Letter to a thief

Here's a letter I received by email from Sam Green, who has clearly retained his sense of humour in trying circumstances:

I would very much like to thank the shooter who stole my hidefspex glasses and made my weekend on the 30th September at the Kreighoff FITASC at Lakenheath.

For your information, they're only a week old, and if you'd like to get in touch with me, I have a spare lens!

Damp start to the pheasant season

Today was my first day's pheasant shooting this season. The first drive I drew No.1, so I was right at the end of the line, which put me almost behind the beaters in the cover crop, looking down the valley where the rest of the guns were standing. Most of the birds went forward of course, so I had a splendid view of the shooting. Then a lone bird headed back, straight over my head... and I knocked it neatly out of the sky with a single shot.

It was the perfect start to the season, except for the small matter of a persistent drizzle that fogged my glasses all morning and generally dampened everything - including the keeper, Martin, who had taken one of the beaters' advice on whether or not he'd need his hat and coat. He'll be checking the forecast himself in future!

You can see me looking a bit soggy in the photo above. I actually enjoyed the day enormously, depite the rather hangdog expression!

If you look closely you'll see I was shooting with a Beretta Silver Pigeon 20-bore - the first time I've tried the gun at game. It was a real treat to use. Mike Yardley tells me he rates this gun as the best ever made for game shooting, and I'm inclined to agree. It's light, handles beautifully and the recoil is very soft (I was shooting 25g Lyalvale Express 7s from justcartridges.com). And when I hit the birds, they were killed as cleanly as with a 12, even the higher ones on The Oaks drive.

Also pictured is my new Barbour 'Linhope' jacket. I was dead chuffed when this arrived out of the blue, with a letter from Lord James Percy, no less, asking if I'd like to try it out. Well yes, I think I could manage that!

It's too early to give the jacket a proper review, but so far I am very impressed. It's a world apart from the old wax Barbours that I remember from years back. The materials are top-notch, and the quality of design and construction is just amazing. I keep finding clever little details, like the way the hood fixes into the collar with a combination of press-studs and velcro. In fact the closer you look, the more you realise has gone into this coat. Even the press studs are all arranged so the word 'Barbour' is the right way up. How many other coats offer that sort of attention to detail!

I'll give the coat a thorough try-out over this season, and report back on important stuff like, is it really waterproof, and does it really breathe (although I think I already know the answers to those two).

Here's a short video clip of a flush of birds over the guns at The Oaks. Unfortunately I missed the chance to capture the wonderful sight of a swan which flew along the line about 30ft up, turned over my head on peg No.8, then made its way back down the valley, during the previous drive. My excuse is that it was raining harder then, and I was keeping the camera safely in my pocket!

Check your traps from the breakfast table

Whilst at the National Partridge Conference, I met Dick Bartlett from British Moorlands. He has developed a clever system that allows a keeper to check his traps by mobile phone.

Basically each trap (or a group of traps close together) is connected to a transmitter, like the one Dick is holding in the photo.

At a pre-defined interval - perhaps each hour - the device sends a radio signal to a receiver placed somewhere in the centre of the estate. The signal says "no change - trap still set".

If the trap has gone off, the "all clear" signal isn't received, and the receiver unit logs it. The same lack of signal would occur if the transmitter had failed, so the system has a built-in fail-safe.

Now here's the clever bit. The central receiver has a mobile phone built in. The keeper calls it from wherever he happens to be - and receives a text telling him which traps need to be checked, and which can safely be left alone.

The system saves time, fuel and more - allowing a keeper to cover more traps over a wider area. It could also mean that trapped animals are dealt with more quickly, because the keeper knows exactly which traps to visit straight away.

Estates can hire or buy the system, which Dick says works out at around £10 per trap. More info on his website

Looking out for partridges

On Friday I attended the National Partridge Conference in Cambridge, organised by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (the new name for the Game Conservancy).

The morning session was a series of lectures, where we heard from the scientists who have been researching into our native grey partridges for the past 30 years.

English partridges were once widespread across the British countryside, but have suffered a decline of 86% over the last 30 years. They're now the subject of a government Biodiversity Action Plan, with the GWCT as 'lead partner'.


In the afternoon we were taken to the GWCT's flagship partridge recovery project at Royston in Herts - where they have proved that the partridge's decline can be reversed. A combination of habitat management and predator control has seen partridge numbers increase from 20 pairs to 184 pairs in just four years.


To prove the point, GWCT keeper Malcolm Brockless and his team of beaters positioned the delegates at pegs like a partridge shoot, and drove several large coveys over the line. Several hares came though the line too, proving that managing land for partridges is good for other wildlife too.


I couldn't help feeling sorry for Malcolm when a fox burst through the line, with all the GWCT top brass watching. I bet he'll be doubling his efforts to catch that particular charlie!

Back door law

We've mentioned in the magazine that police forces seem to be trying to tighten the law on firearms by the back door.

Basically, if you apply for a new FAC, or a variation for a new calibre rifle, you may find a new condition appearing on your certificate - requiring you to be "supervised" by an experienced shooter.

That condition was never intended by parliament, and it's not even in the Home Office guidelines, but if we don't watch out it will become standard practice - putting another obstacle in the way of people taking up the sport.

Here's a letter we received recently from a reader:

Having spent most of my adult life serving in the army I was trained to do many things including qualifying to be a Skill At Arms Instructor, (the guy who teaches soldiers how to safely and effectively use many types of weapons). Imagine my surprise when the local police support office explained that because I'd only got a rimfired.22 Brno on my certificate that I would need to be supervised when shooting my new Steyr Mannlicher 308 (NATO 7.62), a round I'd fired for more than two thirds of my career.

Having asked around one of my mates offered to help out having shot locally for a good few years, the plastic copper was more than happy to have a 22 year old teach me how to handle "Such a powerful weapon."

The point is I now have to bug him every time I get a problem with deer stripping the tops off my newly planted woodland, taking him away from important work he's trying to do on his own land, just to satisfy some pen pushers whim.
All I can say is thank God for good mates in the shooting fraternity.

Yours

P Andrews

If you find your local force are trying to impose a similar condition on you, contact BASC for advice (assuming you're a member - and if you're not you should be!).

Stalking in Scotland

I'm just back from stalking in the hills above Pitlochry, Perthshire, in the company of Jim the stalker/keeper at Tarvie. It's hard to imagine a nicer way of spending a couple of days: the weather was glorious and the countryside was looking fabulous (apart from the heather beetle damage, but that's another story).

It's become a regular trip for me at the beginning of October each year, and one I always look forward to - although it's rare that I'm so lucky with the weather.


Jim - that's him above - is great company, a true countryman who knows his patch like the back of his hand. I always enjoy catching up with the gossip from the estates round about. Plus he always has a tale or two about the ridiculous red tape that's part and parcel of running an estate nowadays. Jim knows more about the wildlife on the estate than the pen-pushers could comprehend, and yet they're always ready to dictate how things should be done.

One recent bit of nonsense was when they wanted to tell him how to burn the heather, specifying the precise dimensions of the burnt strips and suggesting that each burnt strip (300 of them) should be fenced off to prevent grazing of the regrowth!

If you ask me, these muppets should have to spend 5 years as a ghillie before they're let loose near a computer. Then they might have a clue what their diktats actually mean to real people and real wildlife in real places, rather than the Disneyland in their heads.



Anyway, on to happier subjects... Jim's skill brought us in range of a nice stag on each of the two days, and much to my relief I was able to do my bit and put the bullet in the right place. Result: 2 stags in the larder, and a host of happy memories to cheer me up when I'm stuck behind a desk in dreary old London over the coming weeks.

Here's a vid of Jim bringing the carcass down using a trailer behind his Honda ATV.

I was staying at Killiecrankie - at the Killiecrankie Hotel, which I can highly recommend if you need somewhere to stay in the area, not least because the new owners have a very cute cocker pup called Beanie who lives in the entrance hall and welcomes the guests. It's on the River Garry - pictured above - close to the famous Soldier's Leap (the story is told on the sign below, although it completely omits to mention that the battle was fought on 27 July 1689, and that the Jacobites thrashed the Redcoats, although it did them little good in the end - there's a good summary here).



The area is one of the few remaining strongholds of red squirrels, which you can sometimes see from the dining room, as they run around the fir trees in the gardens. Sadly a good few end up squashed on the road, despite the signs warning motorists to look out for them.

All in all, I had a fabulous time and feel extremely lucky. Now I have to knuckle down and get on with the next issue. Ah well!

Sporting Shooter podcast - episode 5

Here's the latest episode of the podcast. This month I go to a NOBs gundog training day, and interview Grant ('Hedgey') from the NOBs forums. Plus there's an update on what's been happening this month, including the ongoing Foot & Mouth situation, and that call from the police... Music in this episode is by The Pubcrawlers at www.podsafeaudio.com