When I was a child we camped every Summer weekend and the two weeks away from home on the beach next to Portland Harbour (that’s right, where the 2012 Summer Olympics are going to hold their sailing events). My memories of that time are of fish and shellfish – we lived on them. Cockles five times bigger than the ones you buy from beach huts, with the occassional razorfish. Conger, bass, mackerel, pollock, wrasse, bream, whiting, pout, gurnard, flatties, garfish – all featured on the menu during that time.
Using binoculars to give you the best advantage is as important when you are shooting pigeons as when you are stalking deer or birdwatching. This is not to say it is difficult to use them correctly, but a little preparation and practice can make a huge difference to the success or otherwise of your sporting day.
When I was a boy I spent my Summer holidays either sea-fishing in Dorset, where we camped on the beach between the mainland and Portland, or fishing and shooting in South Wales where I stayed with my two bachelor uncles and miscellaneous cousins.
One of the delights of staying in Wales was the weekly trip to Carmarthen for market day. The memories I have was of a buzzing collection of market stalls, selling vegetables, meats, cheeses and hardware, with lots of small shops where you could buy fishing tackle, cartridges, ham sandwiches and best of all, the still-meaty hambones that had been used to fill the sandwiches. Branston pickle was also a staple, and warm crusty bloomers that we spread thickly with butter, thick slices of cheddar cheese topped with thin slices of onion still pungent enough to bring tears to your eyes.
When I was in my early teens I was fearless catching animals; from rabbits, bats, rats, snakes I would try to catch whatever I saw. My first ferret was an escapee I found in the road at the end of our street.
Not knowing much about ferrets, it survived for a while on bread and milk before moving to a better home with someone who was more experienced with keeping the critters.
When we moved to Scotland we left behind our hens and bantams, bringing just our Abbysinian cat. Nick, my son, was desperate to have a pet; so was Phillipa for that matter; we palmed her off with two locusts but Nick was older and less gullible; he wanted ferrets.
There are two approaches to gundog training with rabbits; it used to be common practice to teach dogs to ignore rabbits and other ground game completely, and I suspect some still take that approach. This gave rise to the use of the rabbit pen as a means of teaching dogs to ignore rabbits. It is still used to teach the dogs control in the presence of rabbits, primarily for those people who do not train dogs over ground with a lot of rabbits.
Rabbits in a garden can be a minor catastrophe. I don’t mind a little bit of veg disappearing, and my wife can spare some of her flowers; the lawn they are welcome to keep short; but it doesn’t work like this!
Bunnies have a habit of breeding - the smaller they are, the easier to control!
Young rabbits are much less cautious than their parents. This is nature’s way of feeding predators; breed lots, breed idiots and breed more!
Cock sparrow in spring plumage, rich browns and greys.
When I was growing up in the early seventies it was still not unusual to use sparrows as your first quarry with an air rifle; I was more fortunate than most because I also had access to a set of pig sties where rats abounded and the very occasional mouse survived. I still shot the occasional sparrow; they were very common then, and no, I don’t think that me shooting half a dozen or so made any difference to the population drop that occurred and from which they are only just starting to make a recovery from.
Crows are not the easiest of birds to shoot with an air-rifle; in fact I would argue that they are the most challenging of quarries and should only be attempted with a full-power air rifle where the range is sufficiently short that you are confident of hitting a one pence coin. The truth is that the range a shot is taken is not determined by the power of an air rifle, it is determined by how good a shot you are.
Crows can be brought within range by the use of suitable bait.
was a Spanish-made single barrelled 12 bore hammer gun with full choke and a thirty inch barrel. My Dad took me to choose and buy it from a shop in Broadmead, Bristol, long since gone. Living on the edge of Hartcliffe, a large council estate in the South of Bristol there was very little opportunity to try it out immediately; I had no shooting permissions around there, but we could shoot on my uncle’s farm in South Wales.
There are few birds more handsome than those of the crow family. The magpie is particularly striking, with the contrast between ‘black’ and white making it one of the most recognisable of all British birds. It is perhaps only when you find yourself with a tame magpie, such as this one which was stealing food in Edinburgh Zoo, that you realise just how much colour there can be in a ‘black’ feather.
A striking magpie which is used to people gives an opportunity for camera
Starlings in the flamingo pen at Edinburgh Zoo
