CONFLICT IN THE COUNTRYSIDE - The New Battle For Britain
I often wonder what the young fighter pilots, who died defending their country from invasion in 1940, would feel
about what we have done to it since. My mentor David Bellamy's new book sub-titled "The new Battle of
Britain" is poignantly named. We quote him on the front page of our internet site and are proud to do so.
His ongoing defence of hunting, shooting and fishing as essential for wildlife preservation permeates its
way throughout this highly educational publication.
Here you will find game keepers described as a "noble band" for their environmental work but also a swipe at
"battery pheasant shoots" where numbers shot and not the quality of the shooting "rules the roost". How
many of us in the business share his criticism.
But it is not just about shooting. The 221 pages of this book, with a foreword by Prince Philip, touch
on so many aspect of the conservation of our countryside that it is a must for all country lovers. It
is available from Shaw & Sons of Crayford, Kent, DA1 4BZ or Tel:01322 621110 at £9:99
Ray Rodgers
A FREE COPY WILL BE POSTED TO THE FIRST PERSON EMAILING US WITH THE FULL QUOTE BY DAVID ON OUR FRONT PAGE.
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This section, which is edited by Dig Hadoke, will have regular features
on guns, reviews and previews on gun auctions, and all matters which relate
to guns and firearms. We hope you will find it interesting and informative.
It is designed for you, the reader, and if you have any comments, ideas or
opinions, then do please let us know.
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Musing on New Guns
I witnessed an uncomfortable sight one weekend, this season past. Two new Guns in the shooting
line at our regular shoot in Hertfordshire were having a torrid time of it. Partridges were in
the air but they were in the ‘wrong place’ and going either too fast, too high or too low.
After four dives, between them they had killed three birds - one of them a feral pigeon!
One chap took it on the chin but the other was increasingly and visibly frustrated by his
inability to put birds in the bag. At lunchtime, the two gentlemen concerned headed home, having
decided not to stay for the meal and to forgo the two afternoon drives.
They were unhappy, their fellow guns unimpressed and the shoot captain bemused by the chain of
events leading up to their departure. So why would two Guns, having paid upwards of £600 each
for a good day’s partridge shooting on a renowned shoot walk off at ‘half time’?
The roots of the problem lay in their background as shooters. Both are successful businessmen,
and experienced clay shooters in their early 40s. When in the right place, with the confidence
and understanding that goes with the clear and certain rules of the clay shoot, competent shots.
They had been on a couple of informal ‘walk & stand’ days and after a slow start had settled-in
well enough.
Though inexperienced game Shots, they had the right attitude to learning, with safety uppermost
in their minds and a fear of ‘doing the wrong thing’. They set out to involve themselves in
game shooting on our shoot, where they were made very welcome and seemed to be enjoying themselves
on the ‘walk & stand’ days. After a good pay-day, they decided to treat themselves to a full,
formal driven day with a bag expectation of around 200 partridges.
We’ll call these two ‘Jimmy and Gerald’ for ease of reference here. Now when in the line, Jimmy
stood with his trap gun open and ‘safe’; as he would at a clay station before closing the gun
and calling ‘pull’. As the wind-blown partridges flew over him, he found that by the time he
had identified a likely target, closed the gun and brought it to bear, the birds were past
him and accelerating away or had curled in front and towards another Gun.
Jimmy was confused by this and also by the partridges’ tendency to change direction. A bird
identified as a ‘shot’ would suddenly veer away and another would come into view (late) instead.
Hopping from foot to foot, gun waving towards one bird, then another and then away from it
as indecision took over, I could see Jimmy getting more and more confused and agitated.
His body language was negative and the more frustrated he became, the more his swing
stiffened and the worse he shot.
Some shots he declined because he thought them out of range, the fast small partridge is
deceptive to the untrained eye, others he passed up because he was fearful of shooting a
bird heading for another gun. This is a symptom of his fear of ‘breaking the rules’ and
the thought had stuck in his mind from the strict brief about not shooting quartering
birds given before a pheasant drive the year before.
All this indecision meant Jimmy hardly pulled the trigger for three drives, while watching
birds pour over the other places in the line and fall to other Guns. Gerald was calmer
and more phlegmatic but not much luckier. To compound all this, they had drawn pegs that
were a little out of the shooting despite the large numbers of birds in the air. The wind
was strong and made the birds difficult to predict. Some Guns got excellent shooting whilst
others were largely spectators on some drives. Such is the luck of the draw!
Here is another area in which our two novices showed their inexperience. When in the hot-seat,
Jimmy has a tendency to tell all about him of the scores of birds he pulverised on the last
stand and when out of it loudly complains that he had nothing over him and is wasting his
time. New to the social rituals of game shooting, Jimmy has not learned, as many of us did
as children in the beating line, what the ‘form’ is; he wears his heart on his sleeve and
makes more than the odd faux pas. All of this is usually taken with good humour by the
regular Guns, who are a forgiving bunch most of the time. However, on this occasion, there
was some audible disquiet expressed in the Shoot Room after the last drive. Jimmy doesn’t
work the City but I swear I overheard a couple of Guns evidently under the impression that
he was some sort of banker!
There is a lesson in this for any of us preparing to welcome new Guns into a syndicate.
Those coming to game shooting in their thirties and forties need to be converted from
competent clay shooters into confident game shots. I feel a degree of responsibility
for not anticipating the problem with Jimmy and Gerald. We had been lulled into a false
sense of security from their participation in earlier, more informal shoot days and
expected them to learn too much too soon. A full driven shoot requires a lot of preparation
for the novice if he is to shoot well and behave as others expect.
I should have been with Jimmy at his peg from the first drive and coached him a little,
controlling his shots, instilling confidence, telling him which birds to take and which to
leave, so that he could concentrate on his shooting. Had I done so, he would have had to
worry less about shooting a bird too far, too close or belonging to someone else. He needs
to be shown the rules governing safety and etiquette at the peg, as opposed to at the clay
shoot and he needs to relax, be prepared and enjoy his shooting. This has to be taught;
it does not come instinctively to one unused to the field.
In time Jimmy will learn that paying your money will not make the birds fly over your peg
every drive and he will learn to enjoy the day for the whole occasion, even when the shooting
is not going his way. He will learn the luck of the draw, the fact that it evens out over a
season and that killing a lot of birds is not the sole measure of success or pleasure. In
short, he will learn to be a Sportsman.
All the qualities of discipline, restraint, calm, decisiveness, understanding of nature, wind
and wild birds will come to Jimmy through game shooting - and we will teach him because we
like him. So, next time an inexperienced Gun arrives at your shoot, give him the time, support
and encouragement he needs. Those of us who have been game shooting all our lives are often
too quick to condemn poor form without actually stopping to think about how we learned what
is expected and how we can cram those years of experience into a new Gun in his first season.
The Auction Year So Far
2005 finished with something akin to overkill. There were simply too many auctions in the space
of ten days. It did nobody any favours and some established players got rather poor results.
This, and other signs of fluctuation in the market, clearly led to some re-evaluation among
the big auction houses. Christie’s, Bonham’s and Sotheby’s all cancelled scheduled sales in
the spring. Bonham’s dispensed with the services of specialist Chris Austyn and Christie’s
with Patrick Hawes, who has moved to Bonham’s.
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Nick Holt is now the big beast in the auction jungle with a
turnover of £5 million annually.The gun is a Holland & Holland
8-bore double rifle
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Holt’s, by contrast, went from strength to strength. They topped the £1,000,000 mark for
the first time in summer 2005, exceeded £1,300,000 in March this year and will deliver another
big sale in June, keeping to their four sales a year timetable. Sotheby’s offer an alternative
with their Gleneagles showpiece in August. And Patrick Hawes will get Bonham’s off the mark
with a sale in Knightsbridge on 27th July.
Christie’s are focusing on the very expensive collector-driven sector and selling some very
fine continental shotguns, drillings and rifles of European make, as well as those by top British
makers. These days a Christie’s sale averages around 100-150 lots with an average cost per lot
of £10,000 but perhaps typified by recently sold guns like a Bertuzzi gull-wing over/under and
a fabulously engraved Fabbri over/under which made £60,000 and £50,000 respectively.
Sotheby’s have also gone the smaller sale route with similar numbers to Christie’s, though with
a more eclectic approach across the price and age ranges. The advantage to the vendor of a
smaller sale is that each lot gets more prominence than would be the case in a very large one.
The disadvantage is that perhaps the smaller sale will attract fewer viewers and buyers.
The August sale at Gleneagles will run to around 200 lots, some being held-over from the
cancelled April sale. Specialist Gavin Gardiner is a true enthusiast and is holding his own
during a challenging period for gun auctioneers.
Holt’s now dominate every aspect of the market. They sold six Asprey guns for a hammer price of
£380,000 in March, by far exceeding the price for one lot anybody else has yet achieved. Yet
they still sell tatty hammer guns for £150.00 or old cartridge belts for £30.00. This ensures
that their viewing days are busy and the auction room full on sale days. They also charge less
commission than the other houses: 17.5% to the buyer rather than the 20% charged by the competition.
Holt’s specialists are constantly on the road around the UK offering free valuations and collecting
guns for their sales. They also travel in Europe, Russia and far-flung parts of the old Empire
to procure rifles and shotguns for sale in London. This expansionist policy (recently taking
in Canada) has worked incredibly well for the firm and their sales usually top 800 lots, as well
as regular ‘sealed-bids’ auctions of lower-priced fare.
Where to from here? Well, It is hard to envisage anyone really competing with Holt’s in the near
future. How much further they can grow remains to be seen, but perhaps we shall see a period of
consolidation. The last ten years have been really interesting in the Gun Auction Jungle - a younger
alpha-male has come from nowhere and stolen the pride from under the noses of the rather complacent older beasts.
Outside of London, the provincial scene is still an entertaining area in which to play. Southams and
Scotarms offer much cheaper fare at genuine Trade prices.
Gun sales to look out for this summer:
- Southams, Bedford, June 8th Tel: 01832 273565
- Holt’s, London, June 22nd www.holtandcompany.co.uk
- Bonham’s, London July 27th www.bonhams.com
- Sotheby’s, Gleneagles, August Bank Holiday www.sothebys.com
Dig
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A
writer who made his name in the seventies is Giles Kingdom.
His column "Kingdom's Country" which was published weekly on
Friday in the London Evening News was widely read. Here is his
latest story about country life and goings on. |
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WE ALL GET OLD
It is a sad fact of life that we all get old, but watching your dog slowly wind down because of advancing years
is something that all shooting folk find difficult to contend with.
Your gun dog has been your pal and working companion as well as pet and, one way or another, you have probably
developed a closer relationship with him - or her - than perhaps with some of your friends.
My Labrador has turned 14, which is a grand age for his breed, and is now at the stage when I find the emotions
welling up when he tries hard to do what he has done for most of his life but is let down by worn out parts.
Those days have gone when I watched with pride and admiration when he did a long retrieve, perhaps crossing
water and jumping fences, and then went straight back for another bird he had marked.
He would still have a go but I retired him at the end of last season came the day when he was too tired to
walk back to the Land Rover with me and he had to lie down for a rest more than once.
I'm so glad that he didn't realise that the mallard he had extracted from a fairly deep and fast running
stream was his very last. I did, and it was awful.
A LABRADOR RESCUED
I actually got Coaster through the Labrador Rescue organisation. He was banged up in a semi-detached in the
London suburbs with a charming but harassed family who had no idea how to look after such a boisterous fellow.
The kitchen looked like a war zone and he had a cat "treed" on the back of a sofa. He greeted me like a
long lost friend, knocking over a chair in the process, and trying his darndest to leap high enough to
lick my face.
He and I found each other just in time and a lot of patience and hard work on the part of a trainer
friend of mine and myself, plus his excellent pedigree, got him to what he was bred and born to do.
I pass the spot quite often where, early in the morning of his first full day with me, he put up a
rabbit. Alright, I know, I know, but what the hell. It was his first day in a field and almost certainly
his first day outside and off the leash.
The startled bunny literally disappeared off the face of the earth in front of the pursuing pup by the
simple expedient of popping down a hole. Coaster - don't ask - did a somersault as he piled on the
brakes and then did his best to follow his quarry underground.
He was grossly over weight, the result of too many titbits from the table. Him giving chase had
looked funny enough, but the site of his large rump sticking out of the ground, and his tail
lashing with excitement, is one that stays with me to this day. When I look at him now, I can only
think of how the years have changed him.
I know one is supposed to remember only the good times but it is difficult. When I go to a memorial
service - and I have been to a few lately - and hear someone say that it is a celebration of
life, it doesn't do it for me.
I shall be without the old boy's companionship this season and leaving home without him to go
shooting will be an ordeal. You can't fool him, and I will hear him moaning and groaning as I shut the door.
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Giles will be back soon with more anecdotes and observations on country life
in general. Please read on for our regular contribution on the running of a
small shoot:-
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BLACKHAM DIARY
As if game shooting hasn't got enough on its plate at the moment with the
antis looking for new methods of attack, in-fighting about cage laying
systems, and our glorious leaders trying to ban tail docking, (having
succeeded in Scottie-Land) we also have the "spectre" of Bird Flu to worry about.
I use the word "worry" in a very loose sense if I am honest, as I don't really
believe that there is much we can actually do about the spread of the
disease itself, and - as you have probably guessed - sensationalism isn't
something that I am particularly skilled at.
On the former counts we
could all do more to get our house in order, but with the flu? Well, I don't know.
Am I the only one that thinks that tabloid coverage with words like
"spectre" (ahem!!) or "pandemic" (I think it is like an epidemic but more so)
are perhaps creating a bit more concern than is necessary.
We read daily the scary predictions in the press so I suppose it is only natural to
take the "no smoke without fire" approach to the situation. As such I did have
one concern relating to the impending disaster we are all going to get
wiped out by. I wasn't sure if it would cause problems on the syndicate subscriptions.
It's a well documented fact that on small shoots guns are
always available for out of season vermin/pigeon shooting days but tend to
be busy or forgetful when it comes to work parties and paying up early!!
Well I have to say here I had a pleasant surprise. I explained that I
wanted an early deposit for the birds and ground rent this year and
hey presto - I received half the subs before the end of February!.
The others have assured me "the cheque's in the post" and now we can
get on with doing the
necessary works of pond building etc to better the shoot again this year.
In the mean time I will say thanks for their help with the cash flow
issues of the shoot in times of such uncertainty.
VISITORS FROM TOWN
While I'm having a mini grump, I would like to express my contempt for the
bloody great idiots that thought a bunch of town foxes needed to be
relocated to their rightful rural habitat.
Of course, here they could go
about their daily business, of eating our birds and in a month or so
raiding their nests. The estimate is that about 20-30 town foxes found
their way to Blackham.
One morning stalk with a friend up from the
West Country brought us across a total of 6 foxes, with only one of them
presenting a shot in the snow.
The evening session finished slightly
differently though. While up in my seat, Ian and Pete were on the
other side of the wood with Ian No 2 seated across the road. I was keen for
the guys to get a shot at a fallow.
In the bitter cold I found myself needing
to get out of my seat and walk a bit to relieve the pain in my
extremities due to the cold. On my return a shot rang out from across the valley and
a fox ran up the hill to my side of the wood.
He stopped at the brow and I
cursed myself for not being in the seat where the shot would have been
perfectly safe given the higher angle. The safety didn't even come off.
By the time I re-slung the rifle a second shot rang out closely followed by
a third. What I thought was going to be a bumper haul of venison ended up
being a hatrick of foxes for Ian.
Apparently the first came out into the
middle of the field to relieve himself, whereupon Ian duly sent him back to
the big rubbish tip in the sky.
At the sound of that shot, a further two foxes came
trotting out of the wood to investigate, both of which succumbed to
the same fate as the first.
With Ian 2 adding a fourth Charlie to the tally from across
the road, we set a new record for the most foxes taken in a day.
I've since caught up with a few more on my travels but it will take time
to really get back to where we were thanks to our conservationist friends.
Regards
Kiri K
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