together, drool over the latest kit, grab a bargain and have a good catch-up. Among various cookery, butchery and lymph node inspection demonstrations — and in addition to pushing the vital messaging around the Welsh government consultation to try to ban the release of pheasants — it was great to offer the head measuring service on the BASC stand. And you did not disappoint, with some truly jaw-dropping examples of our nation’s deer being brought for us to look at. S Crook kicked things off with a trio of gold medal heads, most impressive of…

I have observed before that those who are most enthusiastic about the reintroduction of apex predators seldom live in places where these things are being turned loose. I am not necessarily against reintroductions, but I do wonder why proponents never seem to have a plan if something starts to go wrong. Surely an option for lethal control of specific problem animals should be built into every reintroduction project? And to ensure this safety valve operates, there must be a mechanism for fending off the animal rights lobby. Look at the situation with brown bears in the Italian Alps. Ten bruins were originally released near Trento in 1999. Under strict protection, they have prospered beyond the dreams of the planners. Today, there are about 120 bears in northern Italy. There have…