Poor Shot

As above, Falcon T50B-FT 10-50 x 56 scope. Scope comes with rings, flip up covers and extension tubes as per picture. £210 delivered to anywhere in mainland UK.

As above, Hawke vantage 4-16x50ir 17 hmr Very good condition. Used in anger less than a handful of times. Comes with Hawke Match scope rings. £130 delivered to anywhere in mainland UK.

Pard NV007V 12mm night vision add on. As new condition in box with spares, shims and additional collar as per picture. Supplied as a warranty replacement but no longer required. Used once to set up the unit on a scope and stored since. Unit charges and works as expected. £245 delivered to anywhere in mainland UK.

Tetra 33" cleaning rods for .17 and 22 cal. 17 cal rod and accessories lightly used and in very good condition. .22 cal rod is new and unused in original packing. 17 cal rod comes with jag, brass brush and mop. 22 rod comes with jag. £40 delivered to anywhere in mainland UK.

HikMicro LC06 thermal spotter. Good condition, charges and works as expected. No charger but uses a Micro USB which anyone will have spare in a cupboard. Comes with soft case and hand lanyard cord as pictured. £210 posted anywhere in mainland UK.

A so-so season for me on a syndicate and club shoot. No 'bought' days this year, I simply couldn't spare the expense and would rather put the £400+ to a few of this summers open clay target comps rather than a day on another shoot which is no better than the syndicate or club shoots. Between beating, shooting and walked up days on the club ground I probably got around 25 days in over the season. This years syndicate shoot was particularly disappointing. Not the fault of the keeper or members as we suspect that one of the two pens on the land had been emptied by night time poachers with NV and air rifles. The pen runs adjacent to a side road off of a through route, the shoot is also criss crossed with public footpaths so it's not surprising that some scummer has found the pen and came back at a later date to poach the birds. Around 400 birds released in that pen in the summer which was then almost empty by the first shoot day. That pen usually holds the birds really well and the shoot is full time keepered by the famer so no reason to believe that the birds simply wandered due to lack of food or predation. Ideally the pen needs relocating for the next years shoot but I have no say in the matter. This made the shoot days particularly frustrating having to cover miles and miles of ground to get anywhere near the bag when previous years shoot days had been a breeze in comparison. This boiled over on one particular day which will always stick in my mind for all of the wrong reasons. Bad weather, guns not showing up, low beater turnout and a general hard few weeks in work got to me at a point where the dog decided that she didn't want to listen to the whistle anymore and ran up a hedgeline without stopping. When she did finally return, I'm incredibly ashamed to say I gave her a little kick. Nothing serious but enough to raise a quiet yelp from her. That was completely out of character for me and not in any way representative of how I treat my dogs. One of the beaters even approached me after the shoot to have a word and make sure that I was ok. As soon as I'd done it, I took the cartridges out of the gun, laid it down on the floor, caller her in and got down level with the her and sat with her for a minute or so. I felt awful. In the hours after I ran through it all in my head. I'd decided that perhaps game shooting wasn't for me, the dog would be much happier living as a pet in our home and that the game gun and other kit would be up for sale on Pigeonwatch that same evening. The wife gave me a talking to afterwards when I explained why I was being so quiet that evening and the feeling of overwhelming guilt subsided over the next day or so. A bit of an over reaction? Maybe but Jesus I felt truly awful after it. Next time it'll just be a deep breath, remember that it's just an informal syndicate shoot and that everyone's dogs slip up every now and then. I used exclusively steel shot this year on the syndicate shoots being a mixture of Gamebore Dark Storm steel 32g 4's, Bio Ammo 34g 4's, Fiocchi Wetlands steel 3" 35g 3's and Lyalvale High Performance Ultimate Steel 3" 36g 1's. It was a chance to experiment with some new and some older steel loads and break a few myths amongst the older shots in the syndicate. The 3" cartridges were meant for use on the marsh on ducks and geese but I didn't really get the chance to try them so driven pheasant and duck had to make do. The 3" cartridges are obviously really good out to some good ranges but are a bit overkill, cost a lot (£560 a thou for the Lyalvale) and I imagine will start to wear a shooter down after a few drives on a big bird day. I'm not particularly recoil sensitive but I wouldn't want to be shooting 250 of these in a day. The Gamebore were ok, a bit punchy but I've never shot a cartridge so dirty. We're talking barrels lined with thick black wad residue after only a box or two across a days shooting. The Bio Ammo 34g 4's were stand out amongst them all. Felt no different to the 32g 5 lead shot cartridges I would normally use, really good hits out to some good ranges, cleaner kills than even the Fiocchi 3's and afterwards, barrels so shiny you could see your reflection in them. I'm not sure of the cost as I was gifted a few boxes of them before the season but they won't be as expensive as the Lyalvale that's for sure. Shot my first (and only) shoveler duck. It was small, tasted of mud and would be much better if just left to fly on in future. The stand out day of the season (for two reasons) was a walked up shoot with just me and the dog on NYE. I'm relatively new to the game so I'd say this was probably the first time in the 3 years I've been doing this that I set out just me and the dog. No particular plans just a walk around the boarders of the club ground to push any birds back in and maybe take a shot or two if they presented themselves. We must have walked a 5 mile loop around some very hilly Welsh mountain terrain (bordering the Sennybridge army range which any ex or current squaddies will know all too well) with only a missed woodcock to show for it. On the last 500m stretch back to the car the dog put up two excellent birds, one from a patch of reeds heading for the boundary and another from a small brook doing the same. Fortunately I was on the ball that day and got them both first barrel. Two excellent retrieves from the dog (she's always been reluctant to pick up pheasants for some reason, tending to pick and drop, pick and drop all way back to my feet) and I was over the moon. One of the cocks had some nasty spurs and gave her a right kicking as well but she soldiered on got the bird to my feet, sat up and presented it to me without any fuss. The dog didn't put a foot wrong the entire day, was tight on the whistle and worked her socks off. A complete contrast to the day which led to the incident in the last paragraph. The other reason that this day stood out is that she has a nasty habit of jumping barbed wire fences while I'm trying to climb them myself. I normally lift her over and sit her up while I climb over, which she then sometimes jumps back over the fence to get back to the heel position, or I sit her up, climb over and then lift her over. She also tends to jump over while I'm mid climb. I can't predict when she's going to do it and she doesn't do every time. She just wants be on the same side of the fence as me at all times. Unfortunately, one of these jumps was on a new, quite high fence line with some bright and sharp barbed wire. She caught her back end on the way over and cut open her rear right arm/ leg pit which exposed the pocket between the leg muscle and abdominal lining. Very lucky and a few mm either way would have resulted in a much nastier injury. Being a spaniel, she carried on as normal. I did lift her up and check her underside afterwards but I couldn't see anything as the wound was tucked into the armpit and there was little to no blood. She did this around 2/3rds of the way through the day and carried on as if nothing had happened. It wasn't until we got home and she refused to eat a treat, move from one spot and became quite lethargic that I realised something was up and gave her a thorough check over and discovered the open wound. We had plans to go out for NYE but these were immediately abandoned and the dog rushed into the emergency vet. The open wound itself wasn't too concerning but the lethargy and refusal to eat or drink was. Considering it was 16:00 on NYE at this point, the emergency vets were brilliant. The dog was in, put under, stitched up and back with us by 21:00 with a bag of antibiotics and pain relief. She was looking very sorry for herself afterwards. Agria working dog insurance via BASC covered all but the £170 excess so well worth the £18 a month I pay for it. The wildfowling has been incredibly disappointing this year. I managed two trips out early season which resulted in not even seeing a duck, never mind getting a shot at one. I did one trip down to scout out the place on Aug 31st and it awash with mallard with around 20-30 flying over in the time I was there. Since then, the weather, work, beating, shooting and tides have been completely against one and other. I'm planning to get out once or twice before the 20th but it looks like it's going to be an empty bag return for me this year. The marsh is not the productive of marshes but it is easy access and about as safe as it comes for new shooters. There is a much more productive and larger marsh down the coast, I may enquire about a membership this year and focus more on the wildfowling next year and take a half gun on the syndicate instead. At least the dog enjoyed herself. There's a rotten, dirty **** hole of a dyke boarding the path off of the marsh and some cattle sheds which is half tidal mud and other half cow slurry. If I'm not careful she'll be right in there rolling about in it. Here she is waiting for the sun to set on the first day of the season. She was likely anticipating some of the 20 or so mallard we had seen the evening before and excited to get into the mud for some retrieves.

My predictions for the tournament as follows: 1. Ireland (Despite Farrell being on sabbatical) 2. France 3. Italy 4. England 5. Scotland 6. Wales (I hope I am wrong) First place could be anyone of Ireland or France depending on how they get on in their clash. Italy to build on last years success and take the England scalp for (I believe?) the first time. England to take a beating from Ireland which will set the tone for their tournament and will see Borthwick out on his ***. I think Scotland's chance at a title has been and gone. If Scotland were to have done it then it would have been 19-23 and they now need to move on from Townsend and get a fresh start. Wales to push one or two teams close for the 1st 60 minutes but then fall over to a 15+ point loss in the last 20 minutes. As far as this weekend fixtures go, it'll be France, Italy and Ireland to take the wins.

They are a very front heavy gun. Mine required most, if not all of the stock weights to be installed just to put the balance point on the hinge pin and get the balance back between the hands. They have a lot of the overall weight in the front end of the gun which makes them quite taxing to use. I too experienced scores dropping off towards the end of the round whereas with my 694, which is probably around 9lbs with balance weights installed at both ends, I feel like I could shoot stands 1-12, then 12-1 and then back to 12 again and still feel fresh. A very nicely balanced gun, no recoil (relatively speaking) and a pleasure to use. On the flip side, my ProSport felt like it could have fired 250k cartridges and still look like it did the day it came out of the factory. I'm not sure the 694 could stand up to that abuse without regular servicing and overhauls.

Beretta 694 sporting with adjustable stock is advertised at 8lbs 3oz. I'm not sure a pound here or there is really going to make the difference between a gun being too heavy or not over a couple hundred clays. I'd say it was more where that weight is distributed throughout the gun. Guns with longer barrels (32"+) and long, stainless steel chokes right out at the end will put a lot of pressure on the left arm. Shorter barrels with smaller, titanium chokes will feel lighter and faster to swing but may well be within a few oz's of a longer barreled gun overall. Worth trying a few guns before committing to buy based on the listed weight alone. I shoot a 694 with 32" barrels and it seems to be in the goldilocks zone for me. It's not so light that its fidgety or so heavy that it becomes unwieldy and hard to control. The Browning ProSport I had prior to the 694 was exactly that. It was a shade under 10lbs with the stock weights installed and a lovely gun for big, slow targets and it was like shooting a 28 bore recoil wise but outside of that it carried too much momentum in the swing to be controllable and I found myself fatigued early on when shooting a 100 target course with a lot of smaller, faster technical targets.

I shot my first (and last) Shoveler this year. I used it to make some mexican style Enchiladas and even with a lot of garlic, chilly and other spices thrown in I could still taste the super strong muddy/ gamey taste. They are also quite a small bird and I had to pack out the meal with some mallard to make it worth eating so not really worth taking in this day and age. I'm quite happy that I can tick that one off the list but all future shovelers have a free pass from me to fly on.

Two huge breasts on a Canada Goose which go really well in a slow cooker curry. To the uneducated, you could almost mistake it for a beef curry. I've also roasted them in the past, stuffed with sausage stuffing and butter pushed under the skin made it an acceptable accompaniment with Turkey on a Christmas dinner. Only the issue I have with them is carrying multiples of them off the foreshore. They can be quite heavy and I'm surprised that some of them can even fly with all that weight. They have a lot of offal as well which the dogs quite like eating.

Seems reasonable.. The question is, is that level of cost required to sustain the current service levels (absolute **** and an embarrassment in most parts) or will an improved level of service and a return to 12 week grants and renewals be possible? I'm going with the former personally.

IMO if the guns are paying guns and this isn't a beat one/ shoot one or informal syndicate where your up to shoot the next drive or week then you keep schtum. You could start chatting on the gun bus and if the person is receptive to it then offer some training tips to overcome the dogs running in. You could have a private word with the beat captain or keeper and advise that it's probably a little unsafe and disruptive to other guns to have this unruly dog cutting about the place while the drive is in progress but its probably not your place to do so directly, as you have highlighted in your post. If I were a paying gun on a shoot and one of the pickers up had the hump because I was allowing my dog to pick up birds I (or my mates) had shot then I'd be having a word with the keeper about it. Ultimately, even on a volunteer basis, you are there as shoot staff to serve the paying customers. I wouldn't be happy with a checkout assistant who gave me passive aggressive grief because I started to pack my own shopping in the same way I wouldn't be happy with shoot staff being upset that their dog didn't get as many retrieves as it otherwise would have because I'd brought my own dog to stand on peg. I do a lot more beating than I do shooting so I don't want the above to sound as If I'm some privileged snob speaking down to the serf with the gun dogs but we do need to remember what we are there for and what we get out of it in return. I would just make an effort to ensure I positioned myself well away from that particular gun on the next drive.

Agreed. Steel is approx 1/3 lighter than lead so you get around 1/3 more shot per shot charge weight. Add that to the fact that steel shot does not deform as much as lead when fired leading to a naturally tighter patterns then steel cartridges actually do quite well. Problems start to arise at distance where the steel pellet would have lost a lot more of its energy to air resistance. That's where a step up in pellet size starts to matter. I have used the 29g steel 5's from Empire Cartridges before now and these are perfect for close range stuff, birds over decoys etc. I only stopped using them because of the plastic wad.

Where did the two animals come from? You don't just happen over two fully grown Lynx like you would a rescue horse or something.. They would have been smuggled in from abroad or released from a native private collection. Both are concerning as you would hope the authorities would notice two large wild cats being brought into the country and you would hope that any native private collections of big cats are closely monitored and licensed to help prevent this sort of thing. Having said that, if they can't detect a LGV filled with third world migrants then two large cats in a cage would probably also go unnoticed. Anyway, wildlife bombing isn't a rare thing unfortunately with plenty of recent examples of beavers turning up miles from authorised released sites. The excess animals from these authorised sites are often captured and then driven across the country by these eco lunatics and then released onto private land. I recall reading a news article a little while back which documented an example of this with beavers being caught up somewhere in the south east and then released under the cover of darkness onto private land in the south west. Not the article I read but similar.

Great stuff. I know so many people who are late 50's that are completely done having spent the last 30 years sat on their ***** in workingmen's clubs drinking ale and eating from the frying pan. Big pot bellies, knees that no longer work, constant back pain. I often drive past the local and see the same faces that I knew growing up. They'll be there, every day after work, either inside or outside swigging away on the gut rotter and chugging on cigs. That pub will effectively be their coffin. The key is to stay mobile and keep the brain ticking over. I recently worked with a bloke in his mid 80's who manned a desk in the office for a few hours a day 4 days a week to keep himself busy. For an 85 year old he was fairly fit and bright as the sun but he finally retired at 86 with some pressure from his family to enjoy his life. He didn't make it to 87. He always said that it was work that was keeping him alive. True. I work out in the gym 5 days a week and intend to do so until my body no longer allows me to. I am effectively T total and don't smoke. If I do get to 75 then I intend to be in good enough health to allow me to enjoy it. Good to hear that you are both out and getting on with it and long may it continue!

The chips are just the right side of brown but would have preffered a runny yolk to dip them in. Reminds me of the home cooked meals of my childhood. Everything from the frying pan and the fryer. All those processed seed oils and greasy food may have taken years from my life but the food was lovely I certainly enjoyed it at the time.😋 Who wants to live into their 90's anyway? It can't be much fun beyond 75, sat in a chair all day ****ting ones self involuntarily.. Anything from 6/3 to 5/8 on the above chart posted by Tightchoke will be fine..

Get yourself a Land Rover and do it properly. It may ruin your life and be the worst decision you've ever made but alternatively it may not be and be 10 years of trouble free, luxury, peak off roader motoring. You'd get a good Discovery 4 or Range Rover Sport of around 2012 to 2015 vintage with low miles for £13k. Silky smooth 3.0 V6 diesel, 35 MPG, 8 Speed auto, 7 seats or huge boot space on command and a sublime ride with the adjustable air suspension. For the same budget you'll even get a decent L322 Range Rover with the 4.4 V8 diesel a la Jeremy Clarkson or Harry Metcalf. Just keep on top of the servicing and don't let the small jobs build up and you'll be good for years of motoring to your rural barn conversion. The bonus being that a good Discovery 4 will fly under the radar of the nomadic Irish community unlike an Amarok, DMAX or Hilux of a similar age.

I knew it would be Lea Lea before I even scrolled down to the video.. 😅 She does put out some good content but she does need to learn to tone herself back a bit and step back and ask herself 'would anyone actually want to watch this' before uploading it. Makes a difference from 15 minutes of Hikvision thermal footage of some bloke shooting foxes and she's out there showing that women can and do have a place in fieldsports at least so hats off to her for that.

3" steel proofed to boot. The 725 pro sport was HP steel proofed but 2 3/4" chambers only. I'm not sure why as 2 3/4" HP steel cartridges must be quite rare.

Sorry Gerry, you've been lied to or mislead. 725 is mechanical and with two pulls of the trigger you get two clicks (or bangs) regardless of what's in the chamber. I didn't try it when I had a 725 Pro Sport but it would likely have fired a pair of blanks with no issue. It fired 16g Laylvale express ultra lights with no problem and they had PCP air rifle levels of recoil. It did often have an issue firing the bottom barrel though, not because of light recoiling cartridges but because the design was **** and the bottom firing pin made of cheese resulting in light strikes. If you were to then put that cartridge into the top barrel for the next pair it would fire no problem.

I'm well aware that businesses exist only to make profit, it's how they work. I'm also well aware that should a minor rise in taxes and wages amounting to around £2600 per year per employee result in the business becoming insolvent, not viable etc then they were only a minor blip away from oblivion anyway. Exactly correct. It's also fairly safe to assume that this will never change regardless of who gets in at the next election and will only continue to grow and become more bloated requiring even more taxes to pay for. I'm eagerly waiting on what Elon Musk will do with the US government and his DOGE (department of government efficiency). Being on of the richest beings on the planet, he likely has little interest in a long term career in politics and hopefully he's just trying to do what he says he's going do and drain the swamp. Albeit with a little vested interest of lowering red tape and protections on the side. It would take someone who has no interest in retaining a pay packet to tackle the civil service as the civil service are quite good at getting rid of ministers who seek to make changes to the status quo. Anyone who currently does have the wealth and skillset to do such a thing will either have placed themselves as far away from that **** show as possible or will also be sucking from the public teat in one way or another. A lot of young people vote with their heart and not their head. They see a party thats going to represent what they stand for, equality and other woke stuff and get onboard forgetting that the government they have just voted actually has to do more than ensure that trans people are adequately represented on toilet signs and actually has run the country. That being said, a lot of people (myself included) will have found themselves politically homeless at the last GE. Not being able to vote for the conservatives following their last term which consisted of corruption and backstabbing or labour for obvious reasons. Lets not even mention the lib dems who seem to have picked the worst aspects of the other two parties. I voted for Reform, not because I think Farage is the lord and savior or the party was the antidote to all the countries problems but because a large part of what they pledged within their manifesto spoke to what I want from a government. I didn't want a government that was going to tackle the worlds issues, pledge huge sums of money to gaza and ukraine, spend huge amounts of time blaming the last government for political point scoring. I just wanted a party that was going to get on with running the country and while reform may not have been able to do this in their first term, the other two have had years and many attempts to prove that they can't do it.

If the company I worked for had problems paying an additional £2600 per year for a staff member I would be more concerned about the overall viability of the business and ongoing job security. Very roughly, for a business with 50 people that's only £130k per year which isn't insignificant but that business would need to be making more than £1 million per year just to keep the staff wages paid and probably closer to £3 million to keep the business afloat. As a percentage of that, £130k is small change. I'm sure ultra small businesses with low staff numbers and turnover are exempt anyway. This just seems to be a selection of moderately wealthy people making noises because they are going to be slightly less wealthy than they already are/ dividends are down a touch/ next range rover order is going to be delayed/ only 2 weeks skiing in the alps next Christmas instead of 4 and so on. I'm anti-tax and anti-big government and believe that the government should focus entirely on reducing spending and driving growth through tax incentivisation rather than screwing people but the people voted for this current labor party who made little attempt to hide the fact that they are big tax, big public spending socialists. Anyone who didn't vote at all also can't cry foul.

I've got one that I've used for the past two seasons on driven game. It's also used down on the marsh, for any rough shooting and it occasionally steps in for clay target shooting when my main gun is away for servicing or repair. It's not the lightest owing to the laminated stock which is heavier than the standard walnut stock option but it is fair bit more robust and doesn't have a mark on it after the two years. Usually a walnut stock would have picked up some marks by now from button poppers and zips on my shooting jackets, being placed on the ground, hit by cover when walked up shooting etc. Laminated stocks also seem to bend less under recoil which means the recoil has a slightly different feel to it. Hard to put into into words but less springy and more direct but you shouldn't notice this unless your banging out 36g 3" HP steel loads one after the other. This could also be down to the fact it's relatively straight stocked in both cast and drop like other traditional game guns. Laminated stocks also don't seem to suffer from swell or raised grain when wet. Pretty low maintenance with just a wipe over required after being soaked or caked in mud. Checkering was a tad sharp on mine when new and did cause some irritation to the parts of the hand that contact the pistol grip but it has worn with time and is just fine now. I think it looks good also being a stained brown laminate rather than grey. Certainly different from the hundreds of grade 3-5 walnut stocked Brownings, Berettas, Blasers and whatever else you'll see on most game days. It seems to handle 3" HP steel loads quite well, you're going to notice the difference between a standard 2 3/4" load and a 3" load but it's not going to knock your fillings loose when you fire them. It's still quite stiff to open after hundreds of clay loads, hundreds of 32-34g lead and steel game loads and circa 100 3" HP steel loads. Barrels are coated black and not blued which is better for the **** wet conditions we seem to have had for the last two seasons. Barrel ends and breach are still bare steel though and will rust if not looked after. I did get some surface rust to the barrel ends after a session down on the marsh in which I must dipped the ends of the barrels into salt water while moving about. It went from brand new to coated in surface rust in the time it took to walk off the marsh and drive home. No lasting damage and came up good as new with a little emery cloth and elbow grease. It's important that you are able to shoot a gun with standard dimensions as they aren't as easy to bend as a standard walnut stock. It's worth getting your hands on a modern 525 game gun that hasn't been messed with first and be sure that the fit is suitable before committing to purchase.