Those were the Days

[Feltwad]

 

Feltwad

[panoma1]

Only if you were rich!

[Feltwad]

and us peasants poaching

Records show that in that period many poachers lost their lives while trying to put food on the table ,also if they were caught and found guilty many were transported to a colony.

Feltwad

[anser2]

Not so very different to my early days of shooting. A mate and I would have an afternoons rough shooting and if we shot straight and a bit of luck a hand full of pheasants, a rabbit, an English partridge or two , couple of snipe and the odd pigeon or mallard in the bag , back to his house for a quick cuppa and off for the evening flight on the marsh. Stumble back to the farm house well after dark with the frost crisp in the air , hopefully with a couple of duck and maybe a woodcock , feed the dogs, clean the guns , sort out the game over another cuppa , then his mum would produce a huge hot meal and we would settle down in front of a blazing apple log fire in the chairs, dogs basking in the warmth and smelling a bit have a yarn about what we would do the next weekend and fall asleep and dream about shooting. From October to the end of January that was our Saterday routine.

 

Like the shooters in the picture we always used to spend time gazing at our spoils after a days walked shooting, have an autopsy on where a bird was hit and admire the plumage of a pheasant or duck , before carefuly hanging the game in a cool shed.

 

Life could not get better for a couple of teenage shooters.

Edited November 3, 2016 by anser2

[Feltwad]

Not so very different to my early days of shooting. A mate and I would have an afternoons rough shooting and if we shot straight and a bit of luck a hand full of pheasants, a rabbit, an English partridge or two , couple of snipe and the odd pigeon or mallard in the bag , back to his house for a quick cuppa and off for the evening flight on the marsh. Stumble back to the farm house well after dark with the frost crisp in the air , hopefully with a couple of duck and maybe a woodcock , feed the dogs, clean the guns , sort out the game over another cuppa , then his mum would produce a huge hot meal and we would settle down in front of a blazing apple log fire in the chairs, dogs basking in the warmth and smelling a bit have a yarn about what we would do the next weekend and fall asleep and dream about shooting. Form October to the end of January that was our Saterday routine.

 

Like the shooters in the picture we always used to spend time gazing at our spoils after a days walked shooting, have an autopsy on where a bird was hit and admire the plumage of a pheasant or duck , before carefuly hanging the game in a cool shed.

 

Life could not get better for a couple of teenage shooters.

Life could not get better for a couple of teenage shooters.

Yes I remembers those days but what stands out most of all in my mind was several people waiting for my father and I return for a rabbit for the Sundays dinner

Feltwad

[panoma1]

Not so very different to my early days of shooting. A mate and I would have an afternoons rough shooting and if we shot straight and a bit of luck a hand full of pheasants, a rabbit, an English partridge or two , couple of snipe and the odd pigeon or mallard in the bag , back to his house for a quick cuppa and off for the evening flight on the marsh. Stumble back to the farm house well after dark with the frost crisp in the air , hopefully with a couple of duck and maybe a woodcock , feed the dogs, clean the guns , sort out the game over another cuppa , then his mum would produce a huge hot meal and we would settle down in front of a blazing apple log fire in the chairs, dogs basking in the warmth and smelling a bit have a yarn about what we would do the next weekend and fall asleep and dream about shooting. From October to the end of January that was our Saterday routine.

 

Like the shooters in the picture we always used to spend time gazing at our spoils after a days walked shooting, have an autopsy on where a bird was hit and admire the plumage of a pheasant or duck , before carefuly hanging the game in a cool shed.

 

Life could not get better for a couple of teenage shooters.

Bet you didnt sport the porkchop sideburns and weren't dressed in the attire those in the picture were dressed in though! Lol!

[anser2]

Bit too young for pork chop sideburns , we were hardly even shaveing and the clothes more in the 1970s style , nor were we knocking back the port , more likely a beer , but in essence the same as the picture with a roaring fire , steaming dogs and shooting talk.

[Feltwad]

Bit too young for pork chop sideburns , we were hardly even shaveing and the clothes more in the 1970s style , nor were we knocking back the port , more likely a beer , but in essence the same as the picture with a roaring fire , steaming dogs and shooting talk.

Anser2

 

Well said these youngings today do not know what they missed

Feltwad

[E.w.]

Not so very different to my early days of shooting. A mate and I would have an afternoons rough shooting and if we shot straight and a bit of luck a hand full of pheasants, a rabbit, an English partridge or two , couple of snipe and the odd pigeon or mallard in the bag , back to his house for a quick cuppa and off for the evening flight on the marsh. Stumble back to the farm house well after dark with the frost crisp in the air , hopefully with a couple of duck and maybe a woodcock , feed the dogs, clean the guns , sort out the game over another cuppa , then his mum would produce a huge hot meal and we would settle down in front of a blazing apple log fire in the chairs, dogs basking in the warmth and smelling a bit have a yarn about what we would do the next weekend and fall asleep and dream about shooting. From October to the end of January that was our Saterday routine.

 

Like the shooters in the picture we always used to spend time gazing at our spoils after a days walked shooting, have an autopsy on where a bird was hit and admire the plumage of a pheasant or duck , before carefuly hanging the game in a cool shed.

 

 

 

Life could not get better for a couple of teenage shooters.

Life is still good to me, I'm still doing all the above to this day, I love my sport and like anser2 love to admire the plumage of the amazing animals, if one thing has changed is that I value nature much more as l get bloody old.

[marsh man]

As the years roll by we spend more time looking back to what some of us would term the good ole days , in a way they were to some extent , we never had the Pheasants but we had the English Partridges around here in good numbers .

 

One day I can well remember was in the drought summer of 1976 when me and my brother who were both rough shooters , very rough come to that were invited on a walk and stand Partridge shoot , at the time a French Partridge was as rare then as a English Partridge is today .

 

We started at dinner time walking down the rows in the spud fields while the standing guns stood behind a hedge (which is now covered in houses) from the word go there were coveys getting up into double figures with a nice lot returning back to earth after a volley of shots , on one stand I was on a big covey came like bullets towards me and never having fired at driven game before I never had a clue on how far to take them in front and the shots I fired at the leading ones managed to find two out of the ones in the middle so I must have been several feet behind the ones I was hoping to get. Still my next door gun was impressed with my marksmanship and made me feel a bit guilty when he said good shooting young man , I had a little smile to myself and thought , if he only knew .

 

This carried on all afternoon with a final bit of shooting at the Collard Doves which were all over the grain stores at the time ,when we finished we had nearly 100 Partridges and a fair ole bag of doves ,

 

After washing our hands we all went into the large kitchen in the farm house to eat , drink and smoke , and then recall the days shooting while sitting around a big open fire , a day I will never forget , sadly apart from my brother, most of the others ( if not all ) have all passed away including nearly all the wild English Partridges and strangely enough most of the Collard Doves , how times change.

[scolopax]

I was very lucky to have a few small farms to rough shoot over when I was a teenager, mid 80's. And our staple quarry was grey partridge and on the drains, Mallard. The partridge were always difficult to get on terms with walked up but the mallard were easy and a bit of a massacre to be honest (can 4 shots be a massacre?) once a few had been located, the steep drain banks made walking up to them very easy. Like Marshman I have also noticed a decline in collared doves, only a few favoured farms seem to host them now. A pheasant was a rare creature, either a long distance wanderer from a stocked shoot miles away or more likely a genuine wild bird.

Edited November 3, 2016 by scolopax

[marsh man]

I was very lucky to have a few small farms to rough shoot over when I was a teenager, mid 80's. And our staple quarry was grey partridge and on the drains, Mallard. The partridge were always difficult to get on terms with walked up but the mallard were easy and a bit of a massacre to be honest (can 4 shots be a massacre?) once a few had been located, the steep drain banks made walking up to them very easy. Like Marshman I have also noticed a decline in collared doves, only a few favoured farms seem to host them now. A pheasant was a rare creature, either a long distance wanderer from a stocked shoot miles away or more likely a genuine wild bird.

Like you say scolopax , a Pheasant was a rare creature , the first ones we ever saw was on the estate where we went beating in the late 60s , the guns then were very Victorian who wouldn't hardly notice you were there and if any of them said good morning you knew they didn't really mean it

 

As for Pheasants now, I very much doubt if there is a marsh which don't hold the odd one at times , and walking around the marshes you can expect to get one on some of the over grown fields , from the side of dykes , reed beds , or wherever there is a bit of cover.

[anser2]

I was lucky two of the farms we shot over had plenty of pheasants. One was a mixture of a free range pig farm with orchards a few arable fields with tall overgrown hedges and a small area of grazing marsh at ST Olaves and I think many of our pheasants came from the shoot you now beat\pick up on Marshman. The second was my friends market garden famous for its celery on the west side of the river valley. It was a maze of tiny fields , most only an acre or two bounded by small drains and here and there small groves of apple trees. and a Beck running along the eastern boundary that the teal loved. Today much of it is grassed over and the farm house gone , replaces by new houses. Most afternoons we would manage 2-6 pheasants and at ST Olaves there was always a covey or two of English partridges. We used to try and drive them out of the orchard , but I can never remember hitting a driven partridge. The partridges i shot in those days were all walked up. Our shooting was pretty basic in those days, s\s shotgun, a pocket full of paper cased Gran Prix No 6 cartridges a game bag and our dogs. The dogs were pretty wild and poorly trained , but they knew their job and if there was a pheasant in the thickest bramble patch they would have it out no matter what. If they got on the scent of a running pheasant there was only one thing you could do. Follow it as fast as you could and pray the bird would get up while still in range. None of the camo gear that has almost become the uniform these days. Nobody worried about cartridge speeds or ballistics. As long as the cartridge went bang that was all that mattered.

 

Alass I no longer shoot on ether farm, the both were sold , but i often stop and cast an eye over the first farm between St Olaves and Fritton and remember the great sport we had there. Now much of the marshland has been "improved" , but there are still a few rough reedy areas that must hold a pheasant or two and doubtless there are still a few mallard in the dykes.

Edited November 4, 2016 by anser2

[demonwolf444]

Us youngsters haven't missed all the fun!

 

To many stories to tell and only the joy in them can be found with the people you shared the adventure with.

[Feltwad]

What happened to the image at the start of this thread??

Feltwad

[Redgum]

What happened to the image at the start of this thread??

Feltwad

 

It didn't really exist.

[Feltwad]

 

It didn't really exist.

Yes it did .