Nildes

Myxie all over my permission this last month (Surrey)

There is a similar type of wild fruit grows in the Westcountry called a Bullace. Very similar to a Sloe and both make darn good gin.

You know the builders bags that they deliver ballast in? Cut them up with the scissors, wrap them round a hazel stick and fix with a couple of staples. Put an elastic band round them abnd tell the beaters to unfurl when theyre on the Partridge drive

Go straight to the Police. Get them involved, show them the evidence, broken windows etc. Set up, some video monitoring and other passive stuff but don't do anything aggressive. Whether justified or not, you could end up in court and, if you do, your FAC or SGC is very much at risk. You never said what your mate did to earn so much hate? Did you ask? Is he the only victim in this story or is there a lass in trouble somewhere or something like that? This doesn't sound like casual vandalism to me. Someone has got a grievance. If that's true, think carefully before getting involved beyond being supportive because starting a war may just make things worse for him and his mum and whoever it is know where they live. You catch someone and beat the **** out of them and it'll bounce back on him. Think about it. Go to the law.

Andy's a good guy with a couple of good dogs, a lot of contacts and belongs to a good syndicate. He was kind enough to invite me down once. Anyone throwing away an oportunity to work with him doesn't deserve another. If you make a commitment you should stick to it not hang someone out to dry because something better turns up.

I'm sure we've all seen the odd example of poor shooting and poor judgement. Its one of the risks we take when we allow shooting to take place under a relatively light training regime. Its a given that most of us learn on the job. The thing is, most of us learn from our own mistakes and those of others and with shotguns this is a fairly continuous process. I've been shooting for years and am still nowhere near a 1:1 ratio.........which means I'm still making mistakes. I think the big mistake the lads made was mixing drinking and shooting rather than their system of calling birds.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10...g-accident.html

:blink: Some commonsense at last, you must have been born in Essex. No, but I've shot clays at Braintree a few times More to the point, I've shot Partridges on Peter Jones (Vinnie's dad) shoot at South Mimms a few times too and what that man doesn't know about Partridge Shooting you could write on a postage stamp. I just hope I'm as active and on the ball when I get to his age.

I thought nadal was a worthy winner and the other guy (cant spell his name) a bloddy good loser

Thats not what you started off saying though. You wigged Quist for being a townie and then moved to goal posts to partridges when it turned out that he knew his keepering as good or better than you On our shoot it aint so much what you shoot on the first day of the season, its how many are left on the last. Often the beaters days produce some exceptional birds but the first days are just slaughter of the innocents and you could knock em from the sky with a stick. Keeping a few partridges calling in the pen till shoot day tends to ensure that the coveys break in a number of flushes during the drive since not all birds are as fit. Not being so fit tends to stop them flying so far so that they stay on the shoot after they've flown over the guns and call down the early release birds to join them. There, thats my tanners worth :blink:

It seems to be back up again. The whole of Ning was doing the same message last night. Wherever Ning is? Sounds like Narnia

A bit like Facebook where you can customise your own home page, put up photos and generally expand a bit on who you are and what your interests are. You can also message and chat with other members without having to clog up the bulletin board threads with banter.

Play safe, take it to a gunsmith

A social networking site for those interested in Hunting Shooting & Fishing http://wildoutdoors.ning.com/

You'd be wiser going to a gunsmith.

Sounds like a scope problem to me. Try fitting a different scope. If you've still got a problem the check stock for a crack around the pillar.

Starlings have apparently declined in number by about 66% since the 1970's. Definitely the case in Manchester area. Used to be common garden bird. I think I'd fall over if I saw one in my garden now Depends who you listen to and who is collecting numbers. This videon is from just one of many sites where this display can be seen. http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE

I've got a Daystate 40lb which knocks em dead. Take a look at the guntrader site too.

Its likely that any poison you put down will only form part of the rats diet. In this case, it can take at least a fortnight to kill from first dose. Dominant rats eat first and die first. The smarter subordinate rats might pick up on what they've been eating and avoid it. It pays to ring the changes so that they don't become too used to one type of formulation. Sometimes they avoid plastic bait stations and you might do better with wood. Dogs and Pigs are much more susceptical to rat poison than humans. make sure you pick up, burn or bury any rats that you kill.

Duck tape them to the underside of a wardrobe or filing cabinet. Somewhere where anyone searching would have to move a lot of stuff just to look. They are your spare set so they dont have to be instantly available, just safely to hand if needed.

You should shout MISSFIRE or, more correctly HANGFIRE. Keep your muzzle pointing in a safe direction and keep foccused on the gun and not the competition or the next clay. Generaly, with modern primers, your cartridge should fire straight away or not at all but, to be safe, you should wait a good sixty seconds before breaking the gun. Make the gun safe Check for a correct indent on the cartridge. Show the judge if they want. Put the cartridge aside and finish your turn when instructed. Give your gun a good clean and if the problem repeats, take it in to a gunsmiths for repair or adjustment.

At the end of the day we have to accept that for organisations like the RSPCA, a constant stream of publicity is needed to keep the tills ringing. From their perspective, a few successful prosecutions of pigeon shooters not conforming to the letter of the law is a cheap and tempting target almost certain of victory because, even if defeated, they will have gained maximum exposure for their cause in the press. They represent a major pressure group and consituency that politicians find are relatively cheap to keep happy. After all the cost of a few police officers dedicated to wildlife crime is peanuts against costs in health or education. Its an unholy alliance but its win-win for them. Whereas the shooting and countryside community is in dissaray and can't even agree who is on who's side. Look at David BASC's post earlier. If you want to have a solid defence, there's no substitute for a paper trail. Letters to the farmer confirming the fields where target crops are sown and the dates that deterrent measures will be undertaken. Monitoring of results of deterrents by him or you, comitted to paper. Perhaps even an e-mail confirming a conversation that pigeons are returning within minutes of a gas cannon's bang or pictures of the birds in a field next to a scarecrow. Yes its a pain but its a lot less pain than finding that farmers start getting scared off giving shooting permissions because they find themselves involved in prosecutions for wildlife crime. That can cost them grants too.

Its worth having a look at the terms of all the general and special licenses that Defra/Natural England issues. There is an obligation to attempt to deter using non-lethal methods first. There is also an obligation to be humane. I'm not aware of any obligation to have written permission issued on a daily basis. There's nothing wrong in law with verbal permission or instructions. However, either you or the farmer should be able to point to crop damage and you should be able to show that deterrents were tried and didn't work. You should also have the means to quickly locate and despatch any wounded birds. In practice, you might attend a field of rape on the instruction of the farmer, run the dog over it to chase off any pigeons causing a problem Set up a hide and shoot any that return, using the dog to retrieve any that are pricked. That ticks the basic boxes. Obviously, the use of scarecrows and gas cannon would reinforce the deterrent case. However, no dummy deterrent works for long without some positive reinforcement because of what psychologists call habituation. So, to solve the problem and comply with the conditions, you and the farmer probably ought to have scarecrows and other devices installed on the field full time. Gas cannon of course restricted to sociable hours during the week, with you and your dog coming in at weekends to make real the threat that the dummies and gas cannon represent. OK, its a pain and you'll likely shoot less birds than you would if you were to use more stealth but, at least your pigeon shooting will have a future. There's a temptation to ignore the RSPCA and the deterrents and just cut to the chase and go out and shoot pigeons. Someone somewhere is going to get caught and clobbered and the fallout will affect us all because you can bet that the RSPCA and the RSPB will be issuing press releases and maximising their exposure all at our expense. Don't expect them to play fair either. Look at the affair of the Harriers at Sandringham. No evidence was ever produced but the royal lads were tried and condemmed in the press via an orchestrated campaign from the likes of these. The other angle of potential problem from the RSPCA is likely to be on the use of decoys to pull birds into range. They might argue that they are pulling birds in that would otherwise pass by and not cause damage. To avoid this, it might be wise to set your pattern up if you can so that only birds coming back to the field to feed are pulled in.

Don't use the whole wing. Just use the outer section, there's very little meat on it to rot or more importantly, to tempt the dog into chewing it. Use some butchers string to lash the wings to the dummy. You don't want them to come off too easily. Don't use for training until the dog will readily give up a plain dummy. If it wants to play with or explore the dummy with wings on, switch back to a plain one. When doing the retrieve, don't be in too much of a hurry to get the dummy off the dog. The activity you want to encourage is that of bringing the dummy to you and dropping it to your feet or hand. So focus on praising and looking at the dog and not the dummy. If you make the dummy the focus of attention, the dog will be less willing to give it up because while he's got it, he's got your attention.

No, that's a half ***** way of going about it and will only bring you and all professional pest controllers into disrepute. The Essex, Killgerm and Acheta one-day courses are refresher courses for people in the industry already experienced and trained. If your going to do it, do it properly. You owe it to your customers and the environment if not yourself.