A busy week!

Every time I look at this blog, I'm horrified by how long it is since I last posted. My excuse is that I'm rather busy. It is only an excuse - I'm sure I could make time if I tried, but there's so much else to do!

Since January I've been running the TSC Clay Shooting channel on YouTube. TSC, or The Schools Challenge as it was known, is an excellent initiative devoted to encouraging young people to take up shooting, identify talented individuals and encourage and help them develop into the shooting stars of the future. 2016 Olympian Amber Hill, for instance, cut her shooting teeth with the Schools Challenge, and there are other promising youngsters following the same path - Tom Scott for one.

Plus I'm busy producing video content for other channels too. Take this week, for example. If you're a fan of shooting videos, you've probably watched several pieces I filmed and/or edited, probably without even realising it. There's usually a credit at the end, but who reads those!

The week started on Monday with a piece that I'd filmed and edited for The Shooting Show, following long-range rifle shooter Mark Ripley on his mission to protect this year's crop of lambs from marauding foxes:

Next up, on Tuesday it was TSC Clay News, the channel's weekly roundup of all things clay shooting. This week's show included a fun item on Olympic gold medal winners Richard Faulds and Peter Wilson trying out the guns that belonged to the late Bob Braithwaite, who won Britain's first ever Olympic shooting gold medal at Mexico 1968:

Wednesday brought this piece that I'd filmed for Fieldsports Channel, a look behind the scenes of the Princes Trust charity clay shoot in Yorkshire, featuring Promatic Traps:

Tonight will be the weekly TSC Clay Shooting feature, which I can't put up here until it's released at 7.30pm. UPDATE: Here's that feature...

In the meantime, I've also produced a couple of IT training videos for a bank, done a selection of photos for a shoot, and even managed to win a charity clay shoot myself! I'm rather proud of that one. It was the World Pheasant Association shoot near Stockbridge, and I get to have my name engraved on this splendid trophy, a black grouse sculpture by the talented Simon Gudgeon.

Yes, that's me on the right, sharing an inappropriate joke with Jonathan Young of The Field.

So that's my week so far. Who knows what Friday will bring? But I'll be heading out with foxshooter Robert Bucknell to see if we can film him shooting a fox. Always a challenge that one - how many videographers are happy to work singlehanded off the back of a pick-up truck in total darkness? Filming a wary animal that most people only get a fleeting glimpse of at the best of times?

I'm not complaining. I love it! The only thing is, it does rather distract from updating this blog.

Shooting rabbits off a quad bike

Just go and film Geoff, they said. He's shooting rabbits off his quad bike, they said. Sure, no problem. Filming off a quad bike zipping across rough ground - I can handle that. Oh, and it's in the pitch dark...

Actually it came out not half bad, with the aid of some cunning lighting rigs powered by the fabulous Deben lithium lamping batteries (how does the film industry cope without these things?).

Mind you, my thighs took a week to recover from all that clinging on. I don't ride horses, but I imagine the problems are similar - at least, they would be if you were riding a horse and trying to hold a camera steady at the same time.

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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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Pigeon shooting in Ireland with Jason Doyle

Here's a film I made for The Shooting Show with Jason Doyle in Ireland.

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Driven grouse and partridges at Farndale

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Crow shooting in Ireland with Jason Doyle

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Pigeon shooting with a young shot

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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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An interview with gamekeeper Geoff Garrod

The latest episode of The Shooting Show features an interview I filmed with gamekeeper Geoff Garrod. He's a lovely chap, conscientious about his job but with a deep love of the wider countryside and wildlife generally - exactly what the antis find impossible to understand. But then people like that could never get their heads round the idea that a livestock farmer loves his animals then sends them to slaughter.

Filming was a challenge; it was a very bright day, and windy too, and I was desperately short of time. I wished I could spend a whole day just filming him going about his work - or even a year, chronicling the life of a keeper. Still, in the real world who's going to pay for that?

As always, back in front of the computer I kept wishing I'd done things differently; it's always a learning experience. Overall, though, I think the real Geoff comes through reasonably well, and by the tone of the comments it seems viewers like this slightly different style. I'll be trying to improve and refine it in future work.

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Big pigeon day with Geoff Garrod

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Pigeonshooting again with Geoff Garrod

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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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Pigeonshooting for The Shooting Show

This episode of The Shooting Show includes an outing after pigeons that I filmed with gamekeeper Geoff Garrod in Essex. It was a frustrating day as you'll see, but that made for an interesting tale and we made a decent bag in the end. I'm pleased they chose a frame from my slow-mo sequence for the title frame of the video - it took a lot of effort to get that shot right.

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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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Driven pheasants and partridges

It was a challenge to film the item on Paul Childerley's Bedfordshire driven shoot for this episode of The Shooting Show. It's never easy filming any type of shotgun shooting, and live birds are much less predictable than clays. I've developed a technique of holding the camera to my right eye and zooming until it matches the picture from my left eye, then keeping both eyes open while locking head/camera/neck so they move together. Well, it helps me!

I cheated a bit, if you want to call it that, by setting up a Sony AS15 behind the gun and leaving it running throughout the drive. In the edit, I always had the fallback of a wide shot to cover what I'd missed with the hand-held camera - and I needed it quite a bit!

It's hard to convey the reality of a driven day on video. The birds either look too close or miles away, depending on the lens, angle, etc. If you stop and think about it too hard, the action is all over and it's too late.

Some of the birds on the video look lower - and easier - than they were in real life, a fact that's clearly lost on the couple of sneering commenters who seem determined to give shooting a bad name. All in all, though, I think it turned out quite well for a demanding day's filming followed by a quick turnaround on the edit.

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More goose shooting on Orkney

This episode of The Shooting Show includes the second video in my series on wildfowling on Orkney. Magnus takes Gary for a chilly morning flight on a frozen pond - and Gary can't resist filling his boots! It's the first item after Pete Carr's intro, starting around 00:55.

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Orkney goose shoot

This episode includes the first of three stories from my recent visit to Orkney, goose shooting with local guide Magnus Norquay. Thanks to Hamish Cromarty of Black Islander for fixing it up for us.

And if you watch through to 25:15, you'll find a short piece by me about the problems - and rewards - of being a cameraman on The Shooting Show.

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Muntjac from a high seat

In this episode of The Shooting Show, I'm out with Gary Green who is up a high seat after a fox, but ends up shooting a nice brace of muntjac bucks.

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Video: culling sika in Ireland

Here's the follow-up to my earlier video on stalking sika in Ireland with Jason Doyle. In this episode, Jason is out on a lowland estate where the deer are wreaking havoc in the pheasant coverts. The keeper wants them culled - but conditions are far from ideal. Will Jason get his deer? The sika item begins at 13:27.

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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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