rjimmer

I have been promised some Gen3 goggles for next Monday. I think they fell off a US carrier heading for Iraq. Won't be able to buy the rangefinder now!

Never had a semi-auto. The recoil action was, I thought, the sliding barrel system. Perhaps I was thinking of the inertia system. Discuss!!

I caught a biggish cub in a Larsen trap once. A 12 ft,lb spring air rifle pellet in the back of the head did the business, no sweat. A couple more in the heart to make sure though!! Steve, Do you think it is advisable to publish pictures of your guns when your address is readily available online?

Your local police will/should have a high tech crime unit. Ours is at HTCU@dorset.police.uk I send them a copy of all those Nigerian and Zimbabwean letters. Your local one might have a similar address.

Tractors will run on it. You might have to add a little something to it though.

and, of course, the maggots that dropped to the ground were good food for growing game birds. Just think how a dead charlie could be rearing young pheasants. Ironic, don't you think?

I have started lots of people shooting on my place, with clays and airgun targets. A lot say they are not interested in killing things, but it's not long before they change their mind!

Try P.A Beasley Tel: (01869) 277534 Box Farm Castle Street Stratton Audley OX27 0HJ OR http://www.talkingpointmc.demon.co.uk/ukhunting/index2.html

Or do your English spelling prep?

Don't forget that you can make the noise of the shot quieter, but you can't silence the bullet crack if it is travelling faster than sound.

Like I said. They were worn by a very rich person, or rather the husband of a very rich person. See last week's Mail on Sunday Rich Report!!

What did pigeons feed on before oilseed rape? Are peas subsidised? Most green stuff, that pigeons feed on in winter, is not enough to sustain them. They might like the taste of it, but they would probably be better off in the woods and hedges. If there is less winter food around then their breeding season will probably be shortened.

Would you rather have to get your shooting from a civil servant?

Somebody said that Benelli was a part of the Beretta company. The Beretta 9mm. pistol is about the most reliable handgun ever from what I have read about it's testing. I was told once that Colonel Gadaffi owns Beretta!! What are peoples preferences, recoil or gas-operated actions?

For those who think they need practice in accurate shooting and judging distances. http://www.bfta.org http://www.southdorset.ftc.btinternet.co.uk It's a bit like miniaturised full-bore shooting. Lots of drop at the ranges involved. If you kill everything you fire at, then don't bother. You don't need to practice. The indoor airgun seen is more akin to smallbore rifle match shooting.

I think you had better post the actual Act and Section on this. One of our wildfowling members has just bought a Browning 3 shot semi-auto 10 bore for wildfowling. If you let me have the relevant details, I will pass them on to him.

I have seen electronic ear plugs that let you hear normally until a gun goes off. Not sure how much they cost. They were being worn by a very rich person!!!!!

If you know where he is entering the garden, dangle your maggot, or empty the gerry there each evening. If you do it around larsen traps you rarely get them broken into by Charlie. Anybody with an open certificate to use a .22 and sound moderator, aught to be able to get a safe shot at it from an upstairs window.

Coats with hoods tend to concentrate the noise like the old ear trumpets, in my opinion. The first question the specialist asks, when they find out you have almost lost your hearing in your left ear is. "Are you right-handed?" If the answer is "yes" then the second question is. "Do any shooting?" You don't notice it creeping up on you. Looking back, I think the first indication is when you no longer hear the birds singing in the country (I know there aren't as many as there used to be). There is a constant high pitched noise that drowns them out. I know one person who has to wear earphones connected the to radio all night in order to get to sleep without keeping the missus awake. Another sleeps with the radio under his pillow to achieve the same. Next there comes the problem of hearing what one person is saying when there are several conversations going on close by. After a bit, things become muffled and you have a job understanding what is being said in a room that echoes a bit. It came home to me one day when in a college lecture room and suddenly everybody else got up and walked out. I was sitting in front of an open window with a fire alarm bell ringing about 20 feet away and never heard it. I am thinking of getting some electronic ear defenders but, as you may have gathered, it might be too late.

The main reason that the woodpigeon is so durable, is it's ability to convert most available food into 'milk' for it's young. In Britain, woodpigeons have been known to breed in every month of the year and with the mild winters we have had recently........

Do you mean Sportarm in the centre of Dorchester or the Sportsman gun Centre at Warden Hill? I got my Deerhunter coat from the latter.

DON'T BACK HORSES!!!

I used to get and organise pigeon shooting for a BASC affiliated club and I can foresee a lot of problems that guides face. They have to balance the needs of the crop owner with those of their clients. A grower wants his crops protected as well as possible. He does not want to see hordes of pigeons eating their way through his income while someone waits for the numbers to build up for a big bag. I you don't deliver crop protection then someone else, probably one of your keener clients/club members, will be getting all the shooting for themselves. If a guide is to have access to a lot of shooting, and he/she needs to, then they have to get someone onto the land whenever the owners want them there. Unless the guide has access to something really special then average bags have got to be the order of the day. Some mercinary gamekeepers, who can keep people off the land, can 'give' certain friends some really big bags, but you or I won't get a look in.

Let's change the question Who has used a guide and what did you shoot? Did/do you repeat the experiment? You don't have to tell us who it was! I'm also thinking of answering an advert.

Don't know where you are, but the chap I saw wearing a Sportchief had got it from Sportarm in Dorchester. They certainly look warm and are quite long. I liked the look of riverswest.com Dakota waterfowl, but it has gone from their website in recent days!