243deer

Being lucky enough to live in Norfolk I have partaken of quite a few geese, mainly greylags. It is quite a strong meat compared with partridge or hen pheasant more along the lines of pigeon. Pretty much anyone that enjoys liver, heart, kidneys etc. will enjoy goose. An old one needs stewing. If I was to introduce someone to the meat I would cut pieces of breast at an angle, cover in parma ham (or similar) brown off very quickly in a very hot pan then finish in a medium oven for a few minutes, say 140 for a fan, allowing as long to rest as to cook. Make a little pouring sauce from reduced orange juice with a little marmelade (a dark one) and finish with butter. If this was for Christmas day main meal I would do them as an extra as you have suggested.

I think the only folk that we can blame for the continued spread of the virus is ourselves. My own experience of going to a small town supermarket has been dreadful with folk oblivious it seems to maintaining 2m, some still not wearing masks and some even pushing in front to pick something off a shelf because their selfishness and time are far more important than everyones health. I dread to think what things are like in large town supermarkets at weekends. All the government actions are scrutinised by the lords covid committee, those of you trying to make cheap political snipes might like to look at the political make up of this committee which is made up of folk who will in general have more age related wisdom and experience than MP's https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/460/covid19-committee/membership/. We do, of course, not have anyone still alive with experience from the Spanish flu pandemic. Not that it would have made a jot of difference if we did as the world is a very different place so I do not understand how some folk have expected a government with no previous pandemic experience to somehow miraculously find the perfect solution. Our biggest concern should be this apparent mutation, especially if it will make the pfizer vaccine useless. If it is going to mutate like flu on an annual basis it is going to take a few years to get enough of an inkling of how it works in order to get a vaccine ahead of it. We may have just added 5 years to creating a nearly 100pc effective vaccine in which case the moral dilemma of should we just let it run its course will need to be discussed again (a discussion for another thread rather than hijack this one)

They cannot at the moment due to the netting restricting them to a pathway to the polytunnel, I was talking about normal times. Polytunnel is 20ft x 10ft so they have some legroom and are reasonably protected. Just means I have to clean up every night and make sure there is not a scrap of food left as I do not want any furry visitors.

I have been asked to reduce rook numbers on another permission of mine. Once again the main rookery is not being managed properly and now a secondary one has started up. The second one is in the middle of the farm so it will be managed, probably with an fac air rifle for the branchers as cheap to run.

so as of this morning my 6 chickens have to be kept inside to protect them from wild birds although as usual there is an unclear statement about using netting which I am going to interpret in my own way. Clearly whoever thought this up does not keep a small flock of hens, the pigeons that used to happily feed on my brassicas and the rooks that used to clear up at the bottom of the bird feeders now have to wear camoflage to make a raid and have to limit their time on the ground to 10 seconds or less, the alternative is on rushing hens which I do find quite amusing. We have had a couple of avian flu outbreaks on commercial scale properties locally and certainly some precautions need to be taken not to spread any disease but this is quite normal for country folk. If I was to visit a friend who keeps 120000 broilers then I would obviously be extremely careful about biosecurity but hang on a minute we are not supposed to be visiting in t2 anyway! This countrywide inhumane treatment of birds with no end date seems like a complete over reaction by folk who simply do not know how to produce a measured response. In the whole country there have only been a handful of cases and my wildfowling and gamekeeping friends have not found one dead infected bird between them and we are supposed to be in a hotspot area. This same thing comes up year after year with a relatively low number of birds affected. My hens are rescue hens, the poor things arrive almost featherless having been caged all their lives, I did not rescue them to see them re-caged. Having done a risk assessment, the most likely carriers that regularly fly over my garden are rooks. So under GL42 I am going to protect my livestock (note not shooting in the garden as I already have permission on the fields in front and behind and next to the rookery)

I think it is time we all started supporting UK manufacturers of boots. I have always struggled with footwear being too narrow so it will be Altberg for me next time around and a visit to get measured, covid permitting.

please take the trouble to make sure you absolutely know what you are talking about before posting as this is simply not entirely correct and so somewhat misleading. https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/wild-game-guidance this is partly correct but as a trained hunter I can supply to family and friends in small quantities in the fur most stalkers who supply to game dealers are now registered as food businesses as word has spread it is required. Even the councils are catching up as initially most of them also did not know of the requirement. Most stalkers simply register to take carcasses straight from the field to the dealer.

I believe that with all wildlife technically protected by law what you need is a defense against a prosecution for causing unnecessary suffering. Checking at least once every 24 hours has always seemed to me to an acceptable level of care, especially when more specific laws such as checking call birds are taken into consideration and this time interval is specifically mentioned.

it is the inside of a six stringed instrument

there are some drivers that could get stuck in a hovercraft though, my old vitara with mud tyres on used to go pretty much anywhere, my l200 has gotten me out of a fair number of dodgy places up to now without having to resort to a winch. I have never had to pull a stuck defender out but I have towed a couple to a safe place to await recovery.

you could start with a quick review of the active ingredients this page will help https://www.pestfix.co.uk/active-ingredients.asp some of them are pretty horrifying for some wildlife all active ingredients still work which is why they are still sold. The more pet friendly ones are usually those on sale in b n q etc Poisons being left continuously available as a preventative measure (this is now no longer best practice) allowed rats to nibble away and build up immunity to some active ingredients in some areas. If you do not think that you have a very high density at the moment then your trapping and any shooting is keeping them in check. We only use poison on the farm when we get the first winter influx now. We follow the CRRU code of good practice which forms part of our farm assurance and may do yours https://www.thinkwildlife.org/code-of-best-practice/crru-code/

The trouble with statistics is that if you do not ask the right question then you cannot get the right answer. There are various mathematical theories that are held to be true, but not provable, which are applied to statistical data to 'prove' its validity. I do not think that we are collecting data in the correct way to answer any of these questions definitively. Many questions that are answered are political in origin and results are skewed by the way folk are told to collect data. A typical example of this is crime involving firearms, it would be very easy to ascertain if the weapon used was held illegally or legally and what type of weapon it wasyet the police are not allowed to record this as proven by freedom of information requests. Clearly there is an agenda out there that does not want this information in the public domain. So we get information presented where the wording/meaning may have been changed such as 'deaths where covid 19 may have been a factor' to 'deaths caused by covid 19' depending on your source of information and the agenda for how ir is presented. The obvious comparison is tabloid newspaper/BBC or a respected medical journal. Alternative data sources such as the NHS itself https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/ appear far more reliable as you just get the raw data to make your own mind up and not a spun story and someones wild interpretation of a worst case scenario.

ad from a litter of labs near me (just someone trying to make money, not a respectable breeder), 3000 each 3 weeks ago, still none sold, now 1500 each. No papers, obviously no consideration for cogenital issues, poor puppies

traps in wooden tunnels work 24 7 and are a lot cheaper than night vision. They will not work for a few days but 3 bits at each end of whatever you have in your feeders and they will investigate the tunnel soon enough

There now seems to be a complete lack of strategic thinking in many of our agencies. This is a case of over-reaction and how to alienate the farmers who do a great deal for the countryside and wildlife at their own expense. Farmers often even bequeth tracts of land to wildlife trusts, I suspect many will now think twice. Even if he was technically one permit short that would suggest an unreasonably complicated system rather than a deliberate avoidance on his part. As for the tabloid type reporting by the BBC it demonstrates the low standards to which it has fallen, time it was gone

imho the human rights of the victims trump any rights of prisoners so just to show my age 'O dear, how sad, never mind' I did get the sarcasm, very apt.

John I understand the r rate very well however that does not answer the question of how folk will know if they are protected or not. Are those not protected going to be asked to take the risk? I think a lot would for the benefit of all as long as they know that they are at risk or does everyone that has had the vaccine need to presume that they are still at risk?

I am not anti vaccine but I would like to know the possible side effects and also have an indication as to which known underlying medical issues will make the vaccine in-effective. This information is presumably known from the thousands of medical trial reports that will have been processed (a very boring and repetative job that is none the less well rewarded). At this moment in time it would appear that if everyone in the country has the vaccine 3 million plus people will then be unprotected. How will they know this and so be able to take suitable precautions? It is clearly deemed that the vaccine is safe and so has been approved on the basis that its benefit will outweigh its detriment based on the statistical results so far. However if you are part of the 3 million then potentially 1 in 20 of the people you pass in a supermarket might still give you the virus. A plan needs to be published explaining how this situation is going to be managed.

I used to work for Pfizers and so know very well the usual protocols a drug has to go through to be approved. This cannot have been through the usual rigorous process as there has not been enough time to assess long term adverse reactions so the approval will be for a promising but not fully tested vaccine and the approval will in part be political. It would make a good episode of yes minister

I am so glad he is OK. My best friend at school was killed by a speeding motorist and there are plenty on here that think speeding is acceptable and it is everyone elses responsibility to keep out of their way so a lucky escape.

we could simply increase the tariff for manslaughter to include up to life imprisonment then the judges could have the discretion in the worst cases where death occurs without pre-meditation but with either deliberate action or non-action that directly resulted in death that might otherwise have been avoided

I believe that there are screw in chokes now that have teeth that are just enough to catch the wad and slow it slightly thus allowing the shot to release.

That is a champion idea I had not thought of. I have a few roe I need to cull over the next few weeks so I will give that a go.

due to very poor freeview reception where I live I use a Manhatten freesat 2 channel recorder. So if I am watching something recorded (almost invariably am so I can whizz past the ads) I can also record 2 channels at the same time. I get the full suite of programs as my dish points at a freesat satellite. Been going strong for nearly 8 years now.

I am very fortunate to have one of my permissions just over my back fence so I am able to go stalking as I wish. I was a little late on parade this morning only getting out the door at about 7. The fog we have been suffering from recently had lifted a good deal and I had more than a field length in visibility which was a bonus. With a 3/4 bright moon last night I was not expecting anything much but needed to be outside and if I have learned anything about deer they are not predicable. So I set off for about 600 yards, wind was at my 10 o'clock so not ideal if it swirled as it was also a very light wind which will always be fickle, especially in woodland. As I stalked in slowly towards the wood, I was clearly not fooling anything that could see me so the songbirds were twittering away, a blackbird would simply not give up and several wood pigeons clattered away. The only thing to do was to stop. So I set up the quad sticks with the rifle on. Once set up you can lean gently on the stock of the rifle and just let time float by whilst the wood quietens. There is a cross over bit of field craft that is equally pertinant to both stalking (ambushing) and decoying and that is to keep still and only move your eyes. So this morning was one of the lucky ones and after just 5 minutes of being still I just caught sight of some movement at my 9 o'clock. My immediate thought was that I hoped it was not a pheasant as they do tend to shatter the calm and they have such good eyesight for the slightest movement. Fortunately it was a good looking munty buck. As I turned my head very slowly to get a look at his general health and movement I had my second piece of luck as he disappeared behind a mound for a few seconds. This gave me time to swivel the sticks through 90 degrees and get reasonably well set up. When he reappeared he was flitting here and there, taking the odd nibble but not stopping for long. This is the most exillerating time of any stalk when you have to calm your mind and be patient waiting for a good opportunity. After about 2 minutes of following and with the buck now only 30 yards away he took a second nibble at something tasty, his last mouthful. So having gralloched, cleared up, walked home, collected the carcass in the truck, put it in the chiller, cleaned the gun it was now time for my favourite breakfast. I cannot lay claim to producing the baby plum tomatoes, but the fresh munty liver, kidney and the free range organic egg from my own chickens I did have a hand in which makes it all the more satisfying. If you have not been lucky enough to try fresh munty liver and kidney then try and ask any stalker you know if you might have some. Sadly many stalkers no longer eat the offal which is a shame but does give other folk a chance to try some.