Eric Begbie

"****** Blair - Support Fishing, Shooting and Hunting" T-Shirts, Caps and other stuff are now available Here.

If you want a dog to be ready for, say September, then you are looking for one that is at least 9 months old now and well into its basic training. Expect to pay upwards of £800 for such a dog. One advantage of buying a dog at that age is that you will get a better idea of its "personality". This may be important to you as you say you want one that is good with kids and doesn't get your wife excited. Go for whichever breed you personally like best. Either a labrador or a springer will make a good shooting dog if it is from FTCh stock and you train it well.

Darren, Just like your enquiry about e-collars, the answers to your question about pinch collars are likely to be quite polarised. Basically you have to ask yourself a simple question. Are you happy about using any degree (even small) of pain or discomfort (to Jack, not to yourself!) in your dog training regime? If "properly" used, pinch collars, like e-collars, do work. They are one way of training a dog. I put "properly" in quotation marks because, personally, I do not think it is "proper" to use negative methods of training. If you have got Jack to one year old and to a fairly advanced stage of training without inflicting shocks or pinches, I can see no reason why you should have to change your training philosophy now. What's Jack going to think if the nice guy who praised, treated and petted him for the past year suddenly starts using torture? I fear you could end up with a very mixed up and neurotic dog. Good Luck.

Darren, Apart from the dangers and obvious cruelty of incorrect use, there is another huge downside to training with an e-collar. If you re-read Reddeer 40's reply above you will see that he talks about zapping with the collar while out hunting. A lot of hunters in America (where methods like e-collars and Force Fetch are perfectly acceptable) find that if they train their dogs on the collar, they have to use them while hunting as well, for the very simple reason that the dog knows when the collar is not being worn and ignores commands. Some Yanks do what Reddeer 40 does and use the real collar while hunting; others use a dummy collar to try to fool the dog into believing that it is wearing the real thing. For safety reasons you should not let your dog wear any type of collar while out shooting. Go along to any shoot, test ot trial in Britain and you simply won't see any gundogs wearing collars. Its another USA/UK difference - collars (even plain fabric ones) are quite commonly worn by gudogs over the Pond. In fact, if they are hunting public land, it is mandatory. It seems to me that, most of the time, Jack is doing well. Progress by easy steps towards the levels of temptation he finds difficult to resist. For example, you say that, in the training field, he sits to the whistle at a distance most of the time. Most of the time is not good enough. Get that moved to 100% before attempting to move into more dificult situations. Get it 100% right at each stage before moving on to the next stage. I get the feeling you are almost there. Well done.

Here's a couple of sites you might find interesting: Gundogs Galore Gundog Training Magazine Online

Must get one of those girlfriend things! But don't tell the wife.

This is about wildfowling but I'm sure someone could adapt it for pigeon shooting Why Wildfowling is Better than Sex

In my youth (i.e. long before the Beatles) we used to have a Richter Scale to classify "burds" - it was rated from 1 - 20 according to the number of double whiskies that were required before the "burd" looked shaggable. I think Widdicombe (if indeed it is she) would be right off the scale.

It has probably been mentioned before on the Forum but the bag I got from no adverts please for carrying my wildfowling gear would also be absolutely ideal for pigeon shooting. It is probably the only bag I have ever seen that you could use to carry 50 shot birds from the field. Sorry Deako if I'm merely repeateing what has already been posted elsewhere on your Forum. :yp: Well! That didn't work!! I wrote the URL of Deako's website and it printed "No Adverts Please"!!! However, the URL is at the top of the page so you'll find it OK. :*)

I am looking for a good condition Beretta 682 Sporting with 28" barrels (the old plain action 682, not the "Gold"). Anyone have one for sale or know where there is one for sale? :yp:

Over on the Wildfowling Forum today there was a comment from a contributor that he had achieved a very poor cartridge/kill ratio on pigeons - something he put down to the current sub-zero temperatures making the birds shot-proof. I can't see how air temperature affects the ability of shot to penetrate a bird's plumage but I would be interested to know if any other pigeon shooters have experiences of a similar kind. :yp:

Andy, The bag numbers that started the current thread were quoted from another site but most of the "complaints" about you on other threads did relate to your own claims of 100+ bags on your own website. On the current thread, in a posting where I chided a contributor for what I thought to be OTT language about you, I also pointed out that the bags you mentioned were well within the possibilities set by the BASC recommended limits. Don't get so uptight. There is a lot of truth in the old saying that "all publicity is good publicity" and if you don't need any additional publicity, then all the better. Good luck to you - there are plenty of geese to go round. I have actually posted a contribution on the Wildfowling Forum today where I give an example of 33 geese being shot by a party of 6 guns in one morning and I make it clear that, in the circumstances that pertained, I thought it was perfectly OK, despite being marginally above the BASC limits for a single flight at pinks. :yp:

Hi Everyone. I am the Eric Begbie whose wildfowling forum Andy Richardson was complaining about. In actual fact, the "allegations" about large bags made on my forum were merely reflecting the claims of large bags that Andy made on his own website. In other words, the forum supported his advertising. Admittedly some contributors used some rather rude language to express themselves! That's putting it mildly. But the truth of the matter is that there are many wildfowlers who get upset or annoyed when they read about what they would consider to be excessive bags of geese. They obviously don't go out with guides like Andy. On the other hand, there are many potential clients who will use the services of Andy and other guides like him for the very reason that they do hope to occasionally make a large bag. So what do we have here? A thread on a wildfowling forum where some folk, who would never go with him anyway, vent their spleen in somewhat immoderate terms. And a whole lot of free publicity that backs up the very claims that Andy makes himself in his own advertising. And it gives him an excuse to highlight these claims on this Forum as well. He may pretend to be annoyed but he must actually be laughing all the way to the bank. Anyone interested in wildfowling can find the forum here: Wildfowling Discussion Forum Regards to all. :yp: