Fieldsports TV

Take a look at FieldsportsChannel.tv, a new web-based video channel focusing on all types of - yes, you guessed it - field sports. It's the brainchild of Charlie Jacoby, well known to regular readers of Sporting Shooter as a former editor and regular contributor.

The channel hasn't officially launched yet, but it already has some great programmes to watch - including the one pictured above where Olympic medallist Richard Faulds talks about his other great passion, foxshooting. There's also one about chalkstream fishing for trout, and another on squirrel shooting.

When you go to the home page, it isn't immediately obvious where to find the programmes. From the home page, click on the green panel 'Your Sport' at the left hand side of the page, then look at the list at the top left. The first half-dozen items in the list are 'live' - click on a heading to see the videos available. Items further down the list will become live later in the year.

Keep watching and you may eventually see one on the trials and tribulations of a shooting magazine editor!

BASC 'Green Shoots' video

BASC have released a new video detailing the success of their Green Shoots programme. They've cunningly made it impossible to embed, so to watch it you'll have to go to their website here...

I first saw this video at the reception at the House of Lords a couple of weeks ago. It's been produced by BASC's new media man, Dave Harper (who writes each month in Sporting Shooter), and a very competent job it is too. This one was made with the help of a Bristol-based company, but in future BASC hope to produce this kind of thing from their new media centre.

FHM's High Street Honeys go shooting

WLSS instructor Ed Sandys with FHM's High Street Honeys
Charlotte Thomson (left) and Charlotte McKenna

As part of their promotion of National Shooting Week, the Countryside Alliance arranged for two of FHM magazine's High Street Honeys to try clay shooting at West London Shooting School. The CA's Rob Gray points out that they've also achieved "plenty of serious coverage, including lengthy interviews on BBC TV News, BBC Radio Five Live, dozens of BBC and independent TV/radio stations, news bulletins on BBC Radio 2 plus features in national papers like the Telegraph and in countless regional newspapers, magazines and websites." Watch the video here...

UPDATE: Thanks to Rob and those nice blokes at FHM, we can now bring you a picture of the two Charlottes hard at work doing their thing. Nothing gratuitous about this then.

Man poisoned on Surrey farm

News is breaking of a man dead and 7 police taken to hospital after being exposed to a 'noxious substance' at Burpham Court Farm, Guildford, Surrey. BBC story here. Reports say the initial call to the emergency services was about a domestic dispute - raising the possibility that this was a deliberate attack with a pesticide of some sort. Nasty.

UPDATE: This report in the Sun suggests it was a suicide. They've illustrated it with a product shot of Phostoxin, a particularly nasty chemical used to fumigate crop stores, and as a rat poison. It's actually Aluminium Phosphide (MSDS here [pdf]) which on contact with water releases Phosgene, a gas notoriously used as a chemical weapon in World War I, and more recently by Iran in the Iran-Iraq war in 1987.

Precisely how 'not uncommon' is this?

Those nutters at Animal Aid are at it again. With Balmoral gamekeeper Robbie Elliott facing prosecution over 2 badgers killed in snares, the lies and hyperbole against snaring are positively gushing forth: "It is not uncommon for snared animals to chew off their limbs in an effort to escape" claims their ridiculous statement. Really? Care to back that up with evidence? Thought not - Animal Aid, like LACS, were never ones to let mere facts get in the way of a sentimental rant (LACS do a beter job of dressing up this sort of hatred as a 'report' of an 'investigation', but their latest 'War on Wildlife' is full of snide digs at guns 'paying large sums of money to shoot birds for pleasure').

Their argument is that people sometimes do illegal things with illegal snares. So let's ban legal snares. Because that will help. Hey, people sometimes break the law in their cars. Let's ban cars...

These ludicrous organisations are strangely quiet about the baby rabbits dug up and killed by badgers on Springwatch last night. If that had been done by a gamekeeper they'd have been shouting their heads off. But the idea that ickle animals kill and eat each other's babies just doesn't fit their childish view of wildlife.

Hunting, philosophy and politics

Hubert Hubert has a thought-provoking post on his Rabbit Stew blog here - well worth a look.

Funny old world

Here are two totally unrelated things that happened over the weekend:

i) I paid for 30 minutes in a council car park and actually returned 34 minutes later (as it happens I was trying to contact my elderly father-in-law, who suffers from diabetes, and lost track of the time). In those 4 minutes, the extremely vigilant 'enforcement officer' had slapped a £50 ticket on the car.

ii) A group of, er, travelling folk, have concreted over a 4-acre green-belt site, rushing to get the job done over the bank holiday before council officers returned to work and put a stop to it. Story here.

One of the above will most likely get off scot free. As I said in the heading, it's a funny old world.