scolopax

Some coincidence but I had a similar experience to the opening post yesterday. My HWV is not the best or most experienced water dog but will retrieve to a moderate distance. Yesterday I had two greylags down on the estuary, looking back these were his first water goose retrieves. Anyway all went well with first bird, second one had drifted to 50 yards and he got to this one but got a wing over his face, for a few long minutes he just corkscrewed , drifting very slowly further out. Mild concern turned to mild panic, my mate came up and sent his dog but it would not steal the goose from mine and returned. I was taking my jacket off becoming convinced he was caught up and getting myself ready for a dunking but my pal said he would try to wade out first. He went far enough to find the leak in his chesties then my dog must have got his bearings and started to power in the second greylag. All ended well but I do wonder what would have happened if there had been any form of tide running.

currently it seems about one to one (lol)

I swerve / brake etc to avoid hitting anything in the road. It is easy enough to do, I do a lot of rural driving and hit very little, a few pheasants have committed suicide by running out at the last second from a perfectly safe verge but that is about it. I even swerve to avoid frogs in the road, although most tend to be frog shaped leaves. Hedgehogs get run over because they are hard to see, Hares get run over because they often run away from the car and zig zag infront of it taking a while before they decide to break left or right onto the verge. Most potential road kill can be avoided safely enough

No not at all. But before we can mount a robust defence we need to take a long hard look at the various facets of shooting sports and if needed, get our house in order.

My concern is that the elephant in the room is Packham speaks some truth.

so true, that is what I see in my minds eye when the decline of turtle doves is mentioned, them coming into rape stubble fast and low like little dark brown collared doves. The last study I believe showed a much reduced breeding success rate. They still reared some young to fledging but just not as many as they had in previous studies quite a few years before. I think overall the decline in weed rich areas was blamed, whether fallows or margins, I am sure Furmitory was mentioned as beinga favoured food plant.

very stressful this keepering lark, whether looking after 100 or 10,000 Good luck. Sometimes it is just best to cull those with symptons, eyes and coughing, and let the rest out and hope for the best I know it has been said before, but poults are best in almost all situations

After about six or seven years of being a club member I might try and get down to some rather nice North Norfolk marshes I can shoot. I hear there is the occasional duck or goose down there.

it is grown on one of the farms I shoot. It is canary seed, for the bird feed industry literally to feed canaries (and other such birds)

I believe Collared Doves are not on the new GL, maybe you are thinking of these? As already stated the UK Turtle Doves are in a terrible state, huge population crash in the last 30 years. They are quarry species in other parts of Europe and large numbers are / were shot on migration through the Mediterranean countries.

well done, fine looking beast

So votes for the Brexit party let in a remain party, well done the remainers are bright enough to use tactical voting, maybe the leavers should employ some intelligence too https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-politics-49200636

the one good thing which so nearly came out of the GL fiasco was the stopping of commercial pigeon shooting

time some opened up their eyes a bit. Hen Harriers are very efficient predators of grouse and their chicks, they are basically incompatible with driven grouse shooting. As they say......you do the math

My local rural petrol station is like most part grocery store. It is normally quite busy and a couple of days ago I queued to wait for an available pump. On fuelling up I noticed that the inner two pumps, closest to the shop, were “occupied “ by a pick up with the fuel in take on the wrong side and parked midway between the two. Now as I walked to pay the owner of the vehicle came back, I did not say anything but we made eye contact and he realised I had an issue. A short conversation ensued with me confirming that he had not taken any fuel just bought groceries, and that he knew that the car parking was only 50 yards away. I finished by stating that I thought it was selfish to occupy pumps at a busy station, he replied with a smirk that he did not care. And that was the end of it. The tenuous link to shooting is that i discovered at the counter he was one of the major local landowners having several large farms. So no point me doing any door knocking at any of his properties hereabouts now lol. So PW massive, was I right to be irked? Or is it acceptable to park at a pump but not buy fuel?