Table of contents for January 2021 in Sporting Gun

Shorter days and a less plentiful supply of food can make woodpigeon elusive at this time of year. The answer, as ever, is good reconnaissance – and patience – if you are to make the most of the birds available this winter. Driving around the area to check the fields for crop damage, Google Earth and a good pair of binoculars can all be added to your armoury, says Geoff Garrod, so no opportunity is missed. You might be surprised just how big the bag is at the end of the day. So, head out with hide to seek those elusive woodies.…

There used to be a time — and not long ago — when it wasn’t a requirement to keep guns and rifles under lock and key in a steel cabinet. Instead, it was left to gun owners to use some old-fashioned common sense in deciding how they were stored. Having a gun stolen by a passing thief back then was rare, as indeed was any kind of gun-related crime. Instead, ‘safe keeping’ chiefly meant making sure a gun and cartridges didn’t fall into the hands of an inquisitive child about the house. Which is still the case today, of course. “Perhaps Usain Bolt could do a better job of beating the clock but I always fail” I don’t mind admitting that I was one of many who disagreed with officialdom’s…

I started beating on shoots during my late teens and have probably covered hundreds of miles battling through ankle-tugging bramble and trudged across energy-sapping mud and plough, not to mention waging war with countless laurels and rhododendrons. I have been beating on small informal farm shoots and on large commercial shoots. I take great pleasure from being part of a well-organised team. And team is the all-important word. I have often likened a beating line to a military operation. Those who go wide to prevent birds from leaking out from the drive are known as the ‘flanks’, a well-known military manoeuvre. The main body of the line pushes forward in what should be an arrow-straight line; the ‘skirmishers’ (the stops) have been sent well forward to the flushing points to…

Can you believe that Christmas is nearly upon us? I think it fair to say that it has not been a normal year. I am not sure that we would have believed it had we known this time last year what was in store for us. We did not get going until early June with the buck season, but despite the late start due to the dreaded COVID-19, the cull figure is what it should be, albeit with fewer of the very young bucks in the count. By the time we did get going, the youngsters that would have normally been reduced during April and May had either been chased off the ground by larger territorial bucks or pushed into thick cover on the boundaries, rarely to be seen. Who…

Over the years, solar farms have popped up all over the country in a bid to utilise renewable energy. The sites vary in size, along with the amount of energy they generate, but rabbits often favour them, though they clash with the smooth running of such operations. Over the years I’ve worked on many solar farms; some have been rabbit-proofing projects combined with eradication, while others have been ongoing control. I have also been employed to go in behind other companies to put things right. Burning issue Some sites hold hundreds of rabbits, while others may only hold just a handful but are problematic all the same. Rabbits can cause all manner of issues, especially with the abundance of wires. Their chewing habits can even be dangerous and cause fires,…

It’s been a strangely quiet year for pigeon in this area and the numbers simply aren’t around. The times of year when I’d expect to see large flocks haven’t shown the birds. I look on social media and good bags are still being shot in some areas — just not around here. There’s an article to be written on theories of where they are and perhaps I’ll address that next month after a bit of research. For now, though, it’s essential that you keep a keen eye on your permissions to make the most of any opportunities. Autumn drillings will be the best bet for now. Sometimes the most obvious-looking locations are exactly the opposite. I’m sure we’ve all seen a field covered with blue/ grey birds feeding away happily…

You may have been thinking about getting involved on a shoot day as the end of the season draws closer. A beaters’ day, perhaps? You may also be considering joining a team for next year. If you are, your first point of contact would normally be the gamekeeper, possibly via a mutual friend who already helps out, or an advert in a gunshop local to you. The most common way to help out during the shooting season is to join a beating team. This can evolve into other jobs on a shoot day and to helping out of season, possibly in exchange for some pigeon shooting. Expectations The role of beating on a shoot day can vary greatly depending on the shoot you join. Beating on a grouse moor, small…

Most, if not all, of your early gundog training will be using tennis or fur balls and canvas dummies. But at some point you will have to give your young dog the opportunity to pick cold game. This can be fur or feather but, whatever you decide to use, make sure it is fully defrosted and is not damaged. You should especially make sure there are no open wounds, as this can cause all sorts of issues when asking a dog to make its first cold game retrieve. For many novice trainers, this part of their dog’s training can be nerve-racking. Although for the majority of dogs it will go without any problems, it should be done with thought and consideration. Being confident in picking-up game is not something that…

You seem to carry a lot of gear when you go wildfowling. Do you ever prefer to travel light? Tom says: I like to be prepared when out shooting. Despite looking like I am weighed down, the bulk of the bag is typically half a dozen decoys and other bits required to have a good tide flight. I am a firm believer that putting in the extra effort, like building a hide or using decoys, can dramatically improve the chances of success. Having said that, there are occasions where I love to stride out across the saltings with just my gun on my back, a pocketful of shells and a dog in tow. Those flights can produce some memorable tales, but I will often sit there waiting for the birds…

In January my three-year-old labrador was attacked by another male lab in a beaters’ trailer. This has caused fear aggression in him and he has quite badly bitten other male dogs since. I’ve taken him to a trainer who said to try to avoid situations that triggered my dog. He is fine with castrated males and all females. We have chemically castrated him; however, when I took him to my syndicate, he still bit a dog as it walked past him. I’m at the stage where I can’t take him shooting, which is such a shame as he is a fantastic gundog. Fran says: I would recommend that you look at taking your dog to a behaviourist that specialises in nervous aggression; there are some good techniques that they could…

I have heard that leaf springs are better than coil springs on a trigger mechanism. Is that true and if so why? Ian says: As a rule, locks with leaf springs tend to provide crisper trigger-pulls and faster lock time. However, coil springs can work when weakened and damaged, whereas when a leaf spring reaches the end of its life, it will have a complete failure and cease to function. Leaf springs are also far more expensive to produce, and therefore to replace.…

Do you find yourself as busy in the winter as the summer? I always find things slow down on the rabbit front in winter where I am. Ed says: It used to be that the winter was my really busy time of year and the summer was time for play. I would say things are still very busy in the winter, with ferreting daily and shooting four nights a week. Over recent years the summer has also become very busy, and I now find myself ferreting four or five days a week, with three or four evenings of shooting. Much of my winter work is large-scale farmland consisting of about 40,000 acres, while summer is often solar farms and gardens, so a slightly different type of work with different challenges.…

Defra has announced new general licences for the control of wild birds. The three licences will come into force on 1 January 2021 and are the result of a long-standing review by the Department for Environment that involved extensive consultation with interested parties and a review of the scientific evidence. The new licences (GL40, GL41, GL42) will replace (GL34, GL35 and GL36), which expire on 31 December 2020. The new licences are: • GL40 – the licence to kill or take for conservation purposes; • GL41 – the licence to kill or take for public health or safety; • GL42 – the licence to kill or take to prevent serious damage. The announcement ends 18 months of uncertainty, following a legal challenge in April last year by Wild Justice, which…

Imagine that you are in a pub or at a dinner party and the conversation has turned to politics. You find yourself holding a position that is becoming increasingly difficult to defend; the facts, it turns out, are against you, and you are losing the argument badly. Everyone else present is starting to disagree with you and it is becoming obvious that you will have to throw in the towel. There is only one thing left to do – you chuck a dead cat on the table. Everyone else is so shocked by this turn of events that the argument is forgotten as you all agree how disgusting the sight is. You have successfully changed the subject and suddenly everyone is talking about this new topic instead of concentrating on…

“The man who thinks he knows all there is to know about pigeon shooting is a fool” To say that this has been an unusual year would be an understatement. With a second lockdown imposed on England, it looks as though ‘normality’ in the shooting world is but a dream. As I write, we do not know the details, but it is likely that pest control will be able to continue and ‘recreational’ shooting will be prohibited. As in the first lockdown, nobody can be certain how these measures will be enforced, and I feel that the public will be less inclined to slavishly follow the rules this time round. Try telling an estate owner, who may have invested hundreds of thousands of pounds releasing game on his land, that…

We don’t shoot quail in the UK and the only reason that this elusive little bird appears in this series is that it is classified as a gamebird, even though it has no open season. Before the modern game laws, our forefathers might have added the odd one or two to the bag when walking-up the stubble for an early partridge, but by the time the game season was in full swing the quail would have left our shores along with the swallows, destined for Africa where they spend the winter before returning in April. The quail is the only truly migratory gamebird and, like the swallow, it is very much a bird of the late spring and summer in Britain. Those encountered in Europe, more properly known as the…

Dear Santa, After the annus horribilis we’ve had, I have decided to leave all the gloom behind and instead replace it with a bit of Christmas spirit. I wondered, therefore, if you happened to be in a generous mood, if you could help me with a few excellent presents to aid my foxing exploits? Since I’m a married man, I’ll leave aside all thoughts of a camo-clad elfette to assist me and focus instead on more mechanical items. One of the first things I’d love is a custom-made shooting vehicle. It would have to be in the style of a dune buggy but with various alterations to suit my requirements. To begin with, it would have to have a very low footprint weight to allow me to drive off-road over…

I have learned over the years with the many shooters I have taught how important it is to communicate an idea or principle in a way that they not only understand but can also relate to. This way they can then apply an idea and enjoy the success it hopefully brings. How do you learn? This is a very important aspect of teaching and learning that you need to understand as well as your teacher does. Describing a particular technique does not mean the student will understand and relate to it to the extent that they can then deliver that to the shot process. Many may find it hard to relate to a lead value of 3ft at the target, for example, but could see such a value in a…

JANUARY On Sale date: 5 January • 31 January Inland wildfowl; pheasant, partridge, waterfowl (BHWM) (NI); brown hare close (Scot, NI) • 1 January New Year’s Day • 4 January Bank Holiday (Scotland) FEBRUARY On Sale date: 2 February • 1 February Pheasant, partridge close (Eng, Wales, Scot) • 15 February Red, fallow, sika females close (Scot) • 28 February Mountain hare close (Scot) MARCH On Sale date: 2 March • 31 March Red, sika, fallow females close (Eng, Wales, NI); Roe does close (Eng, Wales, Scot) • 1 March St David’s Day (Wales) • 14 March Mothering Sunday • 17 March St Patrick’s Day bank holiday (NI) • 28 March Clocks go forward APRIL On Sale date: 6 April • 1 April Roe buck opens (UK) • 23-25 April Great British Shooting Show, Peterborough • 30 April Fallow buck…

Lead not follow Never were truer words spoken by Robin Scott in his article Dancing to their tune (December issue). If we don’t make the shooting organisations realise that it is the subscription payers who keep them in their jobs and that they should be consulting the members we have had it. I also agree with Robin that what we put through our guns should be our choice, not some faceless idiots with no hard science backing their argument. I have shot for more than 40 years and eaten a lot of game without any ill effects; nor have I ever found any dying fowl. John Pate, via email Flobert’s paradox Is there a lead-free 9mm Flobert (rimfire) shot cartridge available in the UK? I would like to continue to…

When I’m rough shooting how do I make sure my feet are in the right position to take a shot? Tony says: Having your feet in the right position helps you take a successful shot, allowing your body and gun to move with ease. As a rough shooter you will understand that the quarry you are hunting may well present itself at the most awkward time. You could be in a thick piece of cover or crossing a ditch. With time you will get a feel for when you are likely to get a shot, being aware of the dogs hunting with you and the types of cover that will hold birds. Foot position is the same whatever type of shooting you are doing. The lead foot – the left…

Friends in other areas seem to be getting hereditary? big bags of pigeon, but I am struggling to see any on my ground in Essex. Why? Peter says: From around the middle of November, it is not unusual for pigeon to migrate away from mainly arable areas such as Essex to parts of the country where there is a heavy acorn and beech-mast harvest to be gleaned. Where I live, near the Thames estuary, we often used to get huge influxes of pigeon using the coastline as a route to other parts of the country. This was always in heavy acorn years; these birds seldom hang around for more than a few days before moving on.…

What do you think of the latest general licences and how do you think they will affect woodpigeon numbers? Peter says: As far as I am aware any new general licences are broadly the same as the old ones; that is to say, you can control woodpigeon all year round as part of pest control measures to protect a farmer’s crop. Whether you will have to prove that the birds are actually doing damage at the time you wish to shoot them, as we briefly had to do when the licence was withdrawn last year, I have no idea. The people who make these rules are largely detached from the very people they are supposed to represent, so have no idea of the difficulties farmers have in trying to keep…

The Browning Maxus has been a favourite on the semi-auto market since its release in 2009. The latest addition to the Maxus line-up is sure to prove popular with diehard Browning fans across Europe, too. Released in the autumn, the Maxus Limited Edition JM Browning has joined the growing range of Maxus shotguns offering a more elegant and refined version of the gas-operated semi-automatics. This particular variant is limited to a run of just 100 models and boasts Grade 4, oil-finished wood and stunning engraving on the receiver, featuring the portrait and signature of John Moses Browning (hence the ‘JM’), the father of Browning firearms, along with gold detailing of birds, scrollwork and the globally recognised buckmark logo. Stock options The current line up of Maxus shotguns includes synthetic and…

We are fortunate to have a wide variety of wildfowl species on our local marshes. A frequent visitor that always gains the attention of the club members is the pinkfooted goose. We have vast numbers of them. There is something magical about the distinctive ‘wink-wink’ call that gets the blood pumping. Towards the end of last season, I was out scouting from a vantage point overlooking the marsh when I could see a mass of chocolate-brown and white shapes across the grassy marsh top. A look through the binoculars confirmed my hunch that it was a large congregation of pinkfeet. They were tucked away on a marsh that isn’t often shot by the members, making it the perfect place to set an ambush. I rang my brother ( Jack) and…

The Long Land Pattern Musket was the British Army’s standard long-barrelled flintlock musket from the middle of the 1700s for almost 100 years. With the nickname Brown Bess, the muzzle-loaded musket had a barrel 46in long, although towards the end of the 1700s this model was being supplemented and succeeded by the Short Land Pattern, which had only 42in barrels. Why were the barrels so long? Simply to allow the gunpowder, or blackpowder, sufficient time to burn as the ¾in round shot was propelled along the barrel. The diameter of the barrel was not far off that of today’s 12-bore barrel at 0.729in, but the gun weighed about 10½lb compared with a modern shotgun weighing in at about 7lb or 8lb. In the first half of the 1800s the India…

If your labrador is permanently itchy (as opposed to the sort of seasonal itch that you might see with pollen allergies) and you have eliminated other possibilities, then experimenting with a hypoallergenic or elimination diet may be worth the time and trouble. Before embarking on it, however, I would ensure that you have her treated for fleas, sarcoptic and demodectic mange (perhaps with a long acting fluralaner chew) and that you have investigated contact allergens, such as bedding (try a cotton sheet), and biological washing machine powders (try Surcare or Fletti). Similarly, the inflammation and infection that inevitably occurs with chronic dermatitis should be addressed prior to test feeding. What is food allergy? Food can be a trigger for atopic dermatitis, with most cases starting in dogs less than four-years-old…

Our roving syndicate has run into problems as a result of COVID-19. A shoot, to which we had paid a deposit, has gone out of business and is refusing to repay the money. I suspect it may have gone bankrupt. What are our responsibilities to the syndicate members in this situation? David says: That will depend very much on what sort of agreement you have with your fellow syndicate members. One of the advantages of a syndicate is that risk is shared in these circumstances. However, unless you have a formal agreement, not all syndicate members may take that view. Informal arrangements can lead to problems and generate ill feeling if things go wrong. You need to draw up a proper syndicate agreement, ideally with legal input, so that everyone…

Can I borrow a shotgun to shoot on beaters’ day? Tony says: You can, but be aware of the changes to the Policing and Crime Act 2017, Section 130, which came into effect from May 2017. Written permission now forms part of the criteria for lending a shotgun on a shoot to a non-licence holder. The lender must be named in the written permission from the landowner or person who has the legal right to allow others to enter the premises for the shooting of game and vermin. Verbal agreement is not valid. The lender must be named on the consent letter, over 18 and hold a valid shotgun certificate. The lender should be in the presence of the borrower.…

CHARLES SMITH-JONES SAYS:“The original Model 101s may appear rather bulky but they are solidly built and typically well made” If the name and pictures of this gun seem a little familiar, there is a good reason for this. Until 1987, Winchester Model 101s were manufactured in the Olin International factory in Tochigi, Japan. When Olin sold the facility after a scandal involving selling embargoed firearms to South Africa, it was taken over by the newly formed Classic Doubles company along with the existing machinery and many of its staff. The firearms that the new company produced were, perhaps unsurprisingly, remarkably similar to their Winchester predecessors, and the Classic Doubles 101 shotgun featured in the April 2020 Blast from the Past in Sporting Gun is almost a mirror image of the…

CHARLES SMITH-JONES SAYS:“The M85 gives the impression of being somewhat shorter than it really is” Serbian manufacturer Zastava Arms traces its origins back to the casting of four cannons in a small Kragujevac foundry in 1853, the same town where it operates from today, albeit on a much larger scale. Along the way it has been embroiled in two world wars, as well as the civil war that swept the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. As a result, it is unsurprising that the bulk of Zastava’s output has always been military, though it has also produced sporting rifles and even the occasional shotgun. For many reasons, not least the political instability that has racked the region along with economic sanctions, the brand has never established itself in the UK, though…

I make no excuses for returning to one of my favourite subjects this month: the Victorians and their crazy guns. Pictured here is one of the best known oddities of the American Civil War (1861-65), the LeMat Revolver. Although it had a production run of only around 3,000 pieces, some of you will recognise it as the firearm that combined a shotgun with a conventional revolver. Colonel Jean Alexandre LeMat was a French immigrant and resident of New Orleans. He invented this revolver with the intention of it being used by cavalry units, especially the dragoons. The cylinder of this somewhat massive piece usually held nine rounds and, with the central shot barrel, that made it a 10-shot revolver. It was originally made as a percussion revolver — the one…

A LITTLE SOMETHING Robin Scott, former Sporting Gun editor-at-large Right now I don’t feel particularly merry. Presents? Maybe. Lockdowns, Matt Hancock and his lemon-sucking scientists have soured everything, including the family knockabout shoot here on Boxing Day. As we’ve shot, fished, stalked and partied for 25 years it would be churlish not to give Steve something. He says us Yorkshire folk are stingy so I’m giving him three, yes THREE, boxes of cartridges. You’re thinking, “Typical tyke, a tenner’s worth of whizz bangs? How generous. Some friend.” But Gamebore bismuth loads cost over £1 a shot, so it’s about £80 in total. Why bismuth? Simple — giving Steve a few boxes will stop him filling his pockets whenever he comes here to flight duck. He loves the way the bismuth…