scolopax

I just said no, and in comments, maintain the status quo and scrap the Bill.

Need a mega freeze up on the near continent to push those whitefronts across the North sea, bit of snow here would be nice too.

Really enjoyed watching that

Excellent bag

In the old days I found that lead 3’s in either 1 1/4 or 1 1/2 oz loads were the perfect dual duck and goose load. Not really been able to find the equivalent yet in non toxic, not steel at least, and I swap between steel 4’s and Steels 1’s for ducks geese. I have a stock of Hevi shot 1’s and 3’s but they are reserved for geese only, which is a bit daft really but I nearly always have time to switch over to steel if a duck presents on a goose flight.

Waiting for a chopper to the rigs offshore Stavanger, Norway, I had a few hours to kill so took a walk down a short section of ‘fjord’ adjacent to the airport. In about 400 m of shore I counted 314 mallard plus many more up the channel in the first photo. Also there were about 50 wigeon, and a few scoter and eider further offshore. further around on the unsheltered rocky coastline I saw many hundreds of mallard last winter. They seemed happy sitting on rocks and dabbling in seaweed, no doubt flighting the short distance on an evening to flood water on potato fields. With the cold weather due we can only hope they have some vestige of a memory of old migartion routes and once more cross the North Sea. Two years ago they had a very cold spell right up to the coast (normally the serious cold in confined inland) and afterwards a lot of dead woodcock were found, I saw some myself. No doubt bird which also short stopped but in this case were caught out by a couple of weeks of temps cold enough to freeze the sea and the fjord in the photo.

One club on the Humber, which has annual peak counts of Pinkfooted geese over 20,000, was a granted a consent that included the legal entitlement to shoot one, whole, singular, Pinkfooted goose.

The blame lies solely with the blue badge ‘disabled’ permit holder parking on double yellows. my local market town is full of them, cause chaos.

Very similar to the pressure wildfowling clubs are under in England from NE where they shoot over SSSI. the consent process is being used to greatly restrict wildfowling activity in various ways, visits, numbers and species. Mallard is one species in focus,as they are not migrating to the UK like they used to but staying on the continent. WEBS counts are being used against us mainly relying on the precautionary principle. There is no doubt certain quarry species are not visiting our shores in the same numbers they used to, but that is not the same as a population decline.

Always the last thing you try!

Fines for white birds are a pathetic means of extracting cash from the guns, even more so if they are put down just for this reason. Fines to genuinely discourage guns from shooting locally rare game such as wild grey partridge or black game is understandable, but fined for shooting a common as muck released bird is beyond a joke. I am incredulous that the modern game shot goes along with this malpractice.

Very contentious but the results from the 2021 census have been released England and Wales, total population 59.5 million, of which 10 million were born in a foreign country. That’s one in six of born abroad. The few tens of thousand coming over on boats pales into insignificance compared to that number

Found mine a few days ago.

Still quite keen but this morning went for a first light session in a highseat, mainly for a fox. A nice young roebuck came wandering up to me from a couple of fields away. All I could think of was reasons not to shoot it, and it gained the sanctuary of the wood unharmed. It was no challenge to shoot it and the carcass would have been a problem to dispose of.

Just plain dumb. Firstly what he did, and secondly seemed to make to no effort to hide the evidence. The investigators even found shot buzzards around his release pens. SSS.

I would estimate the geese are at least two weeks early in these kind of numbers. Seems to be plenty of young ones too. Let’s hope they can steer clear of AI. if not we may be in for a short season.

A few days of Northerlies forecast so that should encourage even more to head south. They could not have had much more favourable conditions this last week as it is.

Do you get Geese using the Lough? We see more geese than ducks now on my local estuary

Are you sure? I walked through dumfries centre two years ago and during the five minutes I walked the river bank an old boy landed a nice 10 pounder. I must have been very lucky to time it just right

Have you heard about the Lave net ‘heritage’ fishermen shut down on the Severn? NRW would not license them to take a single salmon, even they they only caught a few every season between them. Very similar method to the Haff netters on the Solway, stand up to their waists in the tide with a glorified shrimp net.

Colonel of the Blues and Royals

You are lucky to have them. Welcome them, they are getting hammered everywhere, appreciate them as a truly wild game animal, far more interesting than a bunch of artificially reared game birds.

the Orkney goose blasters? No concern that they are sending the Icelandic Greylag into a precipitous decline.

Someone I know was on a charter off the south coast and they caught Bonito among a whole range of other fish, including John Dory and lots of bream.

BASC have advised / suggested that we do not shoot on the day of the funeral.