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 Continue reading

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 Continue reading

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 Continue reading

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, Continue reading

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 Continue reading

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 Continue reading

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 Continue reading

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 Continue reading

The ferrets continue to go from strength to strength. The glorious days of deep winter ferreting came to an end in Feburary, and the little bailiffs were put into temporary retirement, stretching in their straw beds and dreaming of the day when they can return to business, evicting squatters and dealing out rough justice. Their Continue reading

Tiny brownies plopped back and forth in the flat calm waters of the loch below the Chayne, and I cast my lumbering wet mayfly nymph into the water without much hope. I am a lazy fisherman. If the fish aren’t taking the fly I have on, I have a cigarette and lie outstretched on the Continue reading