FenlanderGundogs.co.uk

BOBBY'S ON MY BEAT

The local Bobby when we were teenagers was a sort. He managed to put a lean on most of the landowners and farmers to get shooting permission. This used to clash with us and a few others as we had to step aside if he was to be shooting, even though we had had the shooting permission for many years or generations.

We used to watch him walking the fields in such an awkward fashion, like a Russian soldier marching, his gun held out front over his bulbous belly, his two Labradors pottering a few feet in front. If he or his Labs managed to flush any game Bobby would let both barrels off in the general direction. Bang Bang or Bobby Boom Boom as we called him rarely shot anything for his poor dogs to fetch.

Bang Bang was very assertive in his protection and patrolling ofhis patch thinking he had sole right, but most of the landowners and farmers let some of the locals discretely walk their land. This was as much an inconvenience to us as a thrilling and amusing opportunity to play with Bang Bang's mind.

The land joining our land out the back of our house had a strip of mature trees right across it leading to the hall. It had at some point been part of a path across the flooded fens to the next village. Following the higher banks of silt deposited by the tidal creeks and rivers, naturally before the land was drained this is where most trees were able to grow. This Holt as the strip was known, twenty yards across, in the middle of vast windswept fields of crops, was a haven for wild life and game. Between the mature trees it was chocca with smaller trees and bushes. An ancient path eroded and worn over generations wandered through the middle. It was quite beautiful with wild flowers in the spring and shaded in the summer so that no weeds such as nettles and thistles grew. The higher bank area made it alive with burrows and dens. So we used to chance our luck sometimes and take a gun down there when Bang Bang was likely to be about.

The trick usually was to start working one end with someone each side and walk it in such a way that you kept moving, shooting as you went, so that you ended up home without going over where you had already shot. This would leave Bang Bang chasing Will O the Wisps, with a bunch of feathers and an empty cartridge case left next to them for him to chornt over. You never did the same route twice in the same month so as not to be predictable. Occasionally one of us might go separate ways to confuse him further, sometimes just to have a shot in the air to distract him from the other.

One most amusing day I got hold of some rookies or crow scarers bangers on a rope. We walked the route in reverse leaving the bangers hanging on a tree with the rope fuse lit closest to Bang Bang's house. We shot game as we worked our way back to our land. After about fifteen minutes we were over half way home and had had a few shots when Bang Bang in his Land Rover came charging down the farm track at a right angle to the Holt. We made ourselves and the dogs to cover on the other side of the wood. As we settled for a moment to see him jump out of his Land Rover make towards the suspected area, the slow burning fuse of the rope bangers got to a banger and it went off. At this Bang Bang claws back into the Land Rover and thrashes back to where he had come from!

Off we go again and not far from our land we got a couple more shots at game and an extra one at a pigeon for luck. We watched Bang Bang charging back down to the Holt get out and start marching along the Holt our way.

Now on ours we take a shot at a passing pigeon. Bang Bang comes into view looking rather perturbed and confused. We acknowledge him and he starts to make his way back to his Land Rover. Just as he's approaching it a banger goes off. With vigour he re-enters his passion to capture the elusive poacher, taking wind into his sails sets off in pursuit.

We went home with three or four pheasants, a rabbit, a pigeon and beaming smirks on our faces! There was only one more banger go off so presumably the rest were discovered.

Standing at the far end of the Holt waiting for pigeon to come in I had the surprise of Bang Bang and his Lab turn up on foot almost on top of me waiting in the hide. Fortunately the hide that had been fashioned for many years out of living bushes still had some leaf on it shielding me from his vision. I couldn't make my escape behind as the undergrowth was too thick and noisy, so I kept still. As they approached the Lab changed course and made its way over to where I was. It came right into the hide to me so I quietly fussed and cooed it for a few seconds for it to leave and venture back to its master less than ten feet away! The same situation happened again a few months later.

There was a few acres just up the road from us with an unkempt orchard on it. It was overgrown with grass, bramble and nettle and alive with game. We got permission to shoot it but as usual Bang Bang had the right of way! Four of us set off in pairs. We had plenty of action. Rabbit, pheasant, pigeon, hare and a fox. We all came out the other end with three or four head of game each to walk into Bang Bang! `I got you now!' ` Armed trespass and pursuit of game!' ` I've been saving that bit!'

We left expecting the worst so we phoned the landowner when we got home and let him know. Bang Bang was not happy when he went to pronounce his achievements to the landowner. The landowner gave us the all clear for permission making his case null and void!

Whoofy Wilkins a local first generation Gorger was out looking for a bit of supper when Bang Bang clocked him and took pursuit. Whoofy Wilkins (Whoofy was his knick name as he was petrified of dogs, bearing the scars) had stashed his gun and kept ahead of Bang Bang across several fields. As a large dyke full of winter water was now approaching to block Whoofy's escape Bang Bang exclaims his classic to Whoofy `I got you now!' At which Whoofy shouts back `Is that what you think!' and with nothing to lose runs and springs across to the other bank landing barely wetting his feet, to laugh and flaunt at Bang Bang who he knew he had beat.

HOLY HUNTERS

CATCH THE PIGEON

In our early teens so strong was our passion for hunting that even the wildlife of the local Chapel was irresistible to us. We became avid church goers for the late Saturday evening service instead of Sunday morning. The Chapel was inside a manor house that had a large mature treed garden. The geese, peacocks and hundreds of tame doves were not the attraction but the masses of starlings, pigeons and collared doves were a hoard of temptation.

It started off with Black Widow catapults, we would have a pop at the roosting starlings when the rest of the congregation were having after-Mass refreshments inside. Of course we had to join the other kids kicking a ball around now and again, but that ended up being a farce as it got to the stage where it was everyone’s instinct, including the other kids, to play roulette with the tame pigeons! I don’t think anyone actually hit any birds, we just liked making them react.

Someone, usually me, would throw a stone from the gravel drive up onto the third floor roof to startle the roosting birds which would exodus in a river of feather to have a barrage of sticks, stones and footballs launched and kicked into the mass of birds! On more than one occasion the owner stepped outside to witness it raining sticks, stones, balls and whatever else had been launched! I’m sure he had an idea but never told me and my brothers off, but did have a little pop at some of the others when we had happened to have snuck off to give the real weapons a go.

It worked quite well having the other kids distracted from what we were up to in the trees and also the owner was watching them and not us, making us the churchgoing angels! So in the shadows we stalked the starlings with the catapults, knocking one off here and there when we could get a stone through the branches. It was when I brought along a little Manuarm .177 air pistol that things got going. I painted a little bit of white paint on the foresight post point and around the edge facing me on the hood, so that with a hand over a torch behind me letting a little light creep out on to the sights, Quentin could help me line the front with the back sight and the bird at night.

Well I got damned good with that little gun, not particularly powerful, but surprisingly accurate up to twenty yards. We usually went for collared doves and aimed for the head or wing. One time a dove a good twenty yards up a fir tree, just its head and neck showing, took a pellet first shot in the head and came clattering down flapping and bouncing, to crash straight into a window where all the adults were having refreshments; blood splattering and dripping down the panes! No one noticed! So we came out from hiding and carried on.

I’m sure it would have made a strange and bizarre observation if someone had witnessed the pre-Mass scene of the boys hanging back a little till the parents had gone inside, to turn around and scurry to the boot of the car, open it up and start to hand out an arsenal of weapons!

Eventually an event put a downer on everything and it was never the same. It was nearly dark and we were out the front of the building. I was just searching the trees for a target when I happened to look across to Alex thirty yards away to see him draw back his Black Widow full stretch and line up on the owner’s prized white peacock standing on the shed! Like a slow -motion scene from a movie I put my hands forward and shouted `Nooooo!’ But the stone had been released and the peacock took it full in the chest! It stuttered and fell over backwards down the other side of the roof. The next week the owner, when asked where the white peacock was, proclaimed that it had died.

SLICE OF OUR GAME PIE

Alex had a real problem controlling his obsession with shooting and caused us real animosity with his compulsive need to hunt everything and everywhere of ours…permission or not! His competitive nature made him a perfectionist but at the cost of comradeship and trust. For his need to help himself to the use of our equipment, ammunition and even dogs sometimes to fuel his ambitious obsession was downright selfish!

Quentin and I tended to shoot together more and keep our bits of permission secret as long as possible otherwise Alex would bunk off school and while we were at work he would decimate the game. We managed to return the favour a couple of times when Alex actually got some shooting permission for himself. He was not pleased and with tears in his eyes expressed his upset and frustration at missing out on such a bountiful bag, for we had hammered it with shot guns bringing a wheel barrow full of rabbit, pigeon and pheasant back to show him! He took a bit of a different outlook from then on and got more of his own permissions, keeping them to himself!

AT ONE WITH NATURE

My father had a way with animals. When he was thrashing Flash the Springer Spaniel bitch with his cartridge belt she attacked and bit him! Funny that! Charlie our Fox Terrier had him a couple of times; Foxy our Hunt Terrier had him plenty, and Chess psycho Springer Spaniel did him a serious hand injury. My father had to tease and taunt animals beyond a game then wonder why they turned on him or ran away.

Gerard bought a Springer pup, Scally, so my father bought the other bitch, Gypsy. Gypsy was so teased and provoked that she became vicious and aggressive at six months old. The future didn’t look good for Gypsy but as fate turned out I accidentally ran her over with the truck while she was sleeping under it, so maybe it saved her a life of torment. I had got my first dog, an English Springer like Gerard’s and named him Jimmy. He was a few weeks age different from Scally. We trained them by three years old to a high standard as gundogs. Something my father had no mentality for.

My father, to one better us bought a trained lab! Well there’s no point having a trained dog if the new owner can’t be trained to work and understand the dog. In any case the seller (I say seller and not trainer as I know the man to be an arse who has ruined more dogs than done any good!) saw my father coming with Busty. Busty a huge black lab was frightened of his own shadow and had obviously been the product of heavy beatings with a stick. He had little usable training other than retrieving close range stuff. He should have made a good basic gundog for wildfowling, still could have been if he had been reconditioned gradually over a year or so, but after a couple of outings my father lost interest and left him as a house dog where to be honest he faired quite well amongst us kids.

He was happy and excitable when we revved him up, so much so that he would skid and slide on the tiles trying to run and skip about in excitement. This big powerful dog was hilarious as we taught him to run and get under the kitchen table, then run back out again. So when my father was at the table at break times we could quietly rev Busty up and tell him to get under the table at which he would charge off and crash under the table then come back with the table on his back! Of course my father would be shouting and cursing that bloody dog, shouting ` Barbara what’s the matter with that dog?!’ Busty was a lovely dog and would defend any of our animals if they were attacked, even us reprimanding another dog you had to watch him as he might bite you. It was quite usual for him to have a litter of kittens sleeping on top of him while he slept like a big hot water bottle!

Although us boys were shooting and hunting mad, most things being a target other than finches and song birds, we quite regularly brought home injured or orphaned animals. I remember finding a nest of kit rabbits in a shallow burrow on the tree nursery. This sometimes happens when a pregnant doe has no warren to have her young as she’s been driven out by lack of space or rejected by the main warren. I put my arm down the hole and pulled out six or seven kits about four weeks old. Rather than kill them, for if left they would do a lot of damage chewing the trees, I brought them home and put them in the old budgie aviary. They fared well till about half grown when one of my sisters thought they would be better free and left the door open. Not being able to catch them we had to shoot them.

Alex, after days of fog, was about to shoot a Woodcock that jumped off of a wooden post to the floor, but curious at this strange behaviour, he got closer, to find and catch a male kestrel. Not being able to hunt properly with the fog hindering, the kestrel was close to death. The hen kestrel was hanging around her mate. Being bigger the hen had fared better having more weight on her. We knew this pair as we often watched them hunting birds. The male would fly into the woods and flush a blackbird out, hit it to disrupt its flight then the hen would come in and deliver a fatal strike. We rarely saw them miss a kill!

Alex brought the bird back and we found a large wooden budgie cage with a wire front and put it on the hay trailer. We shot with air rifle, sparrows, starlings and Pigeon. I put a pigeon in first with all the skin pulled away from the breast and the kestrel when we came back had eaten both sides! After a day or two it got fussy and wouldn’t eat starlings but would eat sparrows. The hen had followed and stayed around our house sitting in the trees close by. The fog still hadn’t cleared in all that time but a couple of days later the morning was clear so with the hen nearby I released him. The pair stayed around the yard for a few weeks fairly tame and we left a bit of food out to start with. Then they set up a territory and tree nest site on our land across the road. They had several successful broods until a new townie neighbour decided to help the wildlife by putting an owl box up. Barn owls moved in and pushed the kestrels out!

Alex another time found a cub fox. At a few weeks old it was orphaned and was wandering around so Alex brought it back and put it in a cage. He shot rabbit and pigeon for it. He had it for several weeks before it disappeared from its cage!

We used to have martins turn up every year and nest under the eves of the house. We could watch them a few feet away from our bedrooms. In those days there were so many sparrows and starlings due to the all the spilt and missed grain for the sparrows and masses of orchards which sustained the starlings. Nesting places were hard to come by and were competed for aggressively. It used to really irritate and aggravate us when the martin’s chicks were thrown out of their nest to their doom. We used to shoot loads of sparrows in the act!

One time I found nearly fledged martin chicks on the floor alive and their mud nest broken up. It may have just been badly built or heavy rain had got to it. So I made a nest-box from a plastic four pint milk carton, cutting a square hole under the handle then tied string to the handle and fastened it to the eves with the young in it. The parents raised their young to fledge, then parents and young raised the next batch! They came back the next years too! I’ve done this a few times with full success. I’ve moved blackbirds’ nests a few feet a day to a safe spot out of the way when I’ve needed to tidy a spot where they have nested. We have reintroduced countless frogs, toads and newts in our youth as the sprays used on the orchards and the lack of ponds had eradicated them. Amphibians fascinated us as kids, we were always making ponds for them. We once found an edible frog on the nursery that must have come in with nursery stock from abroad! Now there are frogs and toads everywhere.

EARLY DAYS

I had always used the Springers for the shot gun, the air rifle with no dog, well that’s not totally true as I did train up our hunt terrier (Fox Terrier x Jack Russel) to stalk rabbits with me. She was useful steady as from six months old, I’d conditioned her to not chase until I wanted her to catch a wounded rabbit, for in those days all the air gun books recommended just behind the shoulder shots but in variably the bunnies still travelled, sometimes to their holes before dying! Always neck or head shots now as you either miss or kill cleanly.

Great little dog was Foxy, the last to be bred from that line. I will never forget lazing in the orchard shade with her, I was probably seventeen; Foxy about six months. We’d just been out practising stalking rabbits, half dozing when something caught our attention. As we lazed there a leveret proceeded to approach us in a sort of little zig-zag hesitant trot. I sat motionless and hissed quietly to Foxy to keep her steady. This little leveret, no bigger than Foxy, proceeded to venture right up to us less than six feet away, by which time Foxy was starting to get excited and wriggle and creep.

The leveret that was well aware of Foxy from the start I believe, but maybe not of me as I was in full camo, sitting up against the base of a tree and dead still, started to inter act with Foxy! Both pup and leveret were doing little dances and feigning in their own style, gradually getting further away from me until they were doing little runs of a few yards, taking it in turns to chase each other! This went on for ten minutes or so by which time they were getting a good distance from me and out of view. I ended up calling Foxy up so I could go home!

Foxy as a stalking dog only lasted till she was about three when Alex my younger brother had secretly seen me out with her and then taken her out himself hunting! The next time I took her out I was in absolute disbelief when Foxy bolted after every rabbit screaming and yapping like a banshee! I never could use her again for stalking but she did make a good addition to the rough shooting scene being brilliant at catching runner pheasants in the sugar beet and rabbit although not always easy to find her in heavy beet as she would catch the pheasant and pin it down waiting for me. She would work the beet with the old deaf Springer Flash I used, popping up here and there like a Meercat to see where I was.

I got a couple of years out of it till the same brother and our father discovered her usefulness and took her out and, you guessed it, she’d been ruined and was a nervous wreck due to over-controlling, beatings, continuous shouting, clicking fingers and squeaking! Other than an occasional squeak to get her attention, I never needed to beat, shout or do that ridiculous clicking fingers thing our father used to do! Obviously Foxy was in shock with someone else taking her out and shouting all these commands that she had no idea how to perform, and the commands kept coming before she had time to try the first command. So then the beatings followed our father’s frustrations. That’s when I decided to get a dog of my own and not use the family one!

Foxy never did fully recover and would regress and clam up if you raised your voice too much. Getting her to work cover again took a lot of patience as our father had kicked, pushed and thrown her into brambles, nettles and the like, where as I used to let her find her own way in as her thin coat and terrier reaction to nettle stings troubled her greatly.

She was a great ratter too and my older brother and I would regularly take her on missions. We would often pour petrol down all the holes in the dykes, give the vapours five minutes to travel through the tunnels then light a hole. One or two whoof bangs and sometimes a boom with the ground lifting you up, flames tearing out of the holes usually with rats dazed and confused stumbling out. Dogs, sticks and boots would be on them.

One time we’d petrolled the holes, called the dogs back and went to light a hole, Foxy had snuck off and put her head in a hole just as my brother lit one at the top. Well Foxy was blown back into the bottom of the dyke and sat in the water front feet held up, no whiskers or eyebrows looking rather shocked and bewildered! We also used to flood rat holes out in the yard with the irrigation hose instead so as not to risk burning the buildings.

I did try and train another pup for stalking, one of Foxy’s. An accident mating with Old Ben our Springer who was one of those WONDERS our father bought! To the old adage `No one gets rid of a good dog’ His Homer Simpson brain deduced that because the two-year old dog for sale was a Gamekeeper’s it must be good! Well poor fucker must have had a master like my father as he was a nervous wreck and had never seen a field of beet let alone done any hunting up! He did retrieve but would crunch game nervously when he got close. I used Ben later on when he had been abandoned and found he should have been a cracking gundog if trained properly. Full of heart, drive and determination.

Sam, Foxy’s pup with Ben, was so ugly she was lovely! Badly undershot, resembling a beagle of sorts the size of a cocker with a deep chest, short, thin terrier ginger and white coat and a sweet happy energetic nature. She would sit lovely and wait to fetch tennis balls, retrieving at speed with pleasure. I could throw a ball across the Middle Level Drain about fifty yards just on to the bank or water’s edge and Sam would swim out at speed zig-zagging following the scent of the ball, collect it and return it to my hand. Guess what! I never got to use Sam for the gun as a Alex commandeered her, let her run wild then got bored and abandoned her. She was left to spoil in her kennel till she was given away a year or so later. So, I got a Springer pup by myself for myself!

THE LONG WAIT

My early teens were spent waiting to be fifteen so I could take a gun out on my own. My two younger brothers and I spent most our young teens out hunting small game like sparrows, starlings, rats and pigeons with high powered catapults, sticks, stones and I was able when fifteen to work and pay for an air rifle.

A Sharp Innova pump up .177 was a great little gun but had a few short falls like needing six pumps for max power, loading was fiddly and regularly needed new seals and valves to the reservoir. I shot pigeon, rabbit, rats, starlings, sparrows in large numbers. We did have a basic code not to shoot song birds. This gun was incredibly accurate with Niko Sterling four x forty and a one piece mount. I was able to hit empty four-ten cartridge cases stood up at fifty paces, four out of five shots standing!

After a couple of years the gun was more trouble than worth with repairs, pumping and fiddly loading so as my younger brothers Quentin and Alexander had started getting air rifles Webleys and BSAs in the cheaper ranges, I looked for a substitute. I preferred the BSAs to the Webleys break barrels they seemed more reliable, accurate and ergonomically set up but still not a patch for accuracy as the Sharp. I did notice how the .22 pellets needed less wind allowance and that the killing power was more effective although the trajectory was more extreme.

I was so practised with an air rifle that I could predict where a sparrow, thirty-five yards away swaying in the wind at the top of the conifers would be, and send a pellet to meet it when it returned! I have witnessed my brother Alex with his open sighted Webley Excel take careful aim at a rabbit running away and roll it over with a head shot! I’ve with witnesses three times deliberately with open sights and carefully aimed shot knocked Starlings out of the sky flying straight over. It was not a case of firing at everything that goes by till I hit one, but now and again when the right target presents.

We became efficient hunters of rabbit and pigeon taking a serious attitude to rabbit enough to be prepared to crawl on the belly sometimes a hundred yards to get a shot! We used the dykes and hedgerows to creep and crawl along to get close to our prey. I got hold of a second hand Weirach 35 and got on well with it. My brother Quentin went further and bought a new HW 77 under lever which swayed me to get one as they proved to be an exceptional gun. We shot like champions with these guns, finding FT TROPHY or ACUPELL the most reliable and accurate pellets.

Alex went for the HW 80 which was the newest model I think at the time and made a big impression with that too but the gun had recoil, vibration and excessive noise distractions. We discovered Power lock main springs, shorter than the original or OX SPRINGS but much thicker metal which meant the spring when fitted and not cocked was only lightly compressed compared to the conventional so got less stress fatigue but had more power, consistency and life use!

When my HW 77 finally wore out I ended up being persuaded to buy a BSA Superstar as the HW 90 that was due out was having troubles with the new patent gas ram system they had bought from Theoben! Unfortunately the most beautifully sculptured comfortable Super Star had user design issues and trying to remember the sequence, pull the under lever to cock it, slide the port open and load, close the port, return the under lever fasten catch, safety then fire… rather than cock the HW 77 under lever and the port opens auto for you to put pellet in, return the lever and the port closes, safety then fire, led to me firing the Super Star every so often with the port open damaging seals and god knows what so I was pleased when the HW 90 was eventually available.

It proved to be another exceptional gun! I one time had four adult rabbits dead within a foot or so of each other in less than five minutes, for every time I shot one another would hop over to investigate the one kicking on the floor! I now shoot an Air Arms s410 an amazing gun that I’m well skilled with and regularly get acknowledgement from experienced shooters.

Fenlander ®

26/1/2015 LAST SHOOT DAY BEFORE THE COCK DAY!