marsh man

Really sorry to hear about your currant Lab getting arthritis at such a young age , I am exactly the same age as you ( 71 this year ) . I suppose I have been lucky as all my previous Labradors have all gone into double figures without doing any previous research regarding hip scores , I say all but my last one was a good looking dog that had half show and half Drakeshead lines in his pedigree , when he was about 7 he started to get stiff after a days work , I used him for pigeon shooting over the next two years and then put him in retirement until the dreaded day when we parted company when he had just reached 10 , up till now he was the youngest dog I had put down in nearly 50 years as a Labrador owner. My young (ish) Lab is now just over three and I was thinking the same as you , this could well be my last one if he goes into double figures and I am still here to take him out , at the moment he is as fit as a fiddle and I hope and pray he stay in that condition . GOOD LUCK with the outcome MM

Yes I will have them .... P M sent

You wont see any Red Deer the last 10 miles through the marshland into Yarmouth but 4 miles away there are plenty of Reds , in fact a few years back on the estate where I worked there was a herd of them that ran into 50 / 60 , the tenant farmers were moaning about the damage they were doing on the beet and spud fields , so in the end they fed them all winter in a compound , then caught them up and transported them to a deer farm in Devon . Now there are about a dozen left along with most of the other deer species .

Hi Jo.max...... If you were coming up to Norfolk in the near future I will have them .

Strangely enough , we never do a lot of good once the Beans ( any Beans ) make an appearance above ground level , could well be a regional thing and what other crops are close by .

One thing for certain , pigeons don't go hungry , when we had the beast from the east I shot some on beet tops and they were in excellent condition , and the ones I got last Friday afternoon on short Peas were the same , having said that , we are now in the first week in June and I haven't had a young one up to now .

Tell yer what ditchman , there are some poor losers about , Beech Tree

It could be slightly earlier down south and a bit later the further north you go , same with the harvest , on average they normally make start around the second and third week in July , same with most things to do with farming , the weather plays an important part as and when the harvest start .

We would have known by the dead tree with its branches bare , as sadly most , if not all our elm trees are in that state . Right or wrong it was still an educational thread Mr JDog I think the prize is awarded to ditchy , as he was the first to state Elm

More or less bang on Konnie with timing , our old keeper used to recon Ascot week could make or break the fore coming season , if it is wet and cold there would be very little insect life for the young game birds and with little feathers they some suffer from the cold , whereas with warm weather there is more food and they soon harden up to face the elements

Our winter barley have only just got there ears on so there would be very little grain for pigeons to be had at the moment , Saturday afternoon we got torrential rain for about an hour with several local houses getting flooded with rain water , on the way home yesterday there was a few fields with knocked about patches which could be worth keeping an eye on in 2 / 3 weeks time , one of the earliest dates in my early diary was the 23 rd of June when I shot on laid winter barley , although then the stems were a lot longer and got laid rather than knocked about like it do nowadays with the shorter stems .

A short day out with you , consisting of 12 hours Crow bashing As for the tree leaves , another one for the Beech .

Agreeing with the above observations , I find very little movement on most crops this time of the year during the morning and early afternoon , the only exception is on laid barley , this could well be because the parents are taking the milky grain backwards and forwards to the swabs . So let me be the first one to wish you luck , you should stay dry once the rape dry out .

Did you ever know the boys dad ? he used to make and fit a stock from start to finish , at the time they supplied cartridges and clays to the Somerleyton gun club , I would ring them up and ask if they would bring me a slab of there Style cartridges when they came down to the gun club , they used to be £12.50p for 250 , and he would bring them in his White Jensen interceptor , a class delivery service.

THANKS for sharing , that would make an unusual drive around my way , standing on the beach with the North sea behind the guns Your dog look as if he / she is really enjoying itself .

Sorry to hear Leon haven't been very well , one of the good ole bois , to the outsider the shop bench look completely disorganised but if they tidied it up it would then be disorganised to them , they know where everything is even though it might be scattered about the shop . I once took a nice English side lock to have some work done , after three weeks it was time to pick it up , after the normal 20 minute chat it was then time to ask me what I wanted , when I told them I have come to pick my gun up it turned out it was in three pieces around the shop , when he put it back together I told him I will have to bring it back one day to have the safety catch filed as it was slipping on my thumb , no more to do , he took the stock off the barrels , put it in the vice , filed it while still talking and done it free of charge , service second to none

The front of the shop have just had a new coat of paint and now look as if it occupied , whereas before it was in a time warp , I used to deal with his father who was a very good gun dog handler, in fact some people used to say he was better handling dogs than he was guns . If you do go when the shop is open Robert have always got time for a yarn and he wont sell you anything you don't want , my brother have just bought a tidy A Y A side by side ( number 3 I believe ) from Tilneys for less than £100 and he gave him a gun case to go with it. If you had gone a few miles inland to Halesworth , you would have come across Richardson's gun shop , if you thought Tilneys looked quaint then Richardson's would have looked like a museum , two brothers run it who are two of the nicest blokes you will come across , one word of warning , don't go in there if you are in a hurry , I was in there once to get a load of cartridges , he was running on for half an hour without asking me what I wanted and then to cap it all his son asked me if I wanted a cup a tea as he was then going to make a brew . an old fashioned gun shop at its best.

You could put them in small lots and try your local sporting auction , people will buy a small bundle of 4 or 5 if they only want 2 / 3 of them , you could also put a reserve on them so you don't give them away . Once you find out roughly what they are worth , try selling a few on the forum , you can send 3 / 4 as a small parcel as long as the weight don't go over 2 kilos . GOOD LUCK .

Two of the best freezers I have had were Walls ice cream freezers with a pair of sliding lids on the top , the first one was second hand when my younger brother bought it to keep a jointed out pig in it when he kept pigs , when he moved and no longer wanted it I gave him a tenner for it , I had it well over ten years and it never let me down , when you laid them neatly you get just over 300 with the lids shut , if I had more I would lay them out on the already frozen ones and lay a sheet over them until I had time to run them up to the dealer , in the end the red lights kept up and its freezing days were over. The second one was acquired when they re organised our cafeteria , the one I got was surplus to requirements ( well sort of ) and was a bit more up market than my first one , the only problem with it was a high pitch whining which we could hear indoors , as it was free we couldn't complain , well moving on a bit , at the time we had a large wildfowl collection that was opened to the public and one day I had to go down there to price some building work up , whilst having a cup of tea with the keeper , my beady eye noticed a freezer the same as mine with no lids on but looked in excellent condition , I asked him if it was any good and what is he using it for , he told me it was in perfect condition and he used it for storing corn in it to feed the wildfowl , I told him I have one the same I use for freezing my pigeons but it make a whining noise , would you do a swap ? , yes no problem , I took him my old for him to keep his corn and I took his one for my pigeons , this one also served me well until it finally gave up the ghost . If you come across one they are well worth having , even more so if you know a Walls engineer who shoot pigeons and you could offer him a day out.

I have the exactly the same set up , I can sell 40 fresh pigeons every week which I can easily get them in the top compartment , if I get to many ( which isn't very often just lately ) I can keep them till the following week and any surplus can go into the freezer , once the bottom drawers are full I can then switch my chest freezer on to start filling that up , this way I can now cut down going to the game dealers which is a 80 odd mile return trip to the bare minimum .

SOLD to Jaggsy THANKS

Would it have been possible to use a box or clap trap to catch the feral pigeons , my brother had the same problem with his neighbours pigeons , after keep cleaning out his gutters and putting up with the droppings in his garden the time came for some drastic action , in his earlier days he used to work for Coypu Control and he still had some wire box traps in his shed , after chucking out his waste bread in the garden and a few pieces in the traps the numbers started to decline without any noise or fuss , as far as the owner was aware , they had moved on to pastures new .

P M sent to Jaggsy THANKS

I was reading that in our local paper ( E D P ) , the guy had only just bought the air rifle the previous day , he had consulted the neighbours and they were o k with what he was doing , he had already shot one rat and then the armed response turned up after some passer by saw him pointing the gun out of his window ....................................... one as new airgun now for sale

Did any of them get a double , or the ultimate gold medal award , the triple .