marsh man

Sadly around our way most of the country churches are now locked up , one of the first jobs I ever did on the estate was repair the flint wall where someone levered the collection box out of the wall , I doubt if there were more a than a few quid and I spent half a day making good to the hole and cementing a new little collecting box in . we have three nice church's on the place and hardly no one go to any of the services , any different around your way ? MM

Many THANKS for the update Whitebridges , funny enough I was going to ring them up today but with it being a sale day then I thought they might be busy , if they are having another one in June then I might put it on the forum before hand to see if anyone want a decent English hammer gun , I have also got a Black powder hammer gun made by the Midland Gun Company which they can have for free if they bought the T Wild hammer gun , as part of thinning my guns out I took my B S A s x s ej to the Yarmouth police station today to hand it in , it was still in sound condition but needed a back trigger spring , I offered it on the forum and no one wanted it f o c , sign of the times we are living in . MM

You have come a long way with your lofting technique from the first ones I ever saw at the first C L A game fair I went to , the lofted Pigeon had a long length of wire hanging below it and was hooked onto a branch , no doubt the long stout wire was to stabilise it , to get it down , or up maybe the chap had connecting poles with the top one having a funnel on it , you then had to buggex about trying to get the bottom of the wire into the funnel , not an easy task in a strong wind , no doubt you and T C would had streamed lined that to make life easy and to allow for a Fenland blow . and I don't mean when Dave break wind on one of his Flatland visits MM

Before corvid I was selling 30 Pigeons every week to one pub in the village , this was a well used pub and in the Summer months they had a fair bit of holiday trade off the Broads cruisers to increase the numbers dining out , by the end of the Summer I had sold around 700 , they also took a fair bit of game in the shooting season as well , then the corvid struck and the place had to cancel functions as everywhere had to close down , this was a disaster on his trade and when his four year lease was up he didn't sign for another four years as he was losing money , a new bloke took it on and he was keen to serve Pigeons on the menu , from 30 a week with the previous chap it was now 25 every two weeks , this only lasted for the Summer season as the chef packed the job in , moving on to last year , again the new chap was keen to include Pigeons as he advertised using local produce , this chap was running two pubs that sold meals and they struggled to use 25 a fortnight between the two pubs and before last Summer finished I stopped taking them as they had several in the freezer , now I don't bother selling them as no one want frozen as they can get enough fresh for there needs and I cannot ever seeing the situation improving . MM

The place where I worked had to comply with the hygiene requirements that was needed to sell game at that particular time which must have been at least 20 years ago , we had a purpose built game larder up the hall that was built out of stone with a hard brick floor , we had to take all the old rails down because we could no longer hang the game by the head by the point of a nail , this was replaced by treated timber with brass V clips that were placed in such a way that no game touched each other while cooling off . The old wooden table where we laid the game on was replaced with a stainless steel one , we had to provide hot water soap and towels for anyone who had touched game and drainage to wash the floor down which we didn't do as our boss didn't want the original brick floor disturbed , now the regulations might have been altered , but it could be another reason why game are given away on a days shoot . As for pigeons , all the ones I used to sell to the game dealer had the estates name on the invoice rather than my name , again things might have changed by now as I no longer get enough to warrant the long journey to the dealers . MM

You are now the main man to seek advice from with the art of lofting poles Chris , we mustn't forget Dave ( T C ) who engineered the device in the first place , so we will put him as neck and neck towards the finishing line. Great shortish session and ten is a nice little bag for an hour or so out in the fresh air , you will soon be spending more time laying the bag out and it will be shooting them in the first place , Have P C been given you some tuition on presentation ?

Cheers , might give Horners at Acle a ring tomorrow to see if they are still taking entries for the next sporting auction , if so I will take it up and see how it get on . MM

I have got a nice nitro proof T Wild hammer 12 bore that is surplus to requirements , any idea what they are worth nowadays ?

I am no wiser so you are not alone . Our house I was born in had a grass front garden and my father used to cut the grass with an ole pair of wall paper scissors , then after a while when the funds allowed he invested in a second hand pair of garden shears , every so often an ole boy in the village came round on his bike that had a grinding wheel converted to run from the peddles , he would sharpen my dads shears up for a few pence and we were then back in service , we just didn't realise how posh we were in those days

You must have a fair size ole garden to be mowing for a few hours , I done exactly the same this afternoon , mine was the driest it had been and today was the third time it had been cut , took about 20 mins and like you say it is now raining fairly hard , best time of the day for it to rain , or should we say night

One of the problems with smallish bags is keeping them fresh as the weather start to warm up , in the height of the Summer it is neigh on impossible to keep them fresh more than a day or so , in fact I have had them blown by fly in the morning and at the end of the day when you lay them out to cool off the fly eggs have already hatched out with the dreaded maggots , so if you had to wait in until the person who want them cannot get to yours for a couple of days then they are already going green , that was the beauty of putting them in the freezer as soon as possible if laid out in a row or so at a time it will kill any eggs off , giving them away to the public could cause a problem if they fell ill after eating the Pigeons you have just waited in and gave them away for nothing , T b h , just not worth the hassle it could bring for doing a good deed . MM

Would be next to useless on soft ground , you would be better off sitting on a five gallon oil drum ( now that is showing my age ) , I have got a directors chair for comfort and a fold up fishing stool for lightness in case I have to walk any distance , something I try and avoid at all cost

SOLD to Jonathan S THANKS

I know very few , if any who have called it a day and then restarted at a later date , life do not stand still and is always changing , a lot of things can change from when you took up the sport in the first place , I was single like a lot of other guys and getting married didn't make that much difference but it do for some , then the first child comes along , money becomes tight , time is at a premium , work and the household chores take priority and the list just go on and on . If you are as keen as ever after you have got through that minefield then you could well be init for the long haul , then as you advance in age you will find the rigors of coastal fowling start to take it's toll as the body cannot respond to the harsh elements as it once did , so you look for a easier way to carry on wildfowling , this is when you go for the morning and evening flight on the fresh marshes , so far so good , then you start asking yourself did you really enjoy shooting those duck that are hanging up ? , when the answer become no then you know it is only going to be a matter of time before your fowling days are drawing to a close , the interest can still be there , but you can still be interested in the sport like a lot of others without taking your gun with you if that makes sense . GOOD LUCK in whatever you decide . MM

Three excellent bags on different fields , maybe not the numbers you were hopping for but for us lesser mortals they would be Red letter days . What do spring to mind is how convenient the fields are that can be looked at on the way home from your work place , now the clocks have gone forward you should find them feeding for a extra hour at the moment and longer as the weeks wear on . Nice photos and THANKS for posting . MM

Things are not that bad now down this part of the country , the land have dried out a treat and yesterday they were drilling Sugar Beet and some farmers were planting spuds , I cut my grass for the first about three weeks ago and done it again since then , mind you they do forecast more rain on it's way , looking bright outside so now going out while it is dry . MM

P M on it's way THANKS

Pigeon Shooting by Archie Coats !st Edition Published 1963 £6 .00 + £2.00 Postage Shooting Woodpigeons by A E B Johnson A revised edition Published in 1980 £5.00 + £2.00 Posted The Pigeon Shooter by John Batley , 1st Edition published 1980 £5.00 + £3.50 Postage All books in clean condition and from a smoke free home . Will combine the postage on more than one book and will post all three for £17.00

Some bargains to be had if you know what you are looking for , I bought my s x s from there about two years ago , T Wild and son , in superb condition , £190 plus fees , now it would sell for less than that , sign of the times . MM

The ole partnership is back in action and long may it continue , a very good bag and laid out in true Norfolk fashion . MM

No I didn't say stop what we have been doing for years , I would say just be more selective where you shoot , if you are anywhere near housing estates then you would be lucky to avoid a visit from the law , any shot carried on the wind and pita , pater on someones greenhouse or tin roof and there would be a good chance you could lose your s g c , no good telling the police you were 150 / 200 yds away when a member of the public state you were shooting towards there house , I know this is fact as a mate of mine whose living is a market gardener fired his gun at some Pigeons that were getting into some of his young plants on his own land , he didn't think no more of it until a armed response team arrived at his house and told him to lay on the floor , they took all his guns away and a forensic team checked the wall of the persons house who reported him , they took him to the police station and kept him in overnight and as far as I know they didn't find any shot marks on the persons walls and he haven't got his guns back . MM

Trouble is nowadays is we seem to be nearer to the public than ever , it's not everyone idea of sport of watching Pigeons or whatever being enticed into a set of life like decoys with often having a flapper and a magnet to keep them company , they don't know the ins and out of the law and all they are concerned about is seeing birds shot and not all of them are not always dead when they hit the deck , I don't think there is an easy answer to avoid it , we often get someone on the forum asking how close can you shoot near houses , I would say avoid them at all costs , it is just not worth the hassle that you are likely to get . MM

THANKS for your kind words Chris , he should look well , I spend more money on his food and tablets than I do on myself ,

Nice bag of Pigeons T C , the Pigeons could have been eating the bit and pieces from the previous crop that were pulled about while the drill was doing it's work and not the odd grain that was left behind These call outs to the police seem even more regular nowadays than in the past , this could be because the countryside is shrinking and houses are going up where we once shot Pigeons , touch wood I have only ever had one visit from the law and that was because the gun fire was upsetting the ladies horses , when the village policeman came and gave me a look he recon I was getting on for 300yds away from her stables and told me to carry on as I was shooting over laid barley , the estate rang her up afterwards and told her , either she put up with me going the odd day or they will have to put a gas gun on seven days a week , needless to say we didn't hear no more . MM

Rusty look a very contented puppy and I am sure he will do you proud , it always seem the milestone when the working dog reach double figures , some can carry on for another year or so without any problem and with others the writing is on the wall , my last one was only ten when we had to part company and my oldest one was 14 , I used to love it when we were on the search for a new puppy , it was always at this time of the year so we had a extra couple of days off work , I remember when we went to look at the one we have got now , we had arranged to look at two litters , one in Swaffham and the other in Kings Lynn , the one in Swaffham had both the mum and dad on show and they were both good looking and friendly dogs , the pups were then about six weeks old and one dog pup kept coming up to my wife , she picked it up and gave him a cuddle and nearly ten years later he is now sound asleep after his early mornings walk , we never got as far as Kings Lynn as our mind's had already been made up , I often look at a lot of ole photos we have got and nearly all of them have got at least one dog on them , dogs have been a huge part of our live's ,and now I am by myself they still are even more so . this is my one this last season.