Innholdsfortegnelse for 14-Jun-2023 i Shooting Times & Country

The National Gallery in Edinburgh has acquired a watercolour painting by Joseph Crawhall (1861-1913), one of the Glasgow Boys, a revolutionary group of young painters who pioneered modernism in Scottish art. Crawhall’s artwork, titled Cock Pheasant with Foliage and Berries, is now on display, showcasing his distinctive style of capturing animals and birds through watercolours while eschewing the sentimentality of other Victorian painters. The painting joins the artist’s collection of approximately 40 works, which include sketches and illustrated letters exchanged with fellow Glasgow Boys. Curators note that this latest addition exemplifies Crawhall’s passion for wildlife. As a key figure in the Glasgow Boys, Crawhall stood out as the sole member of the group to focus on painting animals, while others rebelled against the conservative Edinburgh-based arts establishment by depicting everyday…

Driven shooting days have had a torrid few years, with the double impact of coronavirus and avian influenza bringing some parts of the sector to its knees. And despite a market that some claim is facing apathy from shooters and where bookings for shoots are consequently suffering, others are maintaining that the underlying prospects are good. “There are shoots that have closed and syndicates that have folded, but in the main very little appears to have changed,” maintains Liam Bell, ST contributor and head gamekeeper at Millichope Park in Shropshire. “Concerns about avian influenza and worries about the wider economy have done little to dampen game shooters’ appetites for shooting. The shooting community is feeling quite positive and the market is quite buoyant,” he added. Liam did acknowledge that there…

LETTER OF THE WEEK One for the archives Sometime in the late 1950s or in very early 1960s, a friend of my family, Mr Maurice Norman, took some photographs of my uncle in his punt-gun on the Dee Marshes. Mr Norman subsequently sent one of the photographs (right) to Shooting Times, which used the photograph as the cover picture for an edition of the magazine. My father, a founder member of the Dee Wildfowlers in 1952, kept that particular edition, which was eventually given to my uncle. Unfortunately, my uncle has now died and the copy of the magazine cannot be found; it is presumed lost. I have made searches on eBay and the magazine’s own site, but I have been unable to find a copy of this edition of…

An army, so they say, marches on its stomach. Well, as an ex-military man, I can tell you that is only true to a point and can categorically confirm that it marches on its feet. In fact, from the very start of any young military person’s career, the need to look after your feet and boots is frequently stressed. Since my military days, I have spent over 30 years working as a stalking outfitter and, to this day, I am careful in my selection of footwear. I have certainly been through some boots in my time. I prefer a high-leg type and have become particularly enamoured with the range from Brandecosse, having been introduced to the brand a little over a year ago. “Moving around undetected was going to be…

Sporting club If there is one thing that Young Farmers are known for, aside from the belief that beer is a suitable breakfast dish, it is their fiercely competitive spirit. At county shows throughout the land, you will see this largely good-natured dog-eat-dog trait in all its glory. Everything from muscular trials of strength such as log splitting and tractor pulls to surprisingly delicate flower arrangements and works of art are all mediums used for testing and judging the prowess of one club against another. I have a long-standing relationship with the Young Farmers in Suffolk, particularly the Hadleigh and Debenham branches. They have enlisted my support in all manner of activities — as a judge for debating competitions and taking groups of juniors on outings including moth trapping, wildflower…

NEWS Along-standing intention by the Scottish government to implement a limit of 10 red deer per square kilometre across parts of Scotland has come under fire from estate managers and stalkers. The Deer Working Group recommended as far back as 2019 that NatureScot adopted the figure as an upper benchmark for acceptable densities of the iconic species over large areas of open range in the Highlands. A report commissioned by the Scottish government in 2020 estimated that there were around a million deer in Scotland, with densities ranging up to 20 deer per square kilometre. But most professionals agree that the deer population and density is now much higher than that, with some estimates putting it as high as 30 deer per square kilometre in certain areas. “Adopting a blanket…

It’s been a difficult start to the salmon fishing season, with many anglers reporting a noticeable lack of fish. Andrew Flitcroft, the editor of Trout & Salmon magazine, told us he had been monitoring the river reports and thinks the reason for the poor start to the season is low water. Prevailing easterlies have meant a lack of rainfall as well as long-term low water levels. Salmon won’t run in low water, instead staying in estuaries. If they do run, they tend to charge upstream and won’t take a fly. Those that have run will then lie doggo until there’s a fresh flush. At the same time, Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) has halted fishing in the River Moy and the Salmon Weir in Galway after water temperatures rose higher than…

I knew the time would come eventually; it just so happened to be a few weeks before my annual trip to stalk fallow in South Lincolnshire. “Oh, by the way, we’ve switched to copper-only,” the keeper told me as we firmed up a date. I’d been intending to move away from lead for a while; it was a case of waiting for the last of the soft-points in my cabinet to disappear. What I hadn’t anticipated was the difficulty in getting hold of lead-free factory ammunition in fairly short order. The price hike was unwelcome but expected; fruitlessly canvassing not-very-local gunshops to find something suitable was a tedious pain in the haunch. It would be quite easy to get tangled in the detail of how this limited sample of shiny…

If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. Well, you are if the woods belong to Matt Chatfield, because his are full of sheep. Matt is a silvipasturist, using the woodlands on his farm at Halwill in Devon to graze livestock. Not only does this method of farming benefit the sheep, Matt also believes it has improved the quality of his woods too. The understorey, he says, has become thicker and more diverse, and wildlife has increased. This form of silvipasture woodland management is a technique that could be of great interest to keepers and shoot managers, particularly on farms and estates where regenerative farming practices are being embraced. The pheasant is, after all, a bird of the jungle; it loves the thick protection…

Catlow’s notebook I think I have already told you that, if push came to shove, and if the shove was equivalent to something way up there on the Richter scale, demanding that I should renounce one of the two sports that I so love, I should almost certainly choose to remain a fisher rather than a shooter. A winter without the opportunity of lifting my gun on to a bird or two would be a grim and cheerless prospect. If, perhaps, I was still allowed to work my spaniels and in this way play my part in shooting days, although it would still be a deprived and diminished life, I can just about persuade myself that I might find it tolerable. But the thought of a spring and summer without…

Winter in Strathspey lasted virtually until 14 May. The day following, appropriately a Sunday, we saw the first real sunshine of the year. It had been a long, cold winter in these parts and it ended so suddenly and dramatically. By 19 May the water temperature was hitting the 11°C mark, but even on the 16th it had risen from 6.5°C to that magical figure of 9°C, with the shade air temperature hovering on the 21°C mark. Mercifully, the river also fell back to a good fly-fishing level. Heavy snow on the Cairngorms melted only slowly and it is now predictable that the best fly-fishing conditions are just arriving as I prepare to go home after my seven-week stint. By the time this appears in print, however, I hope to…

Across 6 A pigeon family member on a boulder dived American-style (4,4) 7 Sandy terrain is outstanding around Norway’s capital (4) 8 Catch clever-minded pests (6) 9 Gets to one’s feet at Game Fair trading posts (6) 11 Is the weather fast becoming chilly? (5) 13 A roe ends up unsettled as we approve firearm certificate applications (7) 15 Game Fair dog challenge requiring aggressive capability from both sides? (7) 16 Flying insects seen for months without nitrogen (5) 18 A textbook example of a cartridge component (6) 19 A deer is curious about sea ducks (6) 21 Damage to clothing from brambles reminds us of an eye drop (4) 22 With guns in such a state, the clay target is still in one piece (8) Down 1 After a…

Rural mental health across England is an area of “considerable concern”, according to a report by the cross-party Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. Findings show that the needs of rural communities are not fully reflected in mental health policy, services and national NHS planning, and recommend that Defra and the Department of Health and Social Care should establish a new rural mental health policy, with support for rural health providers. Helen Benson, chief executive of the Gamekeepers Welfare Trust, said: “Publication of the findings of the rural mental health report is timely, given the pressures gamekeepers and their families are under at a time of rapid change. At the Gamekeepers Welfare Trust we are increasingly concerned for the mental health of the sector; long hours, isolation, disease and weather…

NEWS BASC is planning to bring a judicial review of Defra’s decision to withdraw general licence GL43, the licence that covers the release of gamebirds such as pheasants and red-legged partridges in certain areas of England. At the same time, Wild Justice has announced it is taking Defra to court over its lack of monitoring of the same licence. Defra was supposed to have introduced a variation of the general licence in line with European statutes barring the release of any gamebirds near conservation areas, but on 30 May, the previous general licence expired and the anticipated new licence is now not being introduced. Therese Coffey, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has announced that gamebird release can now proceed without a general licence unless they are…

Aidan Hartley is a farmer, keen Shot and fisherman I was walking beneath the purple-blossoming jacaranda trees in Rumuruti town, when a Samburu hailed me by name and said he had met me in Serb Krajina during the last Balkans war. The man was horribly disfigured, with a crushed nose, right eye missing, jaw bone smashed and ragged scars across his face. When I reached out to shake his hand, I saw he was missing three fingers on his right hand. Lekarja was his name. “We met in Knin,” he told me over a beer at the Buffalo Village bar. I recalled the evening in 1993, when I had been reporting events in the Croatian town, a nasty place held by the Chetniks. I was quite miserable there until I…

Gunfit G unfit is, in my opinion, one of the most neglected areas for the large majority of game shots. The reason for this is hard to fathom. One analogy I use is this: if you were out buying a pair of jeans or trousers and the sales assistant asked, “What size are you?” and you say, “I’m a 34in waist, 32in leg,” and the sales assistant replies, “I have a pair of 32in/30in, will they do?” The answer would most definitely be “no” — why on earth would you buy a pair that don’t quite fit? The same can be said of guns. Manufacturers make guns for a generic average build, but of course we do not all fit into this group. I fall into the even more problematic…

OPTICS TESTBuy with confidence Binoculars are a very useful accessory that too many shooters overlook. Stalkers know their value when it comes to quarry observation, but they can be a real asset in other branches of our sport, from scanning fields in search of pigeon activity to planning routes along the hedgerows when trying to creep within range of rabbits. The good news is that you don’t have to spend a fortune on a decent pair of binoculars for impromptu recon. I keep a cheap pair stuffed in the rack on the inside of my car door. Konus has a reputation for producing decent optics at sensible prices, and its Mission HD 10x42 WA binoculars are built very much along those lines. They’re robust, produce a sharp, bright image courtesy…

Hunting Most packs at this time of year will have set a date for their puppy show and all hands will be on deck to make sure the kennels are looking their best for the day. Anything that doesn’t move will have either been painted already or will be about to be so, lawns carefully mown, hedges trimmed and hanging baskets set out. The tea for after the prize-giving will have been arranged and the judges organised. But all this is only one side of the equation, and many would argue the least important side, for preparing the young hounds for the puppy show is not something that happens overnight. It takes plenty of practice and patience to ensure the young entries are ready for the day and looking their…

THOUGHTS FROM THE FIELD Mid-June, rain permitting, is the time to make hay. The sugars are up in the stalks and the seed has ripened and set. After making the decision to cut, farmers pray for a continuing period of sunshine, which enables them to ted (turn) the grass a number of times, allowing air and sun to ‘make’ the hay. During tedding, seed falls to the ground, encouraging the mixed species of grasses and wildflowers to reproduce next spring. The now made hay is rowed up into lines for the baler to follow. While small bales are greatly favoured by horsemen due to their practical size for manual handling, in agriculture hay is more usually baled in large rounds or square ‘tonne’ bales. Once baled, the hay is left…