When you think of rat control it is hard not to envisage a man rocking up in a van, filling a bait box and then disappearing until next month. While this may be all that is needed in some cases, it isn’t in every instance. Some years ago I read about

We are approaching the end of the open season for all female deer in England and Wales. All except for muntjac, that is, which have no close season and can be culled beyond the end of March. What a season it has been with the restrictions on travel t

The phone conversation with William about his ‘bovine rump and banjo problem’ – or words to that effect – began something like this: “Hello, is that Malcolm? John in our roving pheasant syndicate suggested I have a word with you.” “Yes, that’s fine,”

Just reading a very interesting article in the January issue about Jean-Paul Gaudin ( JP). It said he was involved in a ‘motorcycle accident in 1988, when he was in his twenties’. A couple of paragraphs later, it says, ‘JP, 47, has become something o

I was recently asked why I took up foxing. Like so many things in life there’s no single answer. Having reflected on the matter, however, I think the main stimulus was probably my seeing the distressed state of some of the lambs on a local farm. Ther

I read recently that the names, addresses, certificate numbers and mobile phone numbers of people involved in the badger cull in Wiltshire have been published on the web. How does this happen and what risks does revealing certificate numbers pose?

The Krypton XG50 looks almost identical to the popular front-mounted F155 and the later F455 night-vision models, and the button layout and functions are practically the same. The Krypton, however, is purely a thermal unit, working solely on the heat

My Dad, who never shot a pheasant in his life, would religiously intone: “A game bird should be hung for at least two weeks before eating”. Not sharing his penchant for putrid meat, I pluck and prepare my gamebirds and pigeons within a day of shootin

When the editor speculated on what us pigeon shooters might have to look forward to in 2021, the seed of an article was planted. However, I decided that before I wrote it I would reread Archie Coats’s book to see what it was like in his day, 60-plus

I remember the day my hearing gave out. It was in July 1979 when I was serving in an armoured infantry battalion with the British Army of the Rhine. I had been running an anti-tank range day in Germany and we were firing an 84mm Carl-Gustaf, a heavy,

In theory, they should be the answer to every farmer’s prayer. But they aren’t. And why not? With hundreds of shooters involved in what might be called higher level crop protection, thousands of woodpigeon coming to roost must surely end up as pâté e

Under normal circumstances with the shooting season finished, people start to think about either breeding or buying a pup to bring on during the spring and summer months. On the face of it, the COVID-19 lockdown would seem a good time to buy a puppy