The wind was appalling. Bellowing through the snow-ripped hills, it rushed over the ground and plunged its claws into my fingers, sawing at the joints and tearing at my skin. My ears began to howl as tears streamed horizontally across my cheeks. And yet it was a lovely morning; the sun rose gently over the shoulder of the… Continue reading

It is always worth having a few tricks up your sleeve when it comes to catching crows, so that when you have a totally dud year with the larsen there is at least some kind of backup plan. Far be it from me to write blog articles about crow control, but it is worth relaying… Continue reading

The past few years have allowed me to make some real progress on catching crows, and although the late snows of 2013 made the birds behave very unpredictably, I certainly can’t complain. I have managed to keep on top of the jackdaws, and it is only since February that I have really seen any crows… Continue reading

At the risk of hyperbole, I can’t resist saying again just how pleased I am with my Nordik “Crying Bird” fox call. In two weeks, I have used it to shoot more foxes than I would normally have managed in several months, and each time they have come roaring in like trains. Not only is… Continue reading

It’s not often that I find myself trying to “review” products on this blog, and on the whole I tend to avoid that kind of thing – But I can’t resist posting to include some mention of two pieces of kit which led to the satisfactory undoing of one of the Chayne’s biggest and ugliest… Continue reading

It was quite useful to run a quick look around the hill this afternoon to check on all the fox earths while they’re still lying inactive. Each year that goes by I find new holes which are either freshly dug or have recently been cleaned out and expanded, and as the badgers continue to colonise… Continue reading

It was very worrying to catch a glimpse of a grey squirrel while shooting woodcock on a local farm earlier this week. The little devil came dashing through a stand of young ash trees, and only avoided being shot because it had never occurred to the gun it ran past that it could have been… Continue reading

Having renewed an old trap line last week, it was satisfying to find that I had brought a large dog stoat to book this afternoon in the teeth of a raging southerly wind. He had the first white hairs of ermine starting to show up on his head and around his eyes, and the smell… Continue reading