Tonight sees the end of the inland wildfowling season – and what a damp squib it’s been for me this year. What with the mild weather and having to move house over New Year, I hardly got down to the mud at all this year, and only had one fleeting morning at the wigeon at [...]
Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category
Out with a Bang!
Posted in Sport on January 31, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Dawn Flight
Posted in Sport on December 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Despite the mild weather over the last month, the wigeon have come to my parents’ farm in quantities. I headed out on Friday morning to try a flight, long before the sun had risen and on an ebbing tide. No matter how early you arrive on the ditch, the wigeon are always there before you. [...]
A Partridge Day
Posted in Sport on October 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
After spending all day yesterday in pursuit of red legged partridges at the Northern School of Game and Wildlife near Penrith, I have a new respect for these birds. Driven from game crops and coppiced willow, the little meteors came zooming out at around head height before flaring steeply up over the guns to provide [...]
Autumn Greylags
Posted in Sport on September 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
From what I can gather, the first of the pink feet are arriving on the Solway even as I type, but it’ll still be a few weeks before they fall into a routine that is predictable enough to allow for a shot. In the meantime, I have to make do with the occassional and enfuriating [...]
Ptarmigan memories
Posted in Sport on September 6, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Reading a post recently on the interesting Croick Estate blog took me back to Sutherland in October 2009, when I had the rare treat of shooting ptarmigan. Having visited the birds a few weeks ago for my birthday in Aviemore, I was reminded of what it’s like to walk through the abandoned boulder fields almost [...]
Wildfowling Starts Today!
Posted in Sport on September 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Today is worthy of celebration more for the fact that it means that wildfowl are on their way than it does that shooting can begin. As a goose struck teenager on the Solway, I used to lurk in the mud beneath Criffel in the hope of shooting a goose on the morning of the first, [...]
Lesson Learned
Posted in Sport on July 4, 2011 | 1 Comment »
The ferret show at the Scone Game Fair still has no idea what hit it. Organised and judged by the Scottish Ferret Club, the show was not at all what I was expecting. From what I could see, mine were the only two working ferrets in the contest, and as the other competitors were being [...]
A James Kirk
Posted in Sport on July 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
It’s been some time since I’ve had the chance to get out and do some shooting. Working as I have over the past eighteen months, I’ve found that I often have so much to do that shooting is the last thing on my mind. I often have to make the decision between taking a shotgun [...]
An Introduction
Posted in Sport on June 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The single greatest advance in the world of human technology was the invention of the wellington boot. Or so a ferret might argue. Playing with my two new jills in the garden this evening, I noticed that one of them was becoming increasingly vocal and shrill. Unsatisfied with tugging at my trouser leg, she started [...]
New Arrivals
Posted in Sport on June 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
It’s been an extremely long day up in Glasgow, but before crashing out altogether, I wanted to celebrate the fact that this blog now has two new contributors. After an aeon spent searching through Stenhousemuir, Skinflats and Camelon for the location of a specific ferret breeder, my girlfriend and I finally managed to track him [...]
