There’s been some monkey business going on between Sri Lanka and China. Or at least, there was plenty being planned, but it has now been put on hold. You may…
Alasdair Mitchell
Identifying animals and birds is not always a simple matter – as the Berlin lion scare showed
The Berlin lion scare appears to be over. It was fun while it lasted. After witnesses claimed to have seen a female lion prowling around a suburb and produced a…
Will banks start discriminating against shooting next?
I have never worried about being ‘debanked’, but maybe I should be. Perhaps I will have my bank account and cards suspended after writing this column. There’s a lot of…
Shared Rural Network gives telecoms companies the power to plonk towers on private land
I almost cheered when I read Rose Sutcliffe’s observations about rural connectivity and the Shared Rural Network project in Shooting Times. The latter is a scheme using matched funding from…
Is fieldsports the most equal of sports?
Last winter, I nearly bust a gut hauling a big red hind into the back of my pickup. I had already dragged the beast uphill and across a deep ditch…
Are we still bound by EU countryside rules?
Defra’s notorious diktat about releasing pheasants within 500m of land that has an EU conservation designation raises a number of questions. For a start, why is any EU designation still…
When a badger disappeared before my very eyes
I once had a badger disappear before my very eyes. I had walked into a barn one evening and surprised the animal as it was helping itself to one of…
Water availability is critical for population density
Any gamekeeper knows the importance of having a good supply of clean water in the release pen. Sometimes, the engineering work this entails is wondrous to behold, encompassing lots of…
The day I went fox fishing
I caught a fox in a landing net recently. I should explain that my old stone farmhouse is set into the hillside, separated from it at the back by a…
“I cannot recall a time when shooting has faced so many legislative challenges”
Bad things tend to come in flurries. I cannot recall a time when shooting has faced so many legislative challenges. Whether it is moves to restrict game releasing, proposed revisions…
Killer facts about apex predators and rewilding
I have observed before that those who are most enthusiastic about the reintroduction of apex predators seldom live in places where these things are being turned loose. I am not…
What makes a good day’s sport?
There are some similarities between driven pheasant shooting and put-and-take trout fishing. Each is based on a certain amount of artifice; the birds or fish are reared and then released…
Is legal gun ownership being suppressed?
Merseyside Police have come up with a neat answer to the matter of crime prevention: if nobody is allowed to possess anything worth stealing, then there can be no property-related…
When does a hunting culture become fair game for the hate industry?
Today, traditional hunting cultures are admired and protected in many parts of the world. Respected ecologists and anthropologists go out of their way to understand and appreciate them. Think of…
Dogs and ramblers
Imagine you are wending your way through an alpine mountain pasture. It’s a bucolic scene, littered with the white, woolly shapes of grazing sheep. Then one of the white blobs…
Fox in the hen house
If you try to tell an urban dweller that foxes can cause problems for wildlife, they may not really believe you. They have been so imbued with the ‘balance of…
Guns and cars don’t mix
I have long thought that guns and cars don’t mix. How many shotgun barrels bear the scars of having been clonked on a door pillar, despite having been encased in…
Taxidermy: has it fallen out of fashion?
On a skiing holiday in the Austrian Alps, I noticed a framed photo in the hotel lobby. It showed the hotel’s owner grinning proudly as he kneeled, clutching a rifle,…
Why do activists always think they know best?
I was reading a fascinating new book called The Inuit Way — an account of an expedition from Greenland across the Canadian Arctic — when I stumbled across the following…
Why has the value of meat dropped?
It is sobering to think that, within living memory, the cost of a day’s red deer stalking in Scotland could be largely offset by selling the carcass. In real terms,…