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Jarvis

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Everything posted by Jarvis

  1. To respond to your illiterate comment, we do have a use for them. At no stage in my post have I said birds are going to waste on my shoot, I was merely asking the situation around the country and if people are having to diversify...
  2. The rats we need to sort out are by streams/ ditches and ponds. All nice and in the open though so stand back and let the terriers have some fun! Our cover crops were shocking this year as well, I think we went nearly 2 months without any rain.
  3. Sounds like a good day was had still. We had a good beaters day with a bag of 68 which could have been more but quite a few older chaps only shoot on beaters day so a lot got past them, but the main thing is they enjoyed it! We finished the season on 45% which I was happy with. Had a walk up day with a couple of mates on the 1st and shot 33 pheasant a rat and 5 squirrels, was a real good laugh. I think I prefer walked up days to big formal shoot days. Now we’re onto roost shooting and getting stuck into a bit of ratting!
  4. A farmer I know does the same thing but with a bell on the end of the string into his bedroom. He shot 60 in two years just doing that!
  5. Four vixens and two dogs so far. So that’s a good few less cubs to be worrying about!
  6. I’ve lost count the amount of times I go up to the shoot I keeper to look for a deer and plans soon change because I end up seeing a fox and the freezer ends up staying empty for another day!
  7. If it was like the old days and you got money for the skins the amount of foxes here I could quit the day job!
  8. They bloody are all big! Had these two last night up there. The top one is a vixen and it was much bigger built than the dog.
  9. I love it out at night on the foxes, and doing it in the day is a no go as the land is completely surrounded by a forest which is open to the public so the last thing I want to be doing is having people blasting away in the day and get townie do gooders walking their dogs sticking their oar in thinking they know the law!
  10. That was only 3 fields as well, the one I was parked in and the two I could see into with the thermal! Lots more to cover yet!! I lI’ve seeing foxes about, its a great sight, (as long as they aren’t at the shoot I do where I want them all taken care of) but where I live the numbers that are here is crazy! They need getting on top of.
  11. Had my first night out at last after waiting about 5 months to get the ground cleared where I live to control the fox numbers for my mate who rents the land to graze his sheep and he lost a lot of lambs last year. To say it’s crawling with foxes is an understatement! I pulled up and straight away there was a fox wandering up behind me. Boom after 2 minutes first fox down! Put rabbit distress on the caller and had two running in. the first was eighty yards, the second was 200, both dropped on the spot. Turned the caller off. Gave it 10 minutes and I saw another two in the distance. Turned
  12. Had a nice job in a large garden on Saturday. Three separate warrens, one on a steep back, the others in a sparse hedge so nice and easy to put the long nets round and let the ferrets and dog do all the running around! Started at 7:30 we were finished and tidied away by 12:00 and accounted for 11 heathy rabbits. Only one 2ft dig and all the rest bolted lovely. A very enjoyable morning and even nicer when your getting paid!
  13. It’s all down to preference and what you like mate, everyone is different. My mate has a tikka he loves it and it’s very accurate but I don’t like the feel of them. My .243 is a browning X bolt under £1000 band new with a S&B 8x56 on the top, very accurate and I love it. I shoot muntjac and roe, If I was shooting bigger deer species on a regular basis I would go for a bigger calibre. As BH says the .243 is a great all rounder and I use it for day time foxing and for blasting magpies and crowd but if shooting bigger deer I think I would get a .308 Have fun gun shopping!!
  14. Best thing to do is don’t rush and just because you think they have masters something don’t stop doing it. Keep constantly going over the basics... my cocker is 3 now and she is still definitely learning.
  15. I’ve got mine in an orchard so it’s nice and easy. Also once you’ve mastered heel, sit, stay, recall etc a good way I found with my cocker to get her steady and used to birds was dogging in. It’s easy for me because I keeper a shoot but if you know a keeper see if you can help him out to get him steady to see birds regular but keeping him steady and close to you. The worst thing for a young dog is to try work and train them and not have birds or scent to flush / see and they will end up getting fustrated.
  16. I introduced all the pups I’ve had to chickens from a real young age. The more often they see them the quicker they get used to them and know to ignore flapping things with feathers till you train them otherwise to retrieve and it flush feathered game. Get them at first to walk round them on a lead then to heel, then sit stay and get them to run back through them to you. it’s always worked for me! You can always tell what dogs on shoot days never see birds unless out on a shoot as they are the ones who go deaf to a stop whistle because seeing so many birds is far too exciting.
  17. That’s the problem a lot of people don’t want the work of plucking etc themselves, they’d rather go into Aldi and buy a chicken for £2.50 all done. With big bird days getting more and more popular it just swamps the dwindling market!
  18. Just wondering the situation around the country with shot game and if game dealers are taking it or are you having to pay them to take the birds. The biggest game dealer near us in Northamptonshire retired the other year and nobody has filled the void. Talks on shoot days now sound like most now have to pay the dealers to take them. We are only a small shoot, shooting 100-120 birds every other week through the season so we are managing to share our birds between guns and beater and the rest get made into sausages and eaten/ sold at the next shoot. What are other shoots doing if the dealers ar
  19. I have used the 40s in the past and use the 42s now. I havent noticed any real differences between them, it didn’t even change my zero which was a bonus, I’m out on the rabbits now since the start of the shoot season as nobody local to us will take our pheasant, so I have a little system going with my mate who’s a butcher. I get him rabbits for his shop and he makes our pheasants into sausages which we can sell on to beaters/ guns and also eat at 11’s. Everyone’s a winner, well except for the pheasants and the rabbits! But I couldn’t bare it if the birds were going to waste.
  20. Oh what a bugger! they are great little trucks! Got this one off eBay with No MOT for £350 ? it stays at the shoot for feeding and for me to use shooting. Made some adjustments to a pallet and ratchet strapped it to the roof to shoot from! It the perfect tool for the job! And the best thing is the heater works!
  21. Went up the shoot Wednesday night, saw 2 Charlie’s but couldn’t get on either of them. Frustrated I thought I’ll try again on Friday (having to take the Missus out for dinner on Thursday to keep in her good books!!) got to the shoot nice and early yesterday at about 6:00, as I was early I thought before I go to where I saw the two at 9:30 I’ll try another spot. Loaded the rifle up and realised I only had 4 bullets with me! Oh bugger, Got parked up and started scanning with the XQ50F, twenty minutes passed and I had two foxes coming in behind me. I got into the bonnet of the jimny and dropped t
  22. Good work mate. I got these two the other week lurking around my chickens. Both dogs, the top one is a good size dog, the bottom one was an absolute monster!!!
  23. I would say that’s poor training by the owner not the dogs fault! No reason why any gun dog breed can’t do both to a decent level or at least like you say (on a small syndicate) My cocker does both and many of my mates dogs do, however I get you point I do see more bad ones than good ones but it’s not the dogs fault. Choose a breed, integrate it slow, no rush. Start with beating for a season or so with dummy training as well and once the dogs steady introduce picking up game later. Don’t try do it all at once. People expect too much too quick and that’s the problem.
  24. Funny you should post this. We had one shot on our shoot yesterday and a few of the guns were discussing it. The first one I ever saw was last season on our shoot so I looked into it. It’s called gynandromorph and it’s where the bird possesses male and female genes. It doesn’t actually mean they have reproductive issues they normally only have the reproductive organs of entirely male or female but just the appearance of both. i may be wrong but that’s what I read up anyway.
  25. At 110 yards with a .243 mate I doubt it would have still be alive Haha! But I know what you mean I like to find them too.
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