Another Day They Cannot Take From Us

My apologies dear reader, I am somewhat late with my second report. It was a foggy day to say the least though the ducks done us proud once again.

We have refined a couple of the drives after the first shoot, we had some extra beaters, Mrs farmers Wife and Number One Daughter of Mine, they worked like Trojans a special well done to them.

Mrs Captain of Shoot also joined us, she is hoping to be a regular gun all of these ladies most certainly made for interesting conversation at lunch time, no stories of big game hunts from Teddy and Ozzy when they were boy soldiers in the Crimea, none of the exploits of Haystack. But things had to stop when scatter cushions were mentioned for the lunch hut.

There are always within lunch huts across the country higher levels of topics that we gentlemen guns attend to, most recently how stupid the video ref was at the rugby world cup, how much better arsenal are than chelsea, the price of wheat and/or barley and is it not about time that the countryside organizations forget the egos and get together under one organisation to speak up for all country pursuits.

All in all a rather good day.

A rusty coloured devil

At last it has been spotted an old wiley dog fox. Haystack and Silage have been dispatched to deal with it. We have had quite a number of Partridge taken, hopefully a couple of stints should see this devil packed straight back to hell.

Another Day They Can't Take From us

I almost started with " what a Glorious sight", I realised of course that that would be really stretching it.

From L to R we have Teddy, Les, Mike, Alastair, Haystack the Keeper, Captain of Shoot and Steve, noticeable absentees Myself taking the pics and Andrew who was at the back of the Land rover doing I know not what, I had thought he had raced off to bag himself a good position for the ducks.

Other absentees, Ozzie get well soon, Silage who is back at college, John hard at work, Conor at school & Ollie in Saudi they will we hope all join us soon, and jolly good it will be to see them.

The day was mild, a shame as we had had some nice cold mornings leading up to the shoot, but to the ducks, we had an unexpected disturbance that put up the 250 plus duck before we were in position with the dogs. What an awesome sight, each and every duck flew well and high. We were to say the least surprised just how quickly they got up to shootable height, especially first time out in previous seasons they have started quite low and throughout the season got higher quicker, not this lot. As always we limited the amount of duck to three per person or when Captain of shoot feels enough and blows the whistle for the end of the drive. We will, at a couple of shoots flight in the ducks as we have at least 70 birds from previous seasons, it also makes things a bit more interesting.

The next couple of drives, due to the very mild weather, produced a couple of birds a piece though the dogs, Tim (lab) Hector (GSP) Ben & Rosie (Springers) worked well, it was also the first time all the dogs had worked together, that in itself is always worth watching. If this little lot could not find a bird they were not in there.

To the old barn for lunch, the banter dear reader is not for gentle ears.

After lunch it was a walk and a half for Andrew and myself, all the way down to the dingly dell amongst the pixie houses, as you can see from the picture an ideal spot for pixies and high birds, Andrew is getting ready. This is part of a much bigger drive taking in the snipe field (see map).

The picture is a bit deceiving as the time you get to shoot is no time at all, but any bird you drop you feel is good shot, as the foliage drops from the trees pegs 4 & 5 will be much sort after.

Again our last two drives in the cover crop produced little today, given a few frosty mornings we will see change, but for this little merry band that is what it is all about dear reader, not the size of the bag (27 today), but the variety, duck, partridge, pheasant, snipe and rabbit, it is the variety of the weather and of nature itself, we know we will have good days we know we will have not so good days, because with the company we keep and the little bit of the countryside we have, we cannot have a bad day.

Something for the youngsters

This next drive we call The Gills I have hidden 3 pheasents in the picture, it is just something for our youngest shots to do whilst Dads read the blog, So Haystack, Silage and Conn first one to find all the pheasents wins a prize from Captain of Shoot.

Another Drive

It seems that some of the drives lend themselves to artisic interpretation and some just do not. This one is Bottom End Drive, it is one of the two failed crops so we have to hope for the best.

The Farmer may have helped us out though, due to the price of wheat & corn, he has decided to grow his own (hopefully enough for us aswell).

He has used an adjacent field to sow the crop, if we lose out a bit on pheasent we may gain on pidgeon.

Raising the bar

After No1 son of mine decided to ridicule my previous effort of drawing the drives on computer, I have upped my game for the Small Valley Drive below sketched in all its glory.

Worse is to come for Captain of Shoot, No1 Son of Mine commented on seeing original paper drawings I see captain of Shoot has had his crayons out.

The little whippersnapper has some horrible jobs to do next he is on the shoot.