Filming foxshooting through a thermal imager

The second half of this episode of the Shooting Show is a piece I filmed with foxshooter Robert Bucknell and his friend Nigel Fulton - we were trying out some night vision gear, including a thermal imager. I managed to rig up a recorder to the thermal viewer, which gave a unique view of the night's events. Scroll to 11:32 for my bit.

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Foxing Irish style

Filming this one was a real challenge - not just the fact that we were going round on foot in the pitch dark, but busting through a herd of cattle in the dark is a little unnerving! My piece starts at 10 min 44 secs into the show.

It was an exciting night's shooting though, and interesting to see how different laws mean that Irish foxshooters go about things slightly differently to how we do it in England.

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Fox control with Geoff Garrod

Good heavens, it's more than two months since I posted here! Not because I've done nothing, but because I've been so busy!

Here's a piece I did for The Shooting Show, waiting with gamekeeper Geoff Garrod for some fox cubs he'd spotted and wanted to clear off the shoot before they did any real damage.

Next up I'll post a few other items that have appeared recently, on The Shooting Show and on Fieldsportschannel's AirHeads series.

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In the Fox Box with Gary Green

Here's my latest film with Gary Green; unusually this one appeared on Fieldsports Channel, as part of their Fieldsports Britain programme. It was a good night, and I was pleased with the way my infra-red filming gear worked. If you were there, the view out across the field was pitch black, but the camera makes it look like broad daylight.

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Shooting in the dark

This foxshooting tale was quite literally filmed in the dark; fortunately I had some powerful IR lamps and an IR camera which makes it all possible - and Robert and Nigel had night vision spotters and riflescopes so they could do their thing without any need for visible light either. But if you'd been driving by at the time and looked straight at us, you'd have seen nothing at all. Spooky.

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Foxshooting with Robert Bucknell

Here's the tale of a recent outing with Robert Bucknell, after some foxes that are taking rather too much interest in a flock of sheep about to lamb. It's the first item in this episode of The Shooting Show, coming just after the intro sequence.

As usual, Robert and Nigel tested my camera skills to the limit - they have shot together for years and seem to read each other's minds. They certainly don't give me much clue what they've seen and what they're about to do next. It's all done in almost complete darkness, and total silence. I'm filming with night vision, which helps but it's hard to see much in the viewfinder.

If you're not careful, the camera is pointing one way when, bang, it's all over and you never saw a thing! Quite a result, then, that I managed to catch both kills on camera - just!

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Video: the fox that didn't steal Christmas

The Shooting Show ran a piece I filmed with Gary Green at a free-range turkey farm in Essex. The turkeys are fattening up nicely for Christmas, and they're proving a big draw to foxes from miles around. As Gary explains, the fox doesn't have to bite them to kill them - he can scare them to death in their hundreds. Fortunately he is on guard duty in his fox box, so perhaps Christmas won't have to be cancelled after all. The item starts at 10:01.

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Video: fox shooting with Robert Bucknell

I've been out several times with the legendary foxshooter Robert Bucknell in an effort to film him shooting a fox for The Shooting Show - but somehow we've never quite pulled it off. Either there were no foxes, or when he did shoot one it was round the other side of the vehicle or behind a bush or whatever, and I didn't manage to catch it on camera.

Well we finally got one - just! This was hardly the close-up view of the quarry that I hoped to get, but at least it's in the frame at the moment Nigel pulled the trigger.

I'll be back out with Robert before long, and with luck I'll get a clearer view of the fox next time. This week's piece starts at 11:08 in the video below.

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Calling in a fox in broad daylight

Here's my latest piece on The Shooting Show - Gary Green out in a high seat, using his electronic caller. It was a baking hot summer's day and a fox didn't seem very likely, to me anyway. But persistence paid off and a pheasant's alarm call caught our attention...

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A new fox call to try - the Nasher

I received this in the post today - the 'Nasher' fox call - from Eddie Nash who runs the Lamping Foxes group on Facebook. So first things first, thanks Eddie for sending it through for me to try.

It's had some good reviews from experienced foxshooters, so I'm looking forward to trying it out. Initial thoughts... well, it's a simple and clever design, looking basically like a short length of copper pipe squashed into a pillow shape, with the ends crimped shut and a hole drilled straight through both sides in the centre. 

Looking at it, you might think it would make a similar sound to the WAM call - a favourite of mine for close calling, although it doesn't have the Tenterfield-style Bestfoxcall's power to reach out to foxes several fields away. Horses for courses, I use both, as well as the plastic reed-type when the mood takes me.

Without any foxes handy to test it on, I thought I'd try out a new app I've put on my mobile - I've been wondering what it might be good for. It's called FrequenSee (geddit?) and displays a graph of, yes you guessed, the frequency profile of whatever sounds are being picked up by the phone's mic. Ignore the silly ads at the top left of each screenshot; it's a free app and that's the price you pay.

First up, the WAM. Notice the first and biggest spike a little above 2kHz. Then the higher frequency spikes around 5kHz, 8kHz and a smaller one at 10kHz. The shorter spikes higher up may be harmonics of the lower ones, or perhaps they are more to do with the rushing of wind out of the side of my mouth etc. I suspect they aren't loud enough to travel far anyway. Someone more musical than myself (which is not setting the bar very high) may be able to tell me what musical notes these represent.

So, on to the Nasher. Subjectively, I felt the sound was similar in tone to the WAM, but louder and more raspy. I was interested to see that the spikes are almost identical in frequency, although the shapes are different. The line is higher in the gaps between the spikes and, although you can't see it in the screen-grab, the line was far more animated, wiggling up and down like a crazed snake. To my ears, that corresponded with a more raspy, 'dirty' sound, as opposed to the pure whistle-like tone of the WAM.

Which may well be a good thing. Experience has shown that foxes are attracted to the raspy tone of the Bestfoxcall - as one foxshooter told me, the more spit you can push throught it as you blow, the better. So I have high hopes for the Nasher, and I'm looking forward to trying it out on the Skye foxes when I head up there shortly. One thing I must work on is holding the Nasher in my mouth; doing the phone app tests, I struggled to hold it with my lips and leave both hands free to grab the screenshot. That wasn't a problem, but it will be a problem if I don't have both hands free for shooting when I use it for real.

Incidentally, check out the little fox mask logo stamped into the crimp at top left - a nice touch.

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Gary Green foxing on The Shooting Show

Here's my latest effort on The Shooting Show - Gary Green out after a fox that's been killing chickens on a large free-range poultry farm in Essex. That was a long day's filming, finishing with me getting home after sunrise, but it was worth it to get a really interesting sequence that tells the story from start to finish. Some day I'll have to blog about the technical challenges of filming a wary quarry in pitch blackness without spooking it - not the easiest task!

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Gary Green on The Shooting Show

This week's The Shooting Show features an item I filmed with foxshooter Gary Green. It follows him over a full day and night of trying to get a particularly elusive vixen that had evaded him for over a year. Did he succeed? Watch and find out!

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Video - Merkel & Leica go foxing with Tim Pilbeam

Here's a video I made recently for Merkel, the German gunmaker. It's the story of their visit to top British foxshooter Tim Pilbeam to find out how we Brits go about shooting foxes at night - something that isn't possible in most countries in Europe due to their different laws.

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New foxshooting DVD out now

It's finished! I've been working with FieldsportsChannel and Robert Bucknell to produce the definitive foxing DVD. It's taken most of this year, and I wouldn't claim it's perfect - but our new DVD makes great viewing and it's packed with tips for successful foxshooting.

As regular readers will know, Robert Bucknell is Britain's leading expert on foxes and foxshooting. His book Foxing with Lamp & Rifle is widely regarded as 'the foxshooter's bible', and he writes a monthly column on the subject in Sporting Shooter magazine.

In the video, Robert and I travel to mid-Wales for advice on rifles and calibres from top rifleshooting instructor Andrew Venables, and I try out different shotgun loads on a steel silhouette fox target. I also get a practical lesson in zeroing from Andrew, and learn some of the elements of accurate rifleshooting.

Robert and other experts describe their favourite kit and methods - rifles and scopes, lamps and calls. And we go out foxing with experts such as Mike Powell and Roy Lupton, by day and by night.

For a bargain £19.95 inc. p&p, it's a real foxshooting masterclass. Everyone with an interest in foxing, from the novice to the most experienced foxshooter, will find this DVD fascinating and informative viewing. And of course, it's the perfect Christmas gift for anyone with an interest in foxshooting.

Order your copy online at the Sporting Shooter bookshop.

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Shot a fox

Nobody told the fox that the hour had changed, so he was following his usual routine and appeared about 6.50 GMT. The plan was to call him in across the field to my front, and I was all set up to take a good steady shot. I called a couple of times, and saw nothing - then suddenly there he was, almost at my feet, looking up as if to say "what's a dying rabbit doing up there?" I adjusted my position as quietly as possible, and took the shot as he stared up at me, trying to work it all out. At such close range the .17HMR knocked him flat with no trouble. He was a biggish adult dog, not one of this year's cubs, and in excellent condition.

Rifle shooting in Wales

Last night's Fieldsports Channel programme features our visit to Andrew Venables' WMS Steel Challenge in mid-Wales. It makes great viewing, and also provides a taster of our forthcoming foxshooting DVD, which I've been working on with the guys at Fieldsports Channel.

Don't forget, our pigeonshooting DVD, Pigeons With the Experts, is still available - check out a preview and order a copy here »

One less fox in the wood

This is one of the cubs raised in the wood next to the release pen. With the birds arriving in about a week, their time is up.

This one wandered out as the light faded tonight, and made an easy shot for the .17HMR. I was using the slightly heavier CCI Gamepoint 20grain ammo, designed to mushroom rather than fragment.

I don't think it would have made any difference on this shot, but I'm finding it a good, solid hitting round.

So, one down, not sure how many to go, but I've seen the vixen, a very dark coloured animal. She'll be harder to get.

Zeroing the .243

Since you ask, yes I have been a bit quiet on here lately. Something to do with producing two magazines this month instead of the usual one. And getting stuck in to producing our next blockbuster(?) video - this time on foxshooting. As part of that, we went back to Andrew Venables' fabulous WMS Steel Challenge in mid-Wales, where I finally got the chance to fire the Tikka T3 .243 that's been sitting unloved in the cabinet for far too long.

With a bit of help from Rupert of OpenSeason, and Jon from Zeiss, I fitted it up with a lovely Zeiss scope on Sportsmatch mounts, and a lightweight A-Tec moderator from Jackson Rifles, then under the expert direction of Andrew managed to shoot a respectable 3-shot group at 100 yards. "OK," says Andrew, "Now you see those 5 steel plates at 200 yards..." Five shots, five plates knocked down. Does wonders for the confidence!

David from fieldsportschannel.tv films Robert Bucknell and
Andrew Venables shooting steel targets at 440 yards

Foxshooting video

It's been a bit quiet on the blog lately - I've been busy with this and that, not least trying to write something meaningful for the magazine about the huge fuss over BASC's involvement in the new Lead Ammunition Group. More on that in another post, perhaps.

Meanwhile, I've also spent a couple of nights sitting up waiting for foxes, with an interesting chap called Gary who lives close to a motorway in Essex. Over the past few months he's shot 156 foxes at this one spot - from the bedroom window of a shepherd's cottage.

The first night we saw a couple of foxes, but they didn't come in to the bait he'd laid. Back again a few days later, this young vixen appeared and... well, watch the video and you'll see (he fires at 1:05).

You can read all about Gary and his foxshooting in next month's magazine - the 'June' issue, which goes on sale on 5 May.

Fings wot I done

Following this blog, you might get the idea that all I've done over the past fortnight is sit and rant at the papers. Oh no! Quite apart from attending my brother's wedding to the lovely Gwen in Edinburgh recently...

...I have been practising my rifle shooting on plastic and steel foxes with Robert Bucknell...

...freezing my wotsits off in a barn on the Isle of Wight, filming Terry Doe and George Stevens shooting crows in a 20mph wind with air rifles...

...not to mention working on plans for a possible launch of a new magazine, chasing up contributions for the next issue of Sporting Shooter, travelling here and there to take photos, reviewing products, checking page proofs, researching several news stories (including CPSA ex-CEO Phil Boakes: did he jump or was he pushed) and wasting half a day transferring my contact list onto my new mobile phone which should synch with the old one but doesn't.

Busy, busy - but all interesting stimulating stuff. And now I learn that my 'editorial workflows' are to be 'reviewed' to ensure that they're being 'resourced, run and managed' in the most efficient way possible. Truly all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.