The distant past & pinks

[anser2]

Alas old age catches up with us all and these days I cant risk chasing the geese out on the open muds or even reach the salting edge. But when the conditions are right as they were last Friday I can still bag a goose or two from the saltmarsh. I returned to the same spot this morning mainly to see what the geese were doing as i hoped I might have some fun in the gale forcast for the morning flight tomorrow. There were still plenty of geese about and despite the weather some of the early skeins were very low , but you just needed to be under them. Today i never fired a shot , but time never hung for a second and my mind went back nearly 40 years to the first time I shot what could be called a bag of geese. So just for Figgy there follows an extract from my forth coming book.

 

There are two schools of thought about shooting on mudflats. On the one hand it can be a sanctuary where the geese roost at night or a place where the duck can spend the day in safety and on a small estuary the open sands and mudflats are best left undisturbed. On the other hand of a vast estuary well away from roosts mudflat shooting adds an extra excitment to wildfowling. To be hidden in a tiny creek below the level of the muds and watch the dawn flight unfold can reveal a magical side of wildfowling where good field craft is needed to be successful.

 

Back in the 1980s I did most of my wildfowling on the Wash. In those days I had no car and had to use a motor cycle for the twenty mile journey to the marsh. I would  arrive after the journey frozen stiff and I needed to generate some heat in the walk out to the marsh to warm me up. I arrived early and sat down on the salting edge to listen where the geese were roosting. The tides were neap and as I expected the birds were a long way out across the flats close to the river channel. I knew that with no wind the geese were going to be sky high by the time they reached the salting edge and debated if it was worth walking a few hundred yards out onto the flats to a narrow creek that wound out from the salting edge. Before I could make my mind up I heard two other fowlers came out behind me. They were two friends who I had shared many flights with Boyd and Nigel. They were determined to walk out to the distant creek and I made up my mind that if they were going , then so was I. It did not take us long to slosh the four hundred yards to the creek that we quickly lined out. The light was just starting to show to the east when there was a great roar, the pinks in the channel were up , and heading our way. A cloud of geese appeared out of the dark sky , swinging around and landing several hundred yards away. Perhaps a early returning fishing boat had disturbed them , but being still too dark to head inland for their morning feed they decided to land in front of us and wait for the light to improve.

 

The geese were very restless and were constantly walking towards us across the muds. As I crouched , hardly daring to breathe they came closer and closer until they reached my creek. They set up a strange humming noise that was almost deafening , but they were loath to cross the creek and turned back , some walking past me just a few feet away. As I flattened myself against the creek bank one gander hesitated right above me, so close I could have grabbed it by the legs, before turning and joining the huge flock in front of us. How it never heard my hammering heart I will never know. A pair of pinks came out from inland offering a good shot , but I let them pass to watch the drama before me. The humming stopped and then with a chorus of calling a hundred geese jumped. In seconds they were on me , too close to shoot so I picked a bird further along the skein which fell into the creek before killing a second pink foot as the skein flared away. All hell was let lose as the whole gaggle jumped , perhaps eight or nine thousand in all , just feet up and heading straight for me. I only had time to jam one cartridge into the breach and they were on me. The noise of their calling was so loud that I could hardly hear my shot , but anouther bird fell onto the mud before a third wave of geese was over us. I managed to get a cartridge into each chamber this time before they reached me. At my first shot a huge gander threw back his head  and started to fall so I swung onto the next goose in the line , he too staggered , but flew on. Dimly I could hear the others shooting and looking to the seaward could make out several birds scattered near them. Then it was all over. The great skein was vanishing over the beach and the vast mudflats were left in silence. The others were emerging like black beetles in the morning sunlight from the creek, Nigel running , chasing a winged pink, Boyd filling his game bag with the last of his six geese. One goose came drifting down my creek while all around me three more slain birds lay. When all the pinks were gathered we came together excitedly talking at once, none of us had experienced anything like it before and then the long walk back to the car. Half way back Boyd spotted a dark lump on the grass in front of us. A pink foot, still warm lay before us. The others could account for all the geese they had shot at and we concluded this must be the second bird I had shot at from the third wave of birds. A dozen geese we had between us , a bag that was unheard of on our marsh in those days , though in truth the shooting was easy, with the birds low and close , but that did not take the shine off one of the most exciting goose flights I have ever had.

[Pushandpull]

One can understand the reasons that mud shooting is more or less prohibited these days on the Wash and elsewhere. However, a significant and challenging part of wildfowling has gone which is a great pity.

[Penelope]

Don't put too many extracts from the book on here Robert; I shall be wanting to read that in its entirety when it's published.

[6.5x55SE]

19 minutes ago, Pushandpull said:

One can understand the reasons that mud shooting is more or less prohibited these days on the Wash and elsewhere. However, a significant and challenging part of wildfowling has gone which is a great pity.

The area those Geese was shot we was no further out than the green Marsh in fact you can/could be further out on to green points i won't name So it was not mud shooting in the True sense.

Robert i remember it well fond and very good memories never too be forgotten.

This morning i was hoping for a good wind sadly it never came But getting slaired in mud trying to hide in a 2ft Creek i swung on to a side slipping Skein with a old aya sbs the same as I used the morning you speak of my 2 shots found the mark  

Looking forward to reading your book and will meet up after the season for sure  

[anser2]

If it holds the wind could be with us tomorrow morning with luck. But if the geese came in at the hight they did this morning there is a fair chance of a shot or two anyway if I can get under them.

 

[bishop]

i used a yamaha yb100 for my fowling in the early 80's. 20 mile ride out to St Andrews  it was ,a lot of it for flock shooting on the incoming tide in the middle of the night  A 10 bore plus 4 or 5 greylag was a difficult balance coming home in icy conditions in the wee small hours!!! And by god was it cold with no fancy thermal jackets like you have now.It was the waxproof cardboard jacket with as many woolies as you could wear underneath and still move.Maximum speed was 55mph  !

Edited November 22, 2017 by bishop

[marsh man]

Excellent account of your dream flight from what could be a bygone era , if that is a taster of what your book will like , I am already getting hungry and saving up what few pennies I have got left

I find now that health issues are not the biggest concern , don't get me wrong , I get more than my fair share of aches and pains and age related illnesses , but touch wood , I have never spent a night in hospital..... yet.

I find motivation is my biggest issue , I often ask myself , do I really want to shoot many more duck and geese ? , up to three years ago I dare say I was going over 100 times a season , then over the last three years I have given up on the early duck and left it later each year before I made a start .

This year I didn't shoot my first duck till nearly November , maybe if the conditions had been right then I would have started a bit earlier, but I am sure the longer we keep shooting wildfowl , you start getting a soft spot for what you keep shooting , as an example , last week I spent a good couple of hours walking around the marshes to see if I could get a shot at a Pheasant to give the dog a retrieve , having walked all the way around without having a shot I walked on to half a dozen Teal feeding in the main dyke , when they jumped my gun came up instantly but for some reason I didn't want to pull the trigger , and they went away without a shot being fired .