scolopax

I would guess it has the potential to completely screw wildfowling in Wales

Not quite the same but there is a well known deer stalking guide who turns his attention to guided pigeon shooting over the harvest, I believe in the midlands. Up to a week ago his parties had accounted for over 19,000 birds in this short season. going by his regular FB updates he must be doing very nicely out of it depending on the landowners cut of course. teams of mainly Danish guns out and individual bags of three figures an almost daily occurrence, with some BIG bags to some lucky guns. I do not know what he charges but he will not be providing the service for free such shooting providers are the modern day equivalent of the professional shot of yesteryear.

Brilliant account, very well done with getting your beast

My club bought into the whole WHT stamp scheme for many years and it was incorporated into our membership fee from day one, then a combination of feeling let down be BASC over local NE consenting issues and £5 increase in BASC fees, well you can tell what happened. We kept affiliated (just) but ditched the stamp to keep membership fees stable. We never used the scheme, I believe interest rate was not that low, and we were fortunate enough to afford all our marsh acquisitions from core funds. But it does offfer access to money for clubs who would otherwise have difficulty accessing credit.

I always check in online just so I can try and chose a seat I want, this is with KLM.

https://monitoring.wwt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/GooseNews17.pdf Always interesting reading, still over half a million Pinks but a very low count of migratory Greylags, although they admit it is likely an undercount and most of the birds were still in Iceland at the time of the count. Saying that there is little doubt they are hammered in Iceland and then again on the Orkneys, only their high productivity seems to have stopped a collapse in numbers IMO..

Never seen a flapper on the foreshore, most mallard are flying at a good or even excessive height and yes some are certainly still growing but I would never say they are weak fliers. On the first the bulk of the bag (if any) or my local estuary are teal, and they have been strong enough to cross the north sea so I would not call them weak fliers either.

Shot a well known bay up north two season ago, after a successful goose flight the tide made and the front was then full of wigeon, we shot a moderate bag over a few decoys and could have slayed them if so minded.. Now the interesting thing is out of 16 birds (four guns) all were young birds of the year and to be honest quite naive, my analogy would be it was like decoying feral pigeons as opposed to woodpigeons. This was mid November. It does not have to be early season to get daft birds.

The bad behaviour i have seen up north has not been exclusively by visiting wildfowlers.

everything in moderation, although i did cringe at one photo i saw posted which had a mallard 'flapper' in the photo, it did not have any flight feathers just pins and I would hope it was pegged by a dog and not shot.

Another great PW post. and a great shed / view

In the bad old days grouse keepers used to treat Black Grouse as vermin, for leading coveys of Red out of the sides of drives.

yes, I think BASC Scotland need to chase up this angle. but it has certainly reduced fowling pressure from what I have seen in the last couple of seasons, and for those of us still fit enough for a good walk has not stopped us shooting.

it was the landowner, farmer who has only relatively recently purchased the land and I hate to say it is from down south. My impression is that he has done it because he can and no one has told him he cannot. It is has stopped the problem of over night tourist camping and rubbish, and also of wildfowlers parking up in for several days in camper vans which he somehow saw as a problem although he certainly did not seem anti shooting.

Yes it was a good way of recruiting new members, although for various reasons some just took this season permit for many years without taking any interest in joining the club.