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SHOOTING GAZETTE - JULY 2005

This is being written on May 6th – a bad day for the Countryside. The thought of 4 more years of NuLab is shuddering and if it does not worry you, then it should. I will lay it out for you. A friend of mine was in a shooting and fishing shop on Tyneside before the Election. The shop had guns on one wall and fishing tackle on the other. Into the shop came the sitting MP. Had he come to pledge his support for Shooting and Fishing? Had he buggery – he had come to gloat. Looking at the display of guns and rods, he waved a hand at the display and said:

“If we get in again, all this will be gone in 5 years”. He then walked out. You have been warned. NuLab is out to get you. Forget about the Government’s promises – they are a load of sh#te. No, they probably will not seek to bring in a ban to stop you shooting and fishing – they do not need to – they can just make a lot of small cuts to make you bleed. Then very will finish you off by suffocating you with rules and regulations – not a happy thought.

It is not a happy thought that my game fowl have finally gone. I was given a Duckwing cock and three partridge hens in 1964. They came from a very ancient and famous Cornish line, which I have kept going through all the years since then. At one time I had over fifty assorted fowl. They lived in a semi wild state in and around the sheep shed. The foxes reduced them to one little black hen. I started to rebuild the flock and got as far as a cock and five hens. The foxes finally got the last one last week and I do not have the heart to start again, especially with the move to France in mind. Talking about Game Fowl (as I was) I can never think about them without thinking of the late, great, Sir Newton Rycroft, Bt., Newton was an eccentric genius in and around matters of breeding and most especially in the matters of Hounds and Game Fowl. He was also an eminent ornithologist. Were you to ask him about his time in the mountains with Tito and his partisans, all he would tell you was that the birdlife in Yugoslavia was most interesting. He once came to stay with me In Yorkshire. I took him out Cubhunting up on the Yorkshire Wolds. He spent most of the morning quizzing ancient foot followers about the Lesser Dotterel, or somesuch. Hounds were hunting in patches of whins below us, without huge enthusiasm. As we walked back to the truck, I asked him for an opinion on the hounds. He thought for a moment and said that in his opinion the hounds were kept solely for the purpose of giving the Master’s liver a little gentle exercise as they represented absolutely no threat whatsoever to the local fox population – he got that about right. At that time I had a rather magnificent Duckwing cock, which Newton admired greatly. It so happened that later in the year, I was judging hounds at Honiton (West of England Hound Show). My mission accomplished, I took myself to the Bar for a sharpener. It has to be said that the Bar at Honiton is one of the roughest dives east of Union Street, Plymouth. I was leaning against the bar, supping a well earned whisky, when I saw Newton cleaving his way through the crowd and obviously approaching me:

“Hello Newton!” I cried.

“Ah, Willy – nice to see. Do tell me, how is that lovely cock of yours?” I wonder how you would get on, trying to explain that one away in the bar at Honiton Hound Show.

I must say that the thought of moving house yet again, in my advancing age does not amuse me, but if I had any doubts about ‘going foreign’; the result of the General Election has stifled them. But where to go? France? Yes, but it is a very big country. So I did what I should have done in the first place – applied a little lateral thinking. The ‘Venerie’ book is the French equivalent of Baily’s Hunting Directory. It gives the details of every hunt in France (there are over 300). It also gives an analysis of the number of hunts in each ‘departement’. The largest concentration is around the city of Poitiers. There are Boarhounds, Staghounds (Red and Roe) Foxhounds, Beagles and Bassets. So to Poitiers we shall go next month (June) and ‘institute search proceedings’. Watch, as they say, this space.

The Countryside Alliance claims and I have no reason to doubt, that its turn out of members helped in the dismissal of some 50 MPs who had voted for a Hunting Ban. I would like to think that many readers joined it. Shame on those who couldn’t be bothered. Soon enough you too will need the help of hunting people in your battle to come. Think on.

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