marsh man

The wait continue , no doubt they are already here but I have been in the wrong place at the wrong time , every month seem to create some sort of weather record but this April have been so cold and wet , even this morning it was cold and raining hard when I went out around 7am and my heating is on , I have just put my damp trousers on one of the rads to dry out , according to the met office it should improve next week , hopefully . MM

I found it better and more convenient at the Norwich showground than the new setting near Thetford , I will give that one a miss and hopefully go to the Sandringham fair in September , this seem more of a friendly fair and is held in spotless surroundings . Yes the Fenland still take some beating , watching the ole thrashing machine working on a lovely hot Summers day while enjoying one of those big ham rolls with a cup of tea in a china cup , will linger with me while the ole memory bank is still working . MM

I buy exactly the same , 12 tins around £9.75 , mine have half a tin in the mornings with a calcian tablet mixed in , then three slices of chicken with a You Move tablet wrapped up in each slice , for his evening meal it is a bowl of Skinners Muesli and anything I have left , he is nearly ten and touch wood he haven't been to the vets since he had a health check when he was a puppy , mind you his front legs are getting a bit stiff , then so are mine

Two fishing books ( 1 ) The New A B C Of Fishing Edited by Colin Willock , Well illustrated with 357 pages ( 2 ) Fishing Impossible , Three fishing fanatics , Ten epic adventures . Cost £20.00 when bought. Both in nice condition and from a smoke free home £8.50 POSTED

We had the luxury of some perfects bits of paper that started off life as The News Of The World , these were hung up in the outdoor loo , for many years we never had an inside loo , this came later when the landlord bricked the outdoor doorway up , turned the pan around and cut a new doorway in the end of the kitchen , no more running down the backyard in the rain , the snow or when we got a flood warning , you could not imagine what difference it made to the six of us who were still living at home at the time .

I was a teenager in the 60s and in my 20s in the 70s , the 60s was decade we will never see the likes again , I remember me and a friend went to London on the train as my dad worked on the railway and somehow got some free return tickets , we were in a different world from our towns and cities in Norfolk , walking down Carnaby St and seeing the latest fashions was something else and the sights in the windows at Soho made you shake at the knees , we also went to London to see the man in Black , Johnie Cash with the Carter family and the Swinging Blue Jeans both live , now that will take you back a bit. .

A lovely way to spend an afternoon MM , nice lot of shooting and you don't do yourself an injury in lugging a load back .

You said in your last post that you doubt you will shoot any more Pigeons till you go on the rape , I take that will be rape stubble , if that was the case then please be careful in letting your dog run around if the rape stubble is fairly short , this will scratch or cut your dogs belly , I always used to take mine and apart from the odd scratch I more or less got away with it , then last year , I am not sure why but our rape stubble was lethal , the stalks were like Aluminum rods and would had cut my dog to bits , I was getting some off our Pea and the Barley stubble's so I left the rape alone to whoever wanted to shoot it and apart from the keeper who took his boy for one afternoon no one else wanted to go . MM

For a while when we were young we had a lot of powdered milk , this was in the White tins and called National Dried Milk , when things money wise were suppose to be better we had that thick , sweet ole Nestle's tin milk , the soap was carbolic , the cleaning powder was Vim and the washing powder was Daz. One thing I really miss from the past is walking up the English Partridge , at the time we had good numbers and we never dreamt there would be a day when you can walk all the marshes for mile after mile without seeing a single Grey Partridge , the days of walking onto a covey are unlikely to ever return . MM

Another decent bag in a few hours shooting , yes the spotted / mottled one is unusual but I have seen similar ones over the years , some with the odd White feather and others that have more White than Grey , only ever seen one pure White one and that was in the game dealers , what ever came of it ? , I haven't got a clue . Can you move the bag on , or is there no demand in your area ? MM

Brilliant and may you have many more , congrats to both of you

Or use a Flexicoy decoy as they are seamless and moulded into one decoy , they have stood the test of time and would still take some beating as far as a full body decoy go . MM

I am certainly no gun dog trainer and would not try telling other people what they are doing right or wrong but I have found since I had my first puppy in 1965 that every Lab puppy I have had since then and including the one I have got now have all been different in there ways in doing things , some will be easy to train and others will take a lot longer . I used to go training with two of my pups with our ex head keeper , he was brilliant with dogs and one year he won the English retriever championship , after we done the basics with sit and stay we would move on to dummy work , this would often involve throwing three or four around and over the dog, he would then go out and pick them up himself with just leaving the pup one to pick up , he was a great believer in only letting a young dog pick up what he couldn't pick up himself . I must admit that my first dog would run in but in those far off days I only shot duck and just about every bird I shot would had been a job to pick up over deep water or mud in and around our estuary , it wasn't till I started to shoot pigeons in a hide that I realised that running in could be fatal and then I concentrated on making sure the pup didn't move out of the hide until told , this was made a lot easier in leaving the easy ones that lay dead around the decoys and pick up yourself while the dog is sitting down nearby , if one had dropped well out then the dog get a retrieve , this way of training have worked out well for me and the only time they get a free hand is when the session is over and I have been shooting over a tall crop . We have all seen a dog try and run through a net and bring the hide down with the owner having to put a lead on and tie it to something man enough to stop him when he see a bird drop , this could have been avoided with it all starting in the pups early training , this is when prevention is better than cure come into play . MM

So have many others , glad he is back in the fold and hopefully a video will be along shortly

Nice one , You can still have an enjoyable day without shooting big numbers , no doubt you would sooner shoot 50 good sporting Pigeons rather a 100 dropping on top of each other after each one is shot . After a wet Winter and early Spring you are now finding if the conditions are right for one farmer then it could be the same for his neighbour's so several fields are all drilled at the same time , a bit like when they start harvesting , nice write up and a respectable bag . MM