aister

i have owned two ten bores and the biggest problem for me here in shetland was tring to find shells loaded with BB or AAA for shooting geese. the only shells i could get were either winchester or remmington turkey loads and they were usually loaded with no4's wich i found didn't work all that well because by the time the shot had opened up to give a pattern that wasn't peppering the bird the energy had gone out of the small pellets. ordering shells from south loaded with BB or AAA cost far too much . i was using my tens purely for geese, one of them was a spanish horror (i think it was built to fit a horse or something) with 3 1/2" chambers and the other was an old damascus hammer gun with 2 5/8" chambers which i had to reload for with black powder and no 1's. i never felt that a 10 bore had much more reach than a 12 but that was probably because of the cartridge choice i had.

i have shot 5 wigeon with rings and 3 greylags with rings. the first goose just had one leg ring, the second had a leg ring and a neck collar and i shot one on saturday morning with the usual metal leg ring and also a plastic leg ring. have to get the info sent off. there were quite a few geese rung on the loch below my house so the rspb and snh could find out if the geese that breed here stay here in the winter or if they go south. i am pretty sure they stay here all year round but i may be wrong, my mate shot 2 in september and i saw one in a park with the same orange neck collar at the weekend so my guess is they stay here all year.

:lol: need more than that i ate 12 once, with all the trimmings.

once again doc, beautiful pictures :good:

teal is my favourite, just a shame they are not the size of a small ostrich :lol:

i usually wait till i have a few snipe to make it worth while, i have seen cooking snipe, plover and woodcock together. what i do is put the birds breast down in a casserol dish, mix up a double strength chicken stock, enough to cover the birds and pour over them, add some coarse ground black pepper, and pour in a good splash of herb dipping oil (i get mine from the co-op, its just olive oil with herbs in).cover and put in the oven at maybe 180degC for 1 to 1 and a 1/2 half hours. its just something i made up (as you can probably tell) but it always comes good. it keeps everything nice and juicy. i cant remember exactly how long it takes but its just till the meat starts leaving the bone. teal works well done the same way too.

glad to hear you are in the clear mate, honestly, i couldn't see what all the fuss was about, a bit OTT in my opinion. but then again i have never lived south on the mainland where things are very different to here in shetland.

beautiful pictures greengrass, well done :good:

i use black gold 32g 4's for night flighting ducks and love them, used at the time of night when the only time you see ducks is when they are in range you get nice clean kills without peppering them. :good: IMO.

here in shetland we have noticed a decline in snipe numbers, the harsh winters we have had have not helped but i think the biggest problem here is hooded crows, ravens and arctic skuas!

open chokes, small shot and just shoot, dont think too much about it .

i would have said they were harder hitting, i had more success with the rc's.

if i had the choice, i would pick the RC50's!!!!

thanks for sharing that, i enjoyed watching it

the ones i had were crimped!!

i have used them a bit on decoyed geese and have no complaints with them, they paterned fine through 1/4 and 1/2, (thats my gun though, could be a different story through yours). recoil was fine through my semi but stung a bit through my 24.5" single baikal :lol: :lol:

beautiful pictures again doc, brilliant :good:

nice pics mate, well done :good: . i havn't had a woodcock this season, time yet though.

cheers guys, cant wait to get them in the pot :good:

it could just be that express max game are, IMO, s###e. me and a few of us have tried them on geese here in shetland where we can use lead, and we all think they are rubbish. geese 20-25 yards up you can hear the pellets hitting the birds but they dont drop and any geese that did drop had to have their necks wrung which is not what you want. my friend had a simmilar thing happen to him, he fired at geese directly above him with a max game BB, ther was a pop and the pellets just made it out the barrel and fell back and hit him in the face :blink: :blink: :blink:, he had to take his sx3 to bits to get the spent shell out of the chamber as the skirt on the wad was melted by the powder and glued itself to the crimped end of the shell. i can honestly say i wouldn't take express max game out to shoot at live quarry. i get on well with the express 2 3/4" shells but not the 3" stuff. this is just my opinion, please dont slate me for it, there are pw members that seem to get on well with them, i use gamebore mammoth 50gr 3's for decoyed geese or RC 50gr BB's for pass shooting and they are much harder hitting than the express.

went to a piece of flood water tonight after the rain we had last night and earlier today, the wind was perfect for where a stone wall could provide cover. when i got there, there seemed to be ducks every where in the air so i sat in with high hopes. after sitting for half an hour with nothing moving i was begining to wonder if anything was coming back. the first to arrive was three mallard, missed them clean with both barrels . after that every thing seemed to go well. ducks seemed to be coming from every direction and i had a very hectic half hour, after having two mallard safely retrieved a pair of greylags came in, i only had time for one quick snap shot and one goose hit the deck, the other goose took a big circle and came back to look for his pal only to end up in the bag too. quite a few groups of geese came in but with so many ducks around i left them in peace. the bulk of what came in after the geese was wigeon which was unusual as its mostly mallard and teal that uses that piece of water. i had 5 wigeon in very quick succession with a right and left in the middle of it and a mallard to round of a very enjoyable night flight. deciding i had enough for one gun i left with birds still coming in and another twenty minutes of light left.

i have a slot on my licence for a 17 hmr and if i was going to get one it would probably be a t-bolt, not that i have fired one, i just like the feel of it and the look. but i probably wont get one as i would prefer a 22 hornet. unless a loto win comes up of course. :lol:

love it. had to be done

love the adjustable stock, beautiful wood too. :good:

great pics as always :good: