Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2022 i The Field

THE past two years have been difficult for everyone, and grouse moors are no exception. A double whammy of poor breeding seasons and closure of the UK to overseas Guns, compounded by outbreaks of heather beetle, have tested the resolve of most moor owners. But the majority have weathered the storm and are now looking at better times ahead. Nevertheless, half a dozen productive moors in Scotland have been sold in a hot market, driven by a unique set of financial incentives to develop woodland and restore peatland with corporate investment and carbon offset finance. While this is in line with its policy on climate change, the Scottish government is now looking at ways to limit the distortion to the hill land market, which has taken prices out of the…

Premier League 5 AUGUST 2022 – 28 MAY 2023 AUGUST sees the return of the Premier League. Acting, for the first time, as a warm-up for the World Cup in Qatar, one thing you can bet on is that it will be chock-a-block. Game after game after game – and, as a bookie, we are up for the fight. Football is now a sport that is synonymous with betting, but where did this relationship begin? Legally, at least, in 1960, when the Betting and Gaming Act was passed; in reality, however, it was well before that. In 1867, an entrepreneur called Joseph Oller came up with the parimutuel system of betting, where the stakes were pooled and shared out equally among those who had correctly predicted the results. Fixed-odds betting,…

GLASLYN MORFA BYCHAN, PORTHMADOG, GWYNEDD This south-facing coastal home on the Llŷn Peninsula has beach, sea and golf course views. Built of stone, the four-bedroom Arts and Crafts-style property is set within landscaped gardens and grounds of just under 21/2 acres with direct access to Samson’s Bay. Backed by a cliff, the gardens include a terrace down to lawns and al fresco dining space. Agent: Strutt & Parker Tel: 01743 284200 Guide price: £1.75 million NEW COURT FARMHOUSE LLANTILIO PERTHOLEY, ABERGAVENNY, MONMOUTHSHIRE With mountain views in all directions to Sugar Loaf, Skirrid and Blorenge, this farmhouse comes with a craft centre and detached outbuilding grouped around a large concrete yard. The craft centre and the outbuilding have the potential to be converted into holiday lets or a home office. The…

Boss & Co (London’s oldest gunmaker, established in 1812) has recently introduced a remarkable innovation – a rising-bite locking mechanism to be fitted to its side-lever over-and-under guns. A rising bite is a third lock between the top of the barrel and the breech to provide extra security. It represents the pinnacle of the gunmaker’s art as it is extremely difficult to build, which explains why it is found only on the best guns, and even then very rarely. This innovation has been showcased on a trio of 16-bore side-lever over-and-under guns built for a European customer. It is a continuation of the 1812 Edition family of new guns; over-and-under shotguns with two side-levers, one fitted for the left side of the action and one fitted for the right, to…

There are moments inevery salmon fishing season where it is counter-productive to your chances of success to continue flogging the pools hour after hour. In such circumstances, there is the ever-present danger that golf might be proposed as a means to while away the time before the light starts to fade from the day. Now is the time to fish for trout. Trout fishing in Britain, and in particular Scotland, is often overlooked and undervalued. Countries across the globe – the USA, Slovenia, New Zealand, Ireland and many others – cherish their trout fisheries and people travel from all over the world to fish in their waters. Scotland is different; there are thousands of lochs brimming with wild trout that see fishers only occasionally, if at all. The Don and…

Some autumns ago, Iwas looking for golden eagles in the mountains of northern Greece, close to the Bulgarian border, when I came across a local kynigós (hunter), accompanied by two handsome English setters. I admired his dogs and, with the help of my Greek-speaking companion, enjoyed an interesting conversation. I told him how rare English setters are in England, a fact that clearly bemused him. He replied that they were one of the most popular hunting dogs in Greece. He knew a little about shooting in the UK, as he mentioned that he didn’t think there could be much fun in shooting 200 pheasants in a day. Good sport, he assured me, was about hunting with your dog, and the bag was immaterial. As a hunter rather than a shooter,…

THE idea of the ‘squeeze’ pistol was to allow a pistol to be partially concealed in the hand but allowing the barrel to poke out between the first and second fingers. It is not fired in the traditional manner of squeezing a trigger, but by being gripped in the palm of the hand and then by tightening the fist, squeezing a bar, or trigger, at the back of the weapon. As a consequence, this style of pistol is known as a ‘palm pistol’ or ‘squeeze pistol’. The best-known example of a palm pistol is that designed and patented by Frenchman Jacques Edmond Turbiaux, who was working in Paris from 1880 till 1895 and who patented the design in June 1882 in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and England and subsequently in…

THE planning before a trip north is usually quite simple; west coast or east coast. The former tends to play Tebay Services as a trump card, a beacon of lesser awfulness in the panoply of motorway services, followed by a stopover at the big Scottish hotel on the way up. The Borders and the east coast have until now lacked some hotel star power, but SCHLOSS Roxburghe (the hotel was taken over by 12.18, an investment management company, from the Duke of Roxburghe in 2018) has always marked itself as a comfortable, sporting place to stay with a decent golf course. However, after extensive renovation and in its new guise as a schloss, it will make the east coast/west coast choice something of a no-brainer. Schloss is the German word…

DACIA could be called the Škoda of our time; it’s an unfashionable eastern European manufacturer that has been taken under the wing of a western European giant (in this case Renault) and has thrived. Since its takeover in 1999, it has produced a stream of great-value models, most of them sounding like ice lollies of the 1970s. The new Jogger (related to the Sandero and the Logan – wasn’t that raspberry flavour?) is a seven-seat estate/‘compact MPV’ that starts at a jaw-dropping £15,000. And it achieves that price despite dropping the ruthless no-frills policy that early Dacias adopted – remember the Duster with wind-up windows, no radio and no air conditioning? The Jogger comes with what’s needed, but no more. But first things first: it may claim to be a…

Times and attitudesmay be changing, but female prowess in the field is still prone to prompt the odd eyebrow raise, or a badly disguised nod of surprise from an impressed onlooker. When former gillie Lynn Woodward Davies greeted guests on the Wye, they were often a little taken aback to find a woman at the helm; those we spoke to for our female syndicates piece recount the delicious satisfaction of boys’ jaws dropping as they stopped otherwise missed teal in their flight, and the lady Masters we meet remind us that it’s hard graft not gender that matters when following hounds. These are the women who have redefined the meaning of a ‘girls’ day out’, here to inspire us to dust off our breeches, gun or rod and to make…

“There’s something abouta woman with the gumption to pick up a gun that makes her good company,” says Elizabeth Cook, who belongs to the East of England Women’s Social Shooting, one of a seemingly small number of all-female game-shooting syndicates within the UK. Her declaration is music to the ears of those frustrated by the assumption that a ‘girls’ day out’ must involve a spa. There are plenty of ladies who would rather be in a shoot room than a steam room, plastering mud on their gumboots rather than faces and talking of ‘numbers of shots’ in terms of cartridges fired rather than lemongrass and seaweed concoctions swallowed. While Cook’s is “a loose virtual collective – rather than a solid block where the same people shoot in the same place,…

An initiative launched in response to health and well-being concerns within the gamekeeping community, is celebrating its fourth year in operation. Raise the Game was launched in summer 2018 and brings together key organisations within the fieldsports sector to work with the Gamekeepers’ Welfare Trust (GWT). A key success from Raise the Game is the STAG course, which looks at leadership, career pathways, resilience and coping strategies. The former Royal Marines-turned-trainers drew on their experiences to address common themes between the two professions, including family sacrifice, poor weather, working in small teams and more. A second course, HIND, was developed for gamekeepers’ wives and partners. The GWT recognises gamekeeping professions are livelihoods that shape the lifestyle of the whole family, and its support is for everyone. “We’ve made great strides…

Britain has around 75%of Europe’s remaining heather moorland, a precious and fragile landscape of which roughly 2.5 million acres is in Scotland, with 1.3 million acres in England and Wales. Windswept and bleak in the winter, moors become a blazing carpet of purple as far as the eye can see in summer, when heather, Calluna vulgaris, comes into bloom. This stunning display lasts from late July, through August and September before gradually dying back, as the delicate flowers wilt in early October. Home to red grouse, Britain’s hardiest bird, which can survive even the harshest winter feeding on the tips and seeds of heather plants, the moorland vista we have today is renowned worldwide for its beauty and rarity. And it is the creation of careful management for grouse shooting…

“Every Connie I’ve had has taken to hunting like a duck to water” Take the wild west coastof Ireland, add the sturdy ponies of Viking invaders then introduce elegant Andalusian horses, survivors of the luckless Spanish Armada that was dashed against this rocky shoreline, and you’ll have the Connemara pony. It’s a highly romantic backstory for a breed that inspires lifelong devotion. Eye-catching, strong, athletic and intelligent, the Connemara balances looks with temperament, stamina and sporting ability in a compact but hugely versatile package. Today, recognition of those attributes has led to hot demand, with prices soaring among an increasingly international clientele, whose ponies compete at a high level in disciplines as varied as dressage, showjumping and carriage driving. Many are the hunting enthusiasts who have admired – and perhaps…

Until the middle of the19th century, the remoteness of Scotland from England was keenly felt by the hardy few who braved the arduous, expensive and often hazardous journey north by stagecoach in the pursuit of their sport. At this time, for most, a day’s sport was largely limited to what could be found on the doorstep or within reasonable hacking distance from home, and it wasn’t until the 1830s that the dawn of the railway age ushered in a new era of comfort, speed and convenience which had never before been possible. An extensive railway network sprung up almost overnight and by the 1860s, trains regularly travelled at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. It seemed the possibilities for travel were suddenly limitless. The sporting community embraced this…

THIS month’s test focuses on a pair of Smith & Torok 28-bore side-by-side sidelocks. Weighing a fraction under 6lb each, they are 30in self-opening guns based on the Purdey system made by Alex Torok, whose delightful .410 double we reviewed in the November 2021 issue. It would be hard to better the .410, one of the best small-bores we have yet reviewed in The Field, but first impressions of the 28-bores are nevertheless good; their form and tasteful decoration are immediately pleasing. The action bars – which have been filed up by hand from forgings – are slim and rounded. They have traditional bonemeal colour case-hardening by Ray St Ledger (also seen on the fore-end iron). Eight pins are visible on each lock (some with tops hot blued, others polished)…

The first grouse of the season is one of the ingredients I am most excited to welcome into the kitchen. Its small, plump, perfect little body, the rich, dark, dense meat and its utterly unique wild herbaceous aroma sets my heart racing and mind spinning in anticipation of the feast to come. A rare treat for the majority of us, grouse is most often cooked and served in the traditional manner with game chips and bread sauce, which, of course, is delicious. Due to the meat’s rather bold and complex flavour, however, I also think it works brilliantly with the abundant fresher, fruitier late-summer crops now ready for harvesting. My recipes this month, pairing grouse with creamy courgettes and sour lemon, fruity juicy tomatoes and spicy smoked sweetcorn, are a…

Summer made a spectacular entrance at the Royal Berkshire Shooting School’s annual Ladies Cup: manicured lawns, blue skies, with rhubarb and raspberry gin cocktails from Berkshire Botanicals flowing once shooting had finished. Fifty ladies descended to vie for the top spots, with Chelsea King missing just three birds to finish on 77 and take home 500 Gamebore cartridges, Le Chameau wellies and a £300 Schöffel voucher as the winner of the Serious Shots section, nudging last year’s winner, Amy Easeman, into second place. Jenna Peaty was the winner of the Intermediate Shots, with Holly Ringrow finishing on 40 to take the Novice section. Ladies were challenged by an interesting variety of stands, from high pheasant to partridge and the much-maligned rabbit. On the fast and furious grouse stand, which forms…

Say the words ‘bespokegunmaking’ and the image that’s conjured is of a high-end luxury sidelock, game scene engraved, with the client’s favourite Fido on the underside. Nothing unusual there, except today the talent employed to engrave these guns is more often female than ever before. In the past, female engravers were relatively rare and often the daughters of established male engravers, such as Alison Hunt, daughter of Ken Hunt, in England, or Francesca Fracassi, daughter of Firmo Fracassi, in Italy. Lately, rock star female engravers have discovered new platforms to express themselves. The demand for ‘functional artwork’ is opening doors for them as never before. Kirsty Smith at Holland & Holland (H&H), Frédérique Lépinois for Westley Richards, Cécile Flohimont with Purdey and Saija Koskialho at Rigby have all made exciting…

No one is too good to bea Master of foxhounds, if he is gifted with the average endowment of tact, administrative talent, power of penetrating character and all other attributes that form the essential equipment of a successful public man.” So wrote Richard Verney, 19th Baron Willoughby de Broke, in his 1921 book Hunting the Fox. But what about the successful public woman? In 2006, 26% of Masters of foxhounds were women. Today, it’s about 38% and rising. Indeed, as I began interviewing ‘lady Masters’ for this feature, each threw more names at me: “You must speak to so-and-so.” This is encouraging, but there is still more work to be done, says Countess (Susie) Goess-Saurau, one of the Vale of the White Horse Hunt’s three female Masters. “The hunting hierarchy,…

When Lynn Woodward Davies first considered working as a gillie on the River Wye in the 1980s, her father said, “You can’t do it!” – despite him having worked as a gamekeeper and a gillie himself. But having grown up helping him, she knew she could. “I was invited for an interview, and was asked lots of ridiculous questions, such as ‘Do you like worms?’ and ‘What are you going to do if you want to pee?’” Even so, she got the job. “Some people did look horrified when I’d step out and say ‘Good morning, Sir’. The look on their face! But at the end of the day they would quite often say to the owner, ‘I’ve had one of the best days I’ve ever had.’ And if they…

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IT’S been a while since I attended one, but local agricultural shows used to be about cows with rosettes and vintage tractors, not speeches warning of a looming food crisis. “We don’t know what a food crisis is going to look like or what shape it might take. But we know that food doesn’t come out of thin air and it’s a hard thing to produce. Now we have the perfect storm of global production problems and political crisis,” said Sussex farmer David Exwood, vice-president of the NFU, speaking at the Royal Bath & West Show. “The future of farming is all about having a great environment alongside food production; it isn’t one or the other, it’s got to be both. We have to achieve clean water and air, increase…

The grouse is one of themost challenging quarry species to shoot. They vary from a 70-yard straight driven bird from a cliff face in the Derbyshire peaks to a covey of 30 swirling through the butts 20ft below you on a Scottish hillside. The Holy Grail is to shoot two birds in front, change guns and then shoot two behind out of the pack. But which shots do you need to master to take on the king of gamebirds successfully? THE STRAIGHT INCOMING GROUSE (above) This is often a bogey target for many grouse Shots, and one I have scratched many times. It is a bird that we rarely see in any other form of shooting, making it a challenge. First, establish your ranges to prevent shooting at the bird…

Any sporting sort knowswhat a challenge it is to undertake a proper Macnab, by which we mean the modern classic iteration, inspired by John Buchan and tweaked for the modern sportsman in the pages of The Field. That is, to catch a salmon, shoot a stag and finish with a brace of grouse, all taken between dawn and dusk, in one day. It requires skill, planning, dedication and that most elusive sporting element: luck. We are delighted to launch The Field’s Macnab Challenge 2022 in association with Blaser and Sentinel Aviation, a combination of partners who will not only fit you out with rifle, shotgun and the right kit, but can also whisk you north (or anywhere else, for that matter) in style. The Macnab is an undertaking that channels…

Nothing says Britain quite like the scent of freshly cut grass. And in a round-about way, that’s how lawnmower racing began – although the sport has very little to do with mowing or lawns. The germination of this novel motorsport began 49 years ago in a West Sussex pub, the Cricketers Arms in Wisborough Green. An Irishman named Jim Gavin was just back from an endurance rally in the Sahara and bemoaning the “horrendous cost” of any form of motorsport. As the pints flowed, Gavin and his friends brainstormed a new initiative, something that would be free of cash prizes, sponsorship and commercialism. They came up with combine harvester racing – but as there were only three in the county and the farmers refused to let them use them, they…

WAR in Ukraine, perhaps spilling beyond those borders. Cost of living crisis. Looming global famine. Fuel and heating bills going through the roof. And yet the art market marches gaily on, impervious, it seems, to economic headwinds (hurricanes more like). As I sat down to type these opening words, I first checked my emails and saw that overnight, Christie’s New York was trumpeting the staggering results of its 9 June handbags sale. That sale, of course, had an arty name – ‘Handbags Online: the New York Edit’ – otherwise what would differentiate what are in essence astonishingly expensive second-hand handbags from a lucky find at the local charity shop? The auction resulted in 96% of the 194 lots being sold, at 123% over low estimate, bringing in a jaw-dropping $3,299,562.…

WHILE silver-coloured labradors may now be fashionable, I have a sneaking feeling that it will be quite some time before we see the first one in the shooting field. It has taken decades for chocolate (liver) labradors to become acceptable, though even now there remains a marked colour bias against them. If you want a working labrador, then the choice is simple: either black or yellow. However, it’s not quite as straightforward as that, as yellow covers a rich palette of colours, from a pale cream that is almost white (popular for pets) to dark fox-red, an increasingly fashionable colour for shooting dogs. The history of these yellow dogs is an interesting one: the first to be recognised was a dog called Ben of Hyde, bred by Major Radcliffe in…

Since powder and shot were first used by our ancestors in the pursuit of various kinds of fowl, an evergreen topic for gunroom gossips has been the relative merits, as sporting birds, of grouse, pheasants and partridges. That the argument can have no end is obvious, but we shall probably continue to expend our own breath, and the whisky of our several hosts, in more or less vain comparisons of these three species until there is no game – or, perhaps, no whisky – left. It is principally for this reason that I have attempted an analysis of some of the main difficulties, as they appear to me, connected with the shooting of driven grouse. For the setting in which we are wont to encounter that noble bird is so…

Spring/Summer Autumn/Winter…

KRIEGHOFF SIDEBAR Gunmakers have long created especially finished guns to promote their brands. Few, if any, have managed this on an annual basis. Since the late 1990s, however, Krieghoff, based in Ulm, Germany, has consistently unveiled a Gun of the Year, frequently featuring historic or geographic themes. In 2020, Krieghoff chose Austria-based Chantal Schaschl and her unique interpretation of the Galápagos Islands’ flora and fauna for this singular honour. Two years later, this distinction went to another woman engraver, this time Jana Schilling from Germany, who employed a game scene theme. Guns of the Year have now become desirable collectibles. “There are many lady engravers who engrave for Krieghoff; Annemarie Mack, Alexandra Feodorow, Maxi Roth and Katy Mau,” says Alan Rhone, who imports the brand into the UK. “One we…

For those who haven’tgrown up with a rod in hand, when the moment arrives it can be a remarkable revelation. But casting about for how to begin can be difficult. Reading The Compleat Angler cover to cover and then heading to the nearest river is probably not the most effective option. A day at the Northern Fishing School, housed on the Swinton Estate in Yorkshire, most definitely is. Founded by keen fisher Marina Gibson in 2019, the school has become a go-to-destination for aspiring anglers from all walks of life. Between June and October last year, more than 400 beginners were taught at Swinton by Gibson and her team of experienced instructors. There are monthly kids’ days, and Gibson has also been instrumental in setting up the Cancer and Pisces…

“Don’t panic if you get bored, or have a row, or feel claustrophobic or homesick,” wrote Jilly Cooper in her 1969 guide How to Stay Married. “These are all part of growing-together pains. They won’t establish a behaviour pattern for the next 50 years. A vital honeymoon ploy is to go somewhere where there is plenty to do.” It was sage advice from the queen of the bonkbuster – who’d only then been married herself for eight years – and is something Fieldy newlyweds should heed. When the headache of harvest logistics and avoiding missing the best sporting days have to be navigated, lying beachside hardly seems worth the effort. For the sporting sort, action calls. And when good sport is on offer, don’t expect any honeymoon concessions: when the…