RIP Dylan : Bless You, Old Partner

I have been overwhelmed by the response from family, friends and social media contacts to Dylan’s passing this morning. My wife and I are going to miss the old feller badly. It has been a privilege to work for nearly 16 years with such an intelligent, biddable and loyal dog. Many people thought it was …

Control and Conscience

  I cross between two coverts following the tractors trail between a thigh high crop, under a cloudless azure sky. The fronds are still glistening with dawns dew and my trousers are soaked. A head pops up just five yards from me, amid the barley, startling me. Then a second head. Then a third, a …

Provenance and Pigeons

. Christmas is always a bit barren for me in hunting terms. Not due to family commitments or work. I to tend to volunteer to work across the break as I prefer to take my holiday days in fairer seasons. The main reason, however, is that it is often the one time of the year …

The Buzzard and The Betrayal

 The decision this morning wasn’t whether to brave the winter weather. It was what guns to take? Looking out of the windows at home I could see the light boughs of young yew and cedar bending under a Northerly blow. In the habit lately of taking both air rifle and rimfire, I glanced at the …

The Fairy Tale Of Re-Wilding

The Fairy Tale Of Rewilding   It was Christmas Eve, in the inn next the muir Ex-keepers debating how life could endure. Re-wilders, with funding, had bought up the land No shooting, no snares, all vermin control banned. They planted the hillsides; a young forest grows, The grouse have all gone, replaced by the crows. …

Anti-Hunting? Be Careful What You Wish For!

  Sometimes I want nothing more than to sit back from the current round of pro & anti-hunting banter and just get on with my (hunting) life. Today the good folk at The Countryman's Weekly, for whom I write, accidently pointed me in the direction of a seriously worrying piece of biased journalism in The …

Beefy, Charity, Lead and Lunacy

Sir Ian Botham (in my humble opinion one of this country's most laudable down-to-earth sporting heroes) put up a great idea last week. Sir Ian (aka Beefy) asked why not donate excess shot game-birds in the coming season to charities who support feeding those in need of meat and protein? The urban and tabloid reaction …

Poor Little Hedgehog?

Forgive the question in the title, but I saw this rather twee and pathetic plea on my Twitter feed this evening. It just about sums up the witlessness and hypocrisy prevalent amongst armchair 'wildlife worshippers'. The ignorance and arrogance of the modern human being makes me almost ashamed to belong to the species. Reading this …

The Hobby And The Peewit: Dedicated To Derrick Bailey

I shouldn't really have been surprised to see them this morning; yet I was. It was my wife, Cheryl, who first saw them and pointed skyward with a query. "They look like Kestrels, but they're not?" I watched the three birds for a while as they coursed the azure sky on the first morning of …

Wearing Two Hats – Shooting and Conservation

I've had a strange weekend. For a shooting writer and journalist I seem to have, quite accidentally, attracted a large number of 'birder' Twitter friends due the above photo. It is a turtle dove; the photo taken at Pensthorpe Wildlife Park, near where I live. I was quite explicit in stating this. The bird is …