Snow Patrol – A Landscape Exposed

Chained to the ‘Work From Home’ laptop and watching three days of steady snowfall tore at my wilder mind. I wanted to be out there in wood and field exploring the virgin snow for track and trail. Come Saturday, I finally had the chance and with the sub-zero temperature supplemented by a bitter Easterly wind, …

Caught Napping – Charlie Down

I met the Devil in the lane down to Garden Wood and he was as drunk as a skunk. Staggering around, his obviously blurred vision failed to pick out the approaching danger that I represented. Or perhaps he knew that my rifle didn’t have the requisite power to put him in my freezer? I was …

Scent, Stalking and Sanity – Why I Shoot

It was just after sunrise when I pulled open the curtains and cranked open the vertical blinds. The frosted scene outside warmed my heart, for today I was guaranteed my first ‘pass-out’ for nearly three weeks. I mentioned in my last blog my lovely wife’s cancer diagnosis and the enforced shielding before her op. Thankfully …

In The Bleak Midwinter

We all know that climate change has truly screwed up our old concept of winter. I have enough decades behind me to recall my father having to go and rescue (on foot) my mother who had been trapped in a local school where she worked as a cleaner when I was ten years old. It …

Soup-Time Charlie

The first thing that struck me as I set off into the wood was the deafening silence. Standing for a while inside the treeline, I looked about, searching for movement. Any movement. The flick of a wren's tail? An agitated blackbird? There was nothing. No breeze, not a sound. It was the morning after the …

Boxing Clever

Have you got as many weather ‘apps’ on your mobile phone as I have?  All of my half-a-dozen promised a morning of no rain. Loaded up for a session on the squirrels I hadn’t even got to the end of the road when I had to turn on the windscreen wipers. Not a deluge but …

Squirrels and Jackdaws: A Return From Lockdown

During the first phase of 'Lockdown' I missed my patrols around the naturalists paradise that is my shooting permission. A mixture of woodland, arable land and livestock farming. The first sensory delight to greet me on my return to the wood was ‘the orchestra’. I stepped into the ride beneath a verdant canopy illuminated with …

The Lockdown Wanderer

For a habitual wanderer, confinement to the proximity of my home could have been hell. I’m glad to say it’s proved otherwise. The order to “stay close to home, don’t get too close to strangers and be home before dark” isn’t new to most of us. These were the instructions given to me as a …

Lockdown Letter to a Landowner

20th April 2020 Dear Lady Amelia, First of all, apologies for the apparently impersonal letter. I’m proficient on my PC but my hand-writing is appalling nowadays! I hope this letter will find you fit and well in this strangest of times. I just wanted to drop you a line to let you know that I …

Another Shot Buzzard ??

The call of the gun was strong on this gorgeous Spring morning. After a week of working from home (in self-isolation) I was desperate for fresh air, yet I realised that my wife must be feeling the same. I suggested one of our favourite walks, from Strumpshaw out to Buckenham Mill and back. Old Charlie …