A Lockdown ‘Call To Arms’

By the third week of the new ‘lockdown’, I had stuck rigidly to the rules. My Twitter timeline (about as live and topical as you can get) described how even deer stalking was being curtailed by various corporate landowners. Concessions have been made for essential pest control. Grey squirrel and corvid control can hardly be …

The Owl and The Jackdaw

It was a splendid morning to be walking the wood with a gun and a camera. Predicted by the weather oracle to be the last day of Mediterranean warmth for a while, I was determined to get some miles under my belt. The rain has been long-awaited, particularly by my farming friends. Their concern was …

Storm Ciara, spare my giants!

With the weather front named ’Ciara’ forecast to hit, I was determined to walk my woods today. As a countryman, shooting conservationist and wildlife lover my affinity with trees is immense. Not just because of the photosynthesis which sustains life on earth. Trees are far more than just oxygen generators. Adult oak, chestnut, beech, sycamore, …

A Morning On The Stubbles

The early morning air in my SUV was blue with curses as I drew onto the farm. I’d spent the previous evening gathering my decoying kit and studying expected weather and wind for the morning. I woke and loaded the motor with a very definite field in mind which adjoined a small copse that would …

When The Wind Blows

On the second weekend in August (while the rest of the UK was subjected to a battering, torrential rain, and flooding) here in East Anglia we got off lightly with just warm, gale-force winds. Yet the temperature was about 26C. It reminded me of the tent-tearing ‘scirocco’ I endured on my only ever camping trip …

An extract from ‘Hunting and Fieldcraft …’

Crop, Shrub, Tree, Flower and Fruit “Growing crops are often why the landowner gives you, the hunter, the mandate to shoot vermin species on their fields. Spend some time studying crops. Know how to identify them during the various stages of growth. Understand when the seed is likely to be drilled, which creatures will attack …

New Book Launch – Hunting and Fieldcraft with Shotgun and Rifle

This book is for anyone who ranges the countryside harvesting meat for the table, undertaking crop protection and protecting vulnerable species from predation. It is for the mature adult venturing into shooting with a limited knowledge of bird and beast. Or perhaps changing from air rifles to more powerful tools. It is for the kid …

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 …

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 …

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 …