An Easter Reflection

Don't tell anyone will you? I saw a very rare mammal in a field North of Norwich this morning. I raised my rifle to cull it but stayed the shot. Then I saw a few more. Still, I was reluctant to shoot. It wasn't a native British animal although rumour has it that it was once extremely common in the British countryside. Introduced from Europe by the Romans (or was it Normans .. much historic debate about this) it took a foothold in these in isles that changed the landscape. It dug and burrowed, opening out areas of heathland and stripping sapling copses. Over hundreds of years it nibbled our grazing pastures, undermined our railway embankments and fornicated its way into legendary numbers.
From the middle ages, up until last century, it was even farmed for its meat and fur. It became the staple food of the peasant, the badger, the fox and the buzzard yet its penchant for agricultural damage made it many enemies. It became hunted with hound, ferret, net, gun, hawk and snare. Yet still its fecundity outran its persecution. Then, in the mid-twentieth century it was dealt a shameful blow. Biological warfare. The deliberate introduction of a species specific virus called myxomatosis, developed by our Antipodean brethren (whose vast sheep farms were swarming with the pest). The virus became a plague and millions of these small mammals stumbled around the countryside sick and blinded by the mucus caking their sad brown eyes.
Nature, though, has a wonderful knack of standing on the opposite side of an unfairly weighted scale. Gradually, the surviving creatures developed resilience to the virus .. though rarely immunity. To this day the myxomatosis virus swims in the blood of the flea, the mosquito and the tick to randomly attack colonies of our mystery animal. Many now survive the disease but will bear the scars of its attack.
More recently, another alleged 'manufactured' disease was let loose on our humble mammal. VHD (Viral Haemorrhagic Disease) has attacked colonies throughout the UK. Unlike 'myxie', we rarely saw the victims for they simply bled to death within their burrows. All we noticed was the sudden lack of sightings of the beasts. Yet still .. our animal continued to rise in numbers. Good news for the hunter, the badger, the fox and the buzzard. Free food for all. In fact, so prolific was its breeding two or three years ago I was shooting even its kittens all year round to control numbers.
Then suddenly, last year, Mother Nature dealt an unusually bitter blow. Perhaps she thought that the badger and the fox were having far too easy a life due to the interference of man? Certainly these large predators have never enjoyed such a prolonged period of enforced protection .. their numbers spiralling out of control. It's often said that Nature abhors a vacuum, yet she also detests a glut .. and moves swiftly to redress the balance. What better way than to reduce the primary food source? An act of retribution she unleashes globally with her proclivity for creating famine, pestilence, flood, catastrophe and fire.
Last autumn and over this winter she let loose the power of precipitation. To put it bluntly, it pissed down for months. Water tables rose across the UK, thousands of square miles of land were flooded (many still are) and the ardour of our little agricultural pest was somewhat dampened. Nor did it have anywhere to delve and nest. This effect cascaded upward in the food chain too. I haven't seen a single fox cub on my shooting permissions so far this year.
So this morning I was mightily relieved to see the return of an animal I haven't shot for nearly four months .. and nor will I until I see numbers that indicate the flush of revival. The creature? Well, you've guessed of course.
Happy Easter, Mr Bunny!

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Hunting Heffalumps (with apologies to AA Milne!)

As we set across the open service track between the farm buildings and the sixteen acre coverts, the bitter Easterly wind picked up the nights light dusting of snow and whipped it in tiny eddies across the frozen plough. The lurcher cast into the breeze, his light, rough coat swept horizontal by the wind. Not gusting but constant, this Arctic-born zephyr cut like a knife, bringing tears to my eyes. We hurried over the white mile, man and dog eager to reach the relative shelter of the wood, paws and boots cracking the fragile ice covering the puddled tractor ruts.

Inside the wood we were to meet disappointment. The cold wind chased us mercilessly and sent her icy sprites dancing among the pine boles to bite the exposed skin. I was well wrapped in micro-fleece and sub-layers of cotton but the imps soon found my cheeks and trigger finger. Thankfully I had a Zippo hand-warmer cooking in my pocket to relieve the latter. The lurcher had scant protection. Not much meat on this little bag o' bones running machine and he kept stopping to nip the balled up ice gathering between his pads. I pulled the fleece snood up to cover my chin and set off deeper into the wood. This was a day to keep moving.

Pretty soon I noticed the tracks of a single beast impressed in the shallow snow ahead of me. The dog had his snout down and was following them keenly. Huge prints, padded and clawed. Twice the size of the dogs. All those speculative stories about big cats in this area of Norfolk immediately leapt to mind. Having little other purpose this morning (any sensible vermin being holed up in burrow or drey)  I decided to follow them for as far I could. I knew what the beast was, of course. I've been tracking animals for too long to be fooled by these prints. Nonetheless, there was fun to be had here. Here we were, my hound and I, in the sixteen-acre plantation playing at being Piglet and Pooh  .. on the trail of a Heffalump!

The trail followed along a man-made ride pretty rigidly, though now and again I could see where the mythical beast had veered off to scent and spray. The pheromones of that spray sending a shiver of caution through Piglet, my lurcher. His fear was palpable, yet he bravely nosed on. We both jumped, hearts in mouths, when a red stag leapt up from cover and called its two hinds up behind him. The huge deer leapt to safety, his harem following, as the dog stood panting. Eventually the tracks left the path and headed off under bare briar and over sandy hummock, deep into the nether-land of the coverts. This is where Piglet came into his own, following the scent while Pooh could only trust and follow, picking up a print here and there. I was comforted by the regular evidence of snuffling and rooting. Areas of leaf mulch thrown up as the creature had sought slight morsels of food which could surely never satisfy its bulky frame? This was a big beast, needing substantial feast.

I never expected to meet this particular Heffalump face to face so I carried no fear in the hunt. I knew he was a creature of the night. Thus, it was no real surprise when Piglet finally led me to the mouth of the Heffalump den. A hole so large the dog, standing 24" at the shoulder, could almost enter if he dared. The dogs nose pulled him inward, curiosity mixed with fear but he soon retreated. It was almost as though he could visualise the cast iron claw and the vicious tooth of the beast. He withdrew a distance, bidding me ( with his whine) to come away too.

As we left the lair of the Heffalump, we followed the tracks made as it had exited the nest at the start of its nocturnal expedition. Just like Pooh and Piglet, we followed them around to where we had first seen the trail .. full circle. Now a foolish hunter could have been tricked into thinking that at this point, the creature had been joined by a man and a dog .. and gone around the trail again.  Heffalumps always seem to hunt in circles. So do badgers. Could our beast have been a badger? Well, possibly it could have been a massive boar badger, with tracks like that? But I'd like to think that I'd found a Heffalump lair. What do you think?

 

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Snapshot Shooter

I've been submitting articles to the country sports press for about eight years now and I'm often asked how I get the photographs to accompany my pieces. I think the old joke (published in my first book) that I've trained my lurcher to take the pics has worn a bit thin. The question of in-field photography was raised again on Facebook the other night, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to give away a few 'trade secrets'. But first, a little history.

I didn't make the breakthrough into regular magazine slots due to my photography. I got into the game through being able to paint a picture with words. In the early days my pics were of random quality and taken just using compact cameras .. even the wildlife pics, which were dreadful. The magazine media, though, is highly visual. It was no fool who wrote 'a picture paints a thousand words'. I've been dead lucky in having an editor (from the start) who is himself an accomplished photographer. Nigel Allen. He encouraged my growing interest in photography and cameras, giving lots of advice along the way. In the early days, Nigel had to post-process my photos massively but he never had to do much with my writing. Now, he has little to do as I send him near perfect post-processed pics and self-edited text (only joking, Nige!). 

Seriously, first tips for submitting to an editor are to make sure the subject is relevant and interesting, text is grammatically accurate, spelling is correct and your pics are as good as you can get with the kit you use. Writing "I went down the wood and shot a rabbit wiv my 22 Beeza and cooked it later" accompanied by a fuzzy pic of a smiling numpty and a bloodied rabbit isn't going to inspire publication. However, " I stole silently from the woods margin and settled between the nettle beds. The movement of translucent ear tips further down the warren brought the .22 BSA Lightning to my shoulder and when the coneys head was clear in the scope, I tickled the trigger. Within seconds, I had the prime ingredient for my Sunday dinner" alongside a subtle photograph of a hunter recovering a (bloodless) rabbit from the meadow is far more likely to attract an editor .. and the reader.

Though I own two DSLRs (Nikon D5000 and D7000) plus a range of lenses, many people would be surprised that I don't use these for general magazine work. It's simply impractical to drag my DSLR's, lenses and associated kit such as a tripod around while hunting. So for hunting forays I travel light and my workhorse camera is my Nikon Coolpix P7100 super-compact. This cracking little 10mp camera shoots RAW files and has all the functionality of a DSLR .. yet fits in your pocket. Attached to my Trek-tech Optera 230 bendable tripod and using a Nikon ML-L3 remote this camera is incredible versatile. I can hang it off tree branches, wrap it around fence posts, stand it on stumps .. the only limit is my imagination. Image quality is superb .. I've even had magazine cover pics from it. In fact it's so good, I own two. I bought another to stow away in case it ever gets discontinued. That tiny Nikon ML-L3 remote control is brilliant for magazine shots as I can pre-programme the shutter timer to 2 or 10 seconds, get into position and snap away at leisure.

If I'm anticipating wildlife photo opportunities I pack the D7000 with a little Sigma 18-250mm zoom attached. Even this adds weight but its manageable when carried on a Black Rapid sling. It can hang loose to bring up quickly for an urgent photo without interfering with my rifle or shooting. There is no room for the Sigma 50-500mm or Nikkor 80-400mm zooms I use when simply snapping wildlife. The latter, a recent acquisition, is the perfect walkabout lens and doesn't break my back on a six or ten mile wilderness hike.

 

 

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Sneak-Thieves and Sentinels

At this time of year I will turn my attention .. and my muzzle .. to the magpie and the carrion crow. Mother Nature has a predilection for favouring the strong over the weak. She allows evolution to put one species at advantage over another. These two corvid cousins are a case in point. They are the countrysides earliest risers, out at first light to clean up the carrion left by last nights roadkill or Reynards leftovers. They have another early trait too. Both build their nest, mate and hatch their chicks a couple of weeks before their prey species .. songbirds or gamebirds.

So as the magpie and crow sit aloft their watchpoint with their squeaking fledglings begging for feed, they are plotting and conniving. They note the blackcap cock and hen changing guard over the tiny eggs. They see the cock blackbird carrying grubs to its chicks. They spot the robin stealing into a crevice to tend its mossy bed. They see all and miss little. Both birds are evolved to perfection to snatch, grasp, tear and probe. Their talons match those of the raptors and their vice-like beaks can crack tiny bones or eggshells with ease.

Each of the two has its own 'modus operandi'. The magpie is a sneak thief and coward. It will watch and wait until the parent birds are away from the nest then plunder and murder. A pair of magpies will work the blackthorn hedgerow like a team of pickpockets in a shopping mall. One will decoy, drawing the parent birds away to fuss and harangue. The other will dip in and steal. With deft and cunning, but little confrontation, they will feed their own. The carrion crows are much more brash. They fear nothing but man, so will simply bully in and take whatever they can see. The common denominator for both corvids is the all-seeing eye and the intelligence to hatch a plan.

So .. if Mother Nature gave them the advantage over these weaker species, she also made them one too. She put a rifle in my hands. Targeting each requires a different level of cunning. The carrion crows remote nest in a tall tree is almost impossible to approach undetected. Crows need to be baited away from their nest and ambushed. Never an easy task but an interesting and achievable challenge. If you get one of the pair, you'll rarely get the other!

Magpies are somewhat easier to cull at nesting time. In fact, it's probably the only time of the year that they drop their guard. Just look at the magpies nest. A huge dome of interwoven twigs which involve hundreds of flights from ground to tree by the pair. The pair become so pre-occupied with construction (and probably so weary) that they pay scant attention to their surroundings. The experienced shooter who can get placed within thirty yards of the building site will get ample opportunity to cull at least one magpie. Often, the second too .. for the only time in its life that the magpie drops its cowardly mantle is when its mate or its young are injured or dead.

 Target these two predators now and you will save dozens of eggs and chicks around your shooting beat .. not only songbirds but your landowners game-birds too.

 

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Deer By Degrees

 

 

It was interesting to watch the reaction in the press to this weeks announcement by a group of researchers at the University Of East Anglia (UEA) that some 750,000 deer need to be culled in the UK. Radio Norfolk were among the first to invite open air debate on the topic and ‘yours truly’ was highly amused at the polarised views. Fair play to the radio producers who were prepared to open out a very emotive topic. Dangerous territory on live radio!

Yes, the reaction from the Bambi brigade was wholly predictable. Nothing should ever be culled and wild animals aren’t a lower order than humans. These people obviously know wild animals that develop medicines, design spacecraft and use computers. These 'antis' love to walk in the woods and hug trees but can’t understand that what our friends at the UEA were trying to say is that if we don’t control deer, there won’t be any new woods! But, as the prophet said, there are none so blind as those who will not see.

If that was predictable, I was totally unprepared for the reaction from my own brethren, the hunting and stalking fraternity. Their reaction was incredulity (at the numbers mooted) and a high degree of suspicion. It’s not every week that academics step forward and say ‘please go forth and shoot’. A fact widely stated by shooters yet perhaps missed by the media was that, by and large, the rural deer population is well controlled. Farmers and landowners (including a certain Mr Brian May, allegedly!) give stalking permission to keep deer herds in check .. and healthy. The problem, the root of the UEA research deduction, is the urban and suburban deer population. Yes .. just as with foxes .. our public parks, shrubberies, cemeteries and amenity woodlands are stuffed full of deer. Roe and muntjac mainly, but also fallow and sika. Less so the magnificent red deer. These can’t be easily controlled as few Local Authorities are prepared to permit shooting and even if they did, many of these areas would be unsafe for small-bore rifle work. A fox is small enough to trap and deal with away from the public. A deer isn't.

The interviews I heard with the UEA research team mentioned the deer versus traffic problem. I wonder how many of the general public have had an 'altercation' with a roebuck? Not something I have personally endured yet but I know several people who have and I’ve seen the results. Norfolks major roads are littered every day with deer casualties. Human victims are more frequent than we appreciate .. including occasional fatalities .. yet even I would advocate that this is no excuse for a cull. Nor would I deny, however, that the simple laws of mathematics say more deer, more road deaths? Stands to reason. No .. the real reason for controlling deer numbers has to be habitat and environmental protection. I could walk someone around my shooting permissions (where deer are culled) and demonstrate the point but unless they really understand Mother Nature (and few anti's do) then it would be pointless.

Now .. that report emanated from a campus on the edge of Norwich and I could almost, tangibly, hear the ripple of cynicism from the shooting and stalking community asking for credentials? Relax, guys and girls. The UEA is an internationally recognised centre of environmental excellence. I have some professional involvement (in the day job) with the campus and can vouch for its ethos. Environmental protection balanced against sense and practicality. This report, to me .. a hunter .. reflected that ethos. There is no room for sentiment when dealing with environmental threat. Whether the threat is to a land-mass, an eco-system, a vulnerable species or a humble songbird we humans, the higher order .. there I said it again .. have the power, the intelligence and the resource to intervene. So intervene we must. If we fail in that duty, then we have failed Mother Nature .. who blessed us with that power.

 

 

I live fairly close to the UEA. Its estate, bordering the River Yare, is managed as an environmental delight too. Too many rabbits, grey squirrels and magpies for my comfort but, hey, what the hell! All of the photos attached (except the deer ones) here were taken on a walk around its woods and waterways today. Enjoy .. and love those academics and their students. They are studying and lecturing to save our planet .. and quite obviously with a very commendable lack of bias.

 

 

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Wild Intelligence

I watched the cock blackbird in my garden, looking skyward at the squadrons of rooks returning home to roost. What was he thinking? The low, fast flight of a bird over his head made him draw in his neck and freeze. Sparrowhawk ..! No .. he relaxed, for it was a late returning woodpigeon flashing across the garden. The blackbird was watching me too, though familiar with my presence here on my garden deck. He was enjoying his territory and I was enjoying mine. He couldn’t possibly know that I strive to protect him and his like. He will only ever know me as a threat .. for I am human. I enjoy his presence and he tolerates my intrusion. His country cousins would not allow such close proximity. They would spot me and go rocketing through the wood with a “cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep”. A continuous racket which they reserve for the presence of man. They will act entirely differently if a fox, cat or stoat is threatening their domain. Their alarm call will be much more subtle. They will circumnavigate the threat, issuing that familiar, monotone "pip-pip-pip". A trait that gamekeepers of old used to their benefit, the first call to know when there was a poacher in the wood and the second to know that a predator was around which might threaten the poults. That tendency to fuss around a ground based mammalian threat allowed the keeper to track the culprit and stop it in it’s tracks.

The jay is one of the woods most observant sentries. She will, however, behave in a fashion almost opposite to the blackbird. She will hover, darting under cover from bough to bough around human presence, though she will remain distant. If there is a natural threat (fox, cat, mustelid, grey squirrel) she will be much closer to them (still circling, still screaming). Catch a jay in the open though and they will arrow off, screeching, to announce your presence to every creature within an acre. Your quarry will heed this warning. Whilst the browsing rabbit will mainly ignore the clatter of a woodpigeon (perhaps because they do it all the time) the coney will flatten to the ground or bolt to cover when the jay sounds her alarm.

One of the most canny watchmen is the carrion crow. Over the years, I have tried to interpret the various calls of the crow and have mostly failed miserably. I am still convinced, though, that the treble-syllable call they emit when I’m spotted with a rifle (a “graw,graw,graw”) really does mean “gun, gun, gun!”. I’m certainly in no doubt that many wild creatures can detect malice. We humans definitely don’t have the franchise on interpreting body-language and you can check this theory Yourself. The grey squirrel may sit on a bough watching you for an eternity until you raise your scope in it’s direction. Then it will flee.

 

Once, I stepped from cover to see a hare staring back at me. My rifle was slung over my shoulder. I backed into cover and drew the camera from my bag. I stepped out and this normally wary beast allowed me to photograph it at leisure. I stepped back into cover and exchanged camera for air rifle. Not that I intended to shoot a hare with an air rifle, it was simply because I wanted to move on. As soon as I emerged with the un-slung rifle, the hares demeanour changed to panic and it bolted.  

Watch the magpies reaction to your body language. A cocky, precocious bird in urban or suburban areas it is used to humans. You could argue that most would never encounter direct human threat like its rural brethren so it has no logical reason to fear us. Yet, and you can test this yourself, raise your arms in a mocking shooting stance at a feeding magpie and it will flash off in alarm. That in-bred survival mechanism recognises a threat even if it may never been shot at in its life before.

Something that I term ’habitual intelligence’ is another trend that intrigues me as a hunter. The ability of bird and beast to memorise an activity or incident and associate it with consequence or outcome. Sometimes, it works to their advantage. Often, used wisely by the hunter, it can be their downfall. A simple example of this is corvid baiting. Regular baiting (shoot rabbit, paunch rabbit, leave paunch in the same spot) gets results. The corvids associate the site with carrion and visit regularly. Once the routine is established, you can hide up and be certain of a shot or two. Shoot the spot too often, however and they will steer clear. That little memory chip in that tiny brain will now associate the location with danger. Incident, activity, consequence.

I mentioned earlier the legions of rooks that pass over my house before dusk. A wonderful spectacle. I can sit and watch the hordes pass over at leisure, their internal navigation fixed on some far flung evening roost. As soon as I raise my camera lens in their direction, they break formation and wheel away in dismay, clearly disturbed by the action. A thousand high rooks and one little dot in a garden far below, yet they know I’m looking. How do they do that?

 

 

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Feathers, Forensics and Fungi

A glorious amble around the Old Hall estate today, where I do my bit to thin out grey squirrels and corvids. The reward for which is full access, all areas and this is a thousand acres of Norfolk brimming with fauna and flora. As we set off, the lurchers nose went straight down to start his eternal quest to find sciurus carolinensis, while I had my eyes peeled for more attractive wildlife. Before I stepped into the woods I cast about and drew in the sure signs of springs approach. Out to the East the rookery was all squabble and noise as the birds engage in nest building and repair. Wheeling above the Southern coverts, a pair of courting buzzards called to each other plaintively and I wondered where the nest would be this season. Along the woods margin, wild daffodils are budding.

We stepped into the carrs and I snapped my fingers gently to bring the dog to heel, his demeanour warning me that game was near. Sure enough, a few steps onward and a salvo of pheasants exploded from beneath the surrounding brash and put my heartbeat into overdrive. Bloody birds! Those damned shot-gunners didn’t do much of a job! Yet without them here, I doubted my invitation would last long. We pressed on, even the lurcher aware that any squirrel within 400 yards now knew we were abroad.

Through the trees I noticed a scattering of white on the woodland floor. Now, I don’t walk a wood. I explore it. It’s an obsession, a need to know everything that’s happening (or already happened) on my manor, including 'field forensics'. Who committed murder? When I got closer I found hundreds of feathers scattered around a low tree stump. Not just one plucked woodpigeon .. but several. I had found a sparrowhawks dining table. The spar will often carry a fresh kill back to a regular spot to feast, as will the fox. So how did I know the diner wasn’t a fox? Take a look at the quills on these two feathers (if you click on the thumbnails you can open the full photo). The tiny tram lines on each quill are indentations made by the hawks bill as it has gripped the feather and drawn it from the pigeon. Definitely a hawk kill. Foxes chomp through feathers rather than delicately pluck them.

          Further down the track I saw Dylan bristle. He stood still and drew up a paw so I thought I had a squirrel incoming. I knelt and set the rifle ready to shoot. It was a hare, loping towards us, totally unaware. My lurcher is trained to leave all potential quarry unless commanded to chase. His quick glances, almost begging release, were ignored. Hare coursing is illegal now and anyway, the Lady here likes to sees hares about. This beast was not ours for the taking today. I stood and the hare froze. It scented the air then burst away through the trees.

Downhill now, past the badger setts and we put up a roe deer. She sprang away, hurdling a barbed wire fence, then dashed out across the plough. I reached a hollow, an ivy-bound carr housing one of the estates grey squirrel outposts. There are a dozen dreys here so I set up in a corner and broke open my flask. After an hour I was as bored as the lurcher. Not a hint of fur or flick of bushy tail so we forged on. Half an hour later we were in the Garden Wood, famous locally for its Snowdrop Walks. These two weekend charity events had kept me from the wood, the Lady feeling that a chap in camo with a rifle toppling dead squirrels from the trees wouldn’t impress the punters! The wood looked splendid, a sea of pure white snowdrops and yellow winter aconites.

          Dylan saw them before I did. Bandits at twelve o’ clock. I watched the pair for a while and waited for a clear opportunity. The spit of the air rifle was indiscernible as one fell and the other fled. Dylan ran in to retrieve, cautiously circling the rodent before picking it up. He needn’t have worried. He returned the squirrel to me and I bagged it.

Among the hidden treasures on this estate are the vast variety of fungi. In autumn there are hundreds of species on show. Today, early March, some of the hardier winter survivors still clung to decaying stumps, such as Artists Bracket and Turkeytail.

 

As we made our back to the X-Trail I was still in explorer mode. The mud puddle next to a cattle trough merited a visit and gave up badger sign. Fresh .. last nights prints. Crouched examining them a movement caught my eye. A tiny muntjac fawn, half the size of my dog (who was studying it quizzically) emerged from some gorse to sniff the air. It’s mothers anxious bark drew it back into cover before I could focus the camera. A magical end to a rewarding morning.

 

 

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