Bog Myrtle & Peat

With the sun still nothing more than a distant glimmer behind the Solway Firth, I headed off this morning for a date with the local wigeon. My alarm was set for 5:55am, and as I sat up in bed, I was delighted to see frost curling up against the window. There is no real advantage to wildfowling on still, frosty mornings other than the fact that everything looks prettier and clearer, and the whimsy aesthete in me can never resist duck under a low moon. The car windscreen was frozen solid, and the situation wasn’t helped by my experiment of pouring warm coffee over it. The milk froze within seconds and if I had been wanting to turn the glass opaque, I would have struggled to have found a better way of doing it.

Once down on the estuary, I met Richard and his loyal labrador bliss before we all settled in for daylight. Already, wigeon were moving around in the frozen gloom, clucking and growling as they passed on hissing wings. It was too dark to shoot, so I listened to them squeak while the thick, muddy flow of seawater slid easily past at my feet. The tide was dead low at eight o’clock, and we already had a couple of birds in the bag by then. The tide had carried them silently towards us from upstream, and when they came too close to the improvised hide, they had sprung vertically off the water and into the navy blue sky. Wigeon make for testing shooting at the best of times, but with numb fingers and bad light, they are almost invincible.

Despite the difficulties, Richard and I began to build a respectable bag. Bliss plunged cheerfully into the dull depths to retrieve dead cocks and hens as they raced away into the Solway, carried by the tide which finally leaned off its pace and, for a few seconds, lay slack and motionless. By this point, small flights of wigeon were coursing up the river and past us every quarter of an hour. Groups of between six to sixteen birds came turning out of the sun to the decoys which bobbed sadly on the muddy bank infront of us. At the first shot, wigeon climb steeply up into the air, meaning that a smooth left and right is effectively impossible. You swing onto your bird with the first barrel, then as soon as the trigger is fired, reach upwards to follow the altered (and noticeably faster) course of the birds. It makes for entertaining shooting, and with the crisp, frozen Galloway coastline as a backdrop, it would be hard to imagine a better way to spend a morning.

By ten o’clock, the birds had slackened off altogether. Wildfowling is known for the sheer bulk of many of its accessories, making wildfowlers famous for cumbersome kit. Tucking camouflage netting, hide poles, decoys, guns, cartridge bags and three brace of wigeon under your arms is a fine art, and is one which takes some practice.