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Uilleachan

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Posts posted by Uilleachan

  1. Find a hazel stand, find some straightish long staffs/cabers, select the ones that fit, cut and keep in your shed. Job done for several years, ready to use straight away, but those that over winter (becoming seasoned) can be tidied up a bit, straightened (easy to do, google/youtube it) if need be and for the hill it's always worth varnishing the end grain and fitting a metal/copper ferrule.

    The difference in sound produced by a metal ferruled stick stabbed/banged end on to a stone or rock, compared to just the unprotected wood, is more than tangible, producing a sharper louder further traveling sound and well worth the little effort in fitting one. Plus you convert your throw away stick into a stick that'll last several seasons. Which is great when you discover one you especially like. Provided the end grain is varnished and protected by a ferrule the shaft can look tattered while the stick retains it's structural integrity/strength. Which is handy should your keeper judge your beating productivity by the state of your stick. 

     

     

       

     

      

     

     

  2. On 11 November 2017 at 19:50, figgy said:

    Wear some thermals under some waterproof trousers or some ex mod Camo trousers 

     

    ^^ That.

    Synthetic top and long johns. Ditching the cotton, especially next to the skin, and layering the clothes is the trick for the cold. 

  3. Not that unusual, more common is to worry deer and other animals (goats) close to an edge in the hope of a driving a few over,  perhaps killing one or getting one injured enough to eventually die. Of course intentional injury could be the point behind that attack. This time of year isn't a good time to be getting a few manky eagle talon induced open wounds about the head, if you're a deer on the open hill that could kill in a few weeks so handy for the eagle, it just needs to keep tabs until it keels over enough to have a peck at. 

  4. Yeah, it's only really worth having if you have somewhere to use it.

    I've a trap and don't have enough ground of my own to use it. I have mine on my pals ground as he's into it but not as much as me. We used to use a manual trap, nick named "death trap", but that took both of us to be present, in use as the manual trap is sans the locking mechanism, so impossible to use alone. The automated trap with remote means I can shoot on my own and we have it there ready to go should we have a little informal shoot with friends. 

    As I'm eternally grateful to my pal for accommodating a part of my shooting mania, i repay in kind. I was up there today (and shot 150 rounds at left and right edge on crossers :good:) and when I arrived he was off to cut willow for a hurdle job he has on, did he need a hand? no. But could I help him shift his cows at some point in the next few days?

    Now I can think of a hundred things I'd rather do, but if he needs me to help him, shift cows sheer sheep etc. I'll arrange my spare time around that and make a point of being available. I believe he's doing me the much bigger favour so it's up to me the ensure he feels the arrangement is worth it. 

    So I'm his orra loon (scots term for: additional odd job lad), paid for as described above. 

    I'd take the trap and shed it. Then keep my ears open for opportunity to use it. You'll be surprised, having a trap can and will open a few doors. But finding a mutually beneficial arrangement is a medium term task.    

     

  5. uilleachan Id suggest you become a member of the GWCT and read their evidence based factual reports.

     

    Nothing from the RSPB is to be trusted, only the other day an internal memo was leaked which described their BOP site monitoring system as very poor and unreliable.

     

     

    I know better than most that: the RSPB "aren't to be trusted", but nor are any agenda driven body.

     

    Why are game managers always blamed by those numpties. Do they no realise that there are other rural occupations, sheep farming mainly, who might have no love for birds of prey?

     

    Blackpowder

     

    Certainly round here that ^ was the main driver when it come to persecution. Coupled with the fact that there was money to be had for a not too badly beat up eagle, £2k in the 80's. Thats still going on, seem to remember someone getting caught with an eagle in his freezer not that long ago.

     

    Poaching and general persecution was stopped round here when some conservation lot started paying a grant of £2k to crofting grazing clarks. All of a sudden eagles were worth more alive. Now we've quite a few and nobody really bats an eyelid. Not even with the sea eagles and they had quite a hard time getting established.

     

    I've never been party to killing a raptor myself. But in years gone by it wasn't uncommon. Young birds move in to vacant areas looking to establish territories once they're fully fledged and those with an interest would stop them establishing themselves. It would be utterly naive to think that isn't still going on in some places where that type of interest still exists.

     

    Be it a keepering effort, husbandry interests, poaching, or just bloody mindedness, it's still happening. Round here we (royal) stopped killing eagles and they became reestablished. It isn't rocket science.

  6. The question is a simple one, why are there few to no apex raptors in the areas where intensive moor management proliferates?

     

    If we can't answer that question, and soon, venues offering driven grouse will decline markedly in Scotland, and it isn't the RSPB we need to worry about.

     

    Because, like it or not, moorland management "techniques" are firmly in the sights of government, and they have several avenues of prosecution open to them. We're already seeing general licence restrictions served on some estates due to "wildlife crime" investigated by the police:

     

    https://www.snhpresscentre.com/news/general-licences-restricted-in-light-of-wildlife-crimes

     

    If agricultural subsidy is devolved after brexit, we could also see the loss of subsidy for culprits and even suspects.

  7. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/eagle-golden-scotland-highlands-numbers-close-to-historic-levels-a7408816.html

     

    Quote from the above:

     

    "Golden eagles also continue to be absent from many parts of the eastern Highlands. Less than one third of the traditional ‘home ranges’ in this area were occupied by a pair of eagles and no eagles were recorded at all in over 30 per cent of them, despite the fact that these should be very productive landscapes for these birds. Many of the vacant territories in this area are on ground managed intensively for driven grouse shooting and in recent years, four eagles fitted with satellite tags have been found illegally killed in the central and eastern Highlands.""

     

    No eagles at all in England at the moment.

     

    As shooters we can wax lyrical about managed moorland habitat diversity, "oh look; a merlin", but with a soaring population of eagles why are there still empty territories? The elephant on the hill seems to be that the vacant territories are in proximity to managed grouse moor.

     

    It's a bit like the claim that there's habitat enough for 300 pairs of hen harrier in England, yet England is largely devoid of them. I don't like pointing the finger at our sport, or aspects of it, any more than the next, but there we have it the numbers speak for themselves.

  8. If that's the case why doesn't the same hold true for the rest of the UK?

     

    There's enough unkeeepered ground north and south of the border to hold populations of raptors now that ddt etc is out of the picture. Why aren't there the numbers about that supposedly should be?

     

    Thats the million dollar question.

  9. I was under the impression there were more numerous raptor populations ( and better breeding success ) on some grouse moors than there are in some RSPB reserves?

     

     

    I can't speak for RSPB reserves as I don't have experience of any. However, "apex" raptors, top of the raptor food chain species, are largely absent from areas of intensive grouse moor management.

     

     

     

     

  10. Well, the absence of apex raptors in winged shooting game areas is a bit of a give away. Especially, as is the case in Scotland, where adjacent non game shooting areas hold healthy populations.

     

    The population spread figures speak for themselves.

  11. Weather changed with us on Sunday. Cold but bright day, plenty of ducks and geese spotted in the bay, a gaggle of Canadians in there too by the look of it, sat apart and distinguishable by their size, in comparison with the regular and numerous greylags, as they were backlit by the low sun and with me not having the bins thats the best I can do with ID, for now. Likely Canada's but could also be some type of swan.

     

    Saw a single fat red-wing sat on the wire on my way home and not a berry insight.

     

    Frost over Sunday night and quite cold all day yesterday. The rain's back in and it's milder this morning, however; that mini cold snap heralds the start of it for me.

  12. Moleskin is made of brushed cotton and is therefore quite hard wearing. However, as a material being made of cotton means that it isn't warm and, positively chilly when wet.

     

    Spend a few quid extra and buy a cotton-wool mix shirt, or pure wool shirt.

     

    Pendelton 100% wool shirts are now available through Amazon UK, who'll import them from the states with the duty added and paid at checkout. They take around 10 days to come and cost between £100-£130 delivered depending size.

     

    The most sober hunting fishing outdoor pattern available at the moment is the black watch, US sizes are one bigger than ours. I'm a UK XL so a US L. I'm also tall so my actual US size in a shirt is LT for proper sleeve length, but being a lad who does his own washing, I find with wool it's best to buy a size bigger and get the shrinking out of the way with an initial 60º wash. So I order XL Tall.

     

    Moleskin for the summer, wool for winter :)

  13. Photos like that always make me laugh. It's a big fat cat right enough, however. Look at her hands holding the cat and then look at her body. It's a classic foreshortening trick and unless that girl is half gorilla, thats what it is....

     

    We used to do that with trout. In our case we carried a convincingly "adult" looking little kids wellie, which we'd use for, ahem............ scale. In our trophy photos ;)

  14. Jings yikes n' help ma boab. At least one of the river Ness eggs has hatched:

     

    https://www.facebook.com/FishtheNess/?fref=ts

     

    For those that don't do Facebook here's the narrative that accompanies the picture of a new pink salmon alevin quoted from the link:

     

    "A Pacific pink salmon 'alevin' from one of the in-stream incubation boxes in the River Ness today. Note that the fish is already turning silver (they start their migration to the sea soon after emergence), its characteristic black tongue is also clearly visible.

    On the 4th September 2017 pink salmon eggs from the River Ness were transferred into two fully enclosed in-stream incubation chambers provided by Marine Scotland Science. These are buried in the river gravel together with two temperature loggers (one above and another below the gravel).

    The incubators allow us to monitor the survival of the eggs, together with the time and temperature at hatching and emergence (the point at which the fry swim up from the gravel). The information gained will be used to help inform a UK wide risk assessment for this non-native species."

  15. Well, they're not banning smacking per se, they're removing the Scots Law defence of "justifiable assault" which can be used to justify beating kids. It doesn't need policing as such, but if you wind up in court for beating kids you'll need to come up with some other means by way of defending yourself.

  16. An ex girlfriend's father had a bad quad incident some 20 years back.

     

    At that time he was working in private forestry, as a keeper/forester. He'd been out on the hill one evening just before dark with the quad, delivering some extra wire & fixings for the fencing contractor to a new fence line. On his way back down he was scouting for beasts in likely spots, when he tipped the quad. It didn't tumble far but it pinned him down. Due to the place and his injuries he found he couldn't move the quad.

     

    He wasn't missed at home until late as he stayed over at the block he was working, which was too far a daily commute from his home. Normally when working this location he'd go to the pub in the village few miles away, to phone home around 9-10pm. When he didn't his wife phoned his boss, who in turn phoned someone to take a look. No sign.

     

    Found him next day after a couple of hour searching, still pinned broken leg and hypothermic, having spent 12 hours on the hill. Close call. Had his wife not phoned until the morning things would likely have turned out differently.

  17. I think the general grabber range is hard to beat at their price performance position in the market. You could spend a lot more for better but would you actually need them or uses them for what they were designed regularly enough to justify an extra £100 per corner?

     

    Round here there's a lot of 4x4 tyre porn on show, but you don't see them pulling ladened livestock trailers out of soft fields etc. the tractor comes out for that.

  18. anyone else think they should charge the idiots who get stuck up a mountain in flip flops?

     

     

    No. Ridicule is a better way forward. Mountain rescue team participation in the UK is conducted on a voluntary basis coordinated by the police, anything that alters that, professional footing etc. would be to the detriment of the service. There'll always be idiots, and we have to put up with those, not rewrite policy that affects the vast majority on account of a vanishingly small number of eejits.

     

    I tried to find a link to a piece regarding a barefooted guy who had to be lifted off the hill with his flip-flopped mate who broke his ankle on the hill in Badenoch a few years back, but I can't find it. The leader of the rescue team in question had some, choice words to describe the pair.

     

    The air ambulance doesn't respond to mountain rescue callouts, thats the job of the coast guard, in scotland at any rate. They may evacuate casualties from safe landing locations once casualties have been recovered off the hill, but they don't rescue people on the hill, generally.

  19. Up this neck of the woods, it's an invaluable resource given the distances to A&E attached to fully equipped hospitals. Especially in the summer when we've high tourist numbers having accidents and or generally clogging up the roads. 2+ hours to a proper hospital in summer is the norm by road.

     

    Between the air ambulance and coat guard helicopter (and the RAF when they covered remote emergency calls), there's a lot of people still with us who simply wouldn't be, but for their efforts.

  20. Most likely mice, given the time of year.

     

    Bait, you have to keep putting it our until they stop taking it. Around 5 to 10 days, as some won't find it as quickly as others....

     

    Traps, there's a bit of a knack setting them to be sensitive. Melt chocolate and paint it on to the trigger plate bait holder. That way they have to work harder to get it thus triggering stiffer less sensitive traps.

  21. From the macbook menu bar, select the apple logo, furthest top left icon, from there select "system preferences", then "Security and Privacy".

     

    From "general" setup a password, then check the Download apps from: "Mac App Store & Identified Developers" button (you can disable it manually when ever you want to download a specific app that isn't Mac store approved/supported).

     

    Next sub menu from Security and Privacy is "fire vault", you don't need to enable this unless you want to encrypt your hard disk.

     

    Then it's firewall, turn it on. You'll have to turn it off again to enable file sharing, if you don't then it's best to have the firewall on.

    In the firewall box there's an advanced button, from there you can tweak the firewall further, but read up on it first.

     

    Next is privacy, decide which apps share info etc.

     

    Once your done, lock the padlock Icon. Don't forget the password.

     

    Thats you, then it's just down to observing regular online/communication security i.e. don't click on links or open files you don't trust.

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