COOTS ??

[marsh man]

With Coots being on the list for legal quarry do any one shoot any ? , as far as a sporting bird is concerned there not very high on the list and to eat them they are another one of those birds with a desired taste that don't appeal to everyone,

 

You can drive them towards the guns but you need a large amount of Coots and a fair bit of organisation and the Coot drives they used to have on Hickling Broad are now a thing of the past,

 

I have shot several in the past, and my old Grandad used to bake them and after your had a meal off the cooked bird he would put the carcass in a stew and that would create another meal , we always skinned ours and laid a rash of bacon on the breast with a onion inside when they were cooking .

 

My days of shooting Coot have long gone and I have got no reason to ever shoot another one . So I am back to the first question , Do you shoot any ? , and if you do what do you do with them afterwards ?

[hoggysreels]

No match man, Coots & Morehens are off my personnal list ... atb

[fenboy]

Yes some of us still shoot and eat some now and again.

http://forums.pigeonwatch.co.uk/forums/topic/293004-thank-you-wabbitbosher/

[marsh man]

Yes some of us still shoot and eat some now and again.

http://forums.pigeonwatch.co.uk/forums/topic/293004-thank-you-wabbitbosher/

Thanks for that Fenboy.......the only thing we done different was to leave the fat on , if not with em being skinned instead of plucked they tended to dry out a bit when being roasted..........and tin foil was only for the well off which we wernt

[birdsallpl]

As Hoggyreels said +1

Never seen a sporting shot for a coot or moorhen, so never shot either. Good sport for falconers though I have been told.

[fenboy]

As Hoggyreels said +1

Never seen a sporting shot for a coot or moorhen, so never shot either. Good sport for falconers though I have been told.

 

I think what Hoggysreels was actually meaning to say was "no marshman" rather than "no match man"

[birdsallpl]

I think what Hoggysreels was actually meaning to say was "no marshman" rather than "no match man"

OK thanks

[fenboy]

OK thanks

 

No problem , you are correct that they rarely provide a sporting shot unless driven over guns as marshman mentions in which case they can be surprisingly nimble .

[silver pigeon 3]

I shoot a few each year, but not as a sporting bird but purely to keep there numbers in check on a local lake. When I started it was not unusual to have 50+ on a 4 acre lake, they caused havoc to the anglers as the lake isn't that deep and they were constantly diving on bait. Normally have about half a dozen on there now, much more manageable.

[anser2]

When I first started shooting I used to shoot a lot of moorhens and the odd coot , but its very rare i shot one these days. Indeed the only couple I have shot in the last 20 years have been when training a young dog to hunt pheasants in thick cover. As for being sporting shots I agree that most are easy to shoot, but it is possable to get quite difficult shots with morhens. On a friends marshland shoot there was a 1\4 mile long overgrown wooded strip reaching out into the grazing marsh. With 2 or 3 guns we used to push the moorhens out to the end of the wooded strip. Sometimes we had 30 or more birds boxed in the last 40 yards. Finaly we let the dogs lose to hunt them out and the moorhens hated to leave the trees and scrub and rather than break out across the grass meadows would climb up and break back over the heads of the guns in the wood , being 20-40 yards up. If we picked a day with a strong following wind they provided testing shots. The birds were not waisted and all skinned and grilled , very good eating they were too.

[marsh man]

When I first started shooting I used to shoot a lot of moorhens and the odd coot , but its very rare i shot one these days. Indeed the only couple I have shot in the last 20 years have been when training a young dog to hunt pheasants in thick cover. As for being sporting shots I agree that most are easy to shoot, but it is possable to get quite difficult shots with morhens. On a friends marshland shoot there was a 1\4 mile long overgrown wooded strip reaching out into the grazing marsh. With 2 or 3 guns we used to push the moorhens out to the end of the wooded strip. Sometimes we had 30 or more birds boxed in the last 40 yards. Finaly we let the dogs lose to hunt them out and the moorhens hated to leave the trees and scrub and rather than break out across the grass meadows would climb up and break back over the heads of the guns in the wood , being 20-40 yards up. If we picked a day with a strong following wind they provided testing shots. The birds were not waisted and all skinned and grilled , very good eating they were too.

Until we had the bad winter in 63 Coots were fairly rare on the marshes , and it wasn't till some of the Broads froze over we would shoot a few . But with Moorhens we had more than our fair share and to keep the numbers down we would remove the eggs to supplement what food we had in the cubboard , and very nice they were too a bit richer than a Chickens and a bit smaller than a Bantams

[anser2]

I could be wrong but it seems to me that there a lot fewer moorhens on the broadland marshes than there used to be. I suspect the harriers and increasingly common otters have a a role in this. Over the past 5 years I have seen otters every where and familys at Geldiston, Rockland Broad and recently a mother and cub at Reedham Ferry playing in broad daylight while the ferry was working at the time. Plenty on the North river two and saw a huge dog otter at South Walsham last winter. We have odd ones on the North Coast and severla on the Ouse Washes too. Still plenty of moorhens on the upland ponds though where otters and harriers are scarce.

Edited December 14, 2014 by anser2

[rjimmer]

I like to see moorhens on my lakes, as they are the first things that disappear if mink turn up. We have a coot drive on the estuary most years, where the coot are driven over guns in staked boats. About 1,000 is the best bag I've seen, but the gamebook shows up to 3,000 in the good old days.

Edited December 22, 2014 by rjimmer

[IEH]

I like to see moorhens on my lakes, as they are the first things that disappear if mink turn up. We have a coot drive on the estuary most years, where the coot are driven over guns in staked boats. About 1,000 is the best bag I've seen, but the gamebook shows up to 3,000 in the good old days.

What on earth do you do with 1,000 Coots?

[Chad63]

What on earth do you do with 1,000 Coots?

 

Export them to France I believe...... Or was it Italy

Edited December 22, 2014 by Chad63

[magman]

thin on the ground here so leave them be , to be honest spend a lot of time watching them as i find them interesting and very protective

[greenshank1]

How were your dogs with them.?

 

I only ask as my lurchers as a kid were very reluctant to retrieve them and one of the old guys on the allotments said this was common for dogs to be reluctant to carry them.

 

Hardly any here on the west coast .

[marsh man]

What on earth do you do with 1,000 Coots?

The record for one day on Hickling Broad was shot in the 1920s , the bag was over 1100 and they were shared out amongst the local residents .

Today you would have a job giving the odd 100 away let alone 1100+

[evo]

could shoot them if I wanted too on one of my perms but to be honest its two lakes and its quite amusing watching them squabble with each other and having their arguments, I,ve often laughed my head off at how protective of their space they are,,don't think I,d like to eat one though , but watching them chase each other around the two lakes is hilarious at times although worrying for the anglers with their expensive poles lol

 

atb Evo

[Penelope]

John, have you read 'At Dusk and Dawn' by Colin Maclean? It's all about the big fowl shoots on Hickling, Ranworth, Duck and the other surrounding broads. Makes good mention of the coot shoots, and the record bag you cited.

 

http://www.amazon.com/At-dawn-dusk-record-wildfowling/dp/B0000CISU9

 

 

The record for one day on Hickling Broad was shot in the 1920s , the bag was over 1100 and they were shared out amongst the local residents .

Today you would have a job giving the odd 100 away let alone 1100+

Edited December 23, 2014 by Penelope

[fenboy]

I bet its worth a read but not at $104 !

[Penelope]

A better price.

 

https://www.herewardbooks.co.uk/books/detail/18394.htm

 

https://www.herewardbooks.co.uk/books/detail/20498.htm

[Grandalf]

Shoot a lot of moorhens -or waterhens as they are more correctly called around these parts - but only as crop protection. Dogs don't like picking them and they are inedible as far as I am concerned.

Coots not in big numbers in this area.

[anser2]

I used to have a copy of "At Dusk and Dawn' by Colin Maclean? , but I lent it to a friend 15 years ago and never saw the book again. I was in regular contact with his son Comander Maclean who still ran one of his fathers duck shoots and at the end of each season used to return to me a bag full of duck rings from birds I used to ring further up the valley on a gravel pit. Colin Maclean used shoot amazing numbers of duck by todays standards and would hardly think about getting out of bed for flight unless they were going to shoot 100. His best bag on Ranworth\Cockshoot Broads between I think 4 guns including the King was about 460 , mainly teal.

 

It may have been a different era of duck shooting , but the book is well worth a read.

[anser2]

Gandalf i am surprised your dogs do not like moorhens , all mine loved them and at times it is a problem when sending the dog into a reed bed for a fallen duck to keep the dogs looking for the duck and leave the morhens alone. When we having a day looking for marsh pheasants, the dogs usually add a couple of moorhens of there own.

 

When i was about 12 I had a strange right and left. We were hunting up the dykes for a moorhen of two when a weather balloon came floating over 60 yards up. A moorhen burst out under my feet and i shot it and swung up and downed the weather ballon with the choke barrel.