Recent content by Oldstalker

Happy Easter and Welcome to the forum; you are ( a very little) my senior although I have been stalking more than as long, but I am still learning.

The old British SAS smocks made of ventile; a spun cotton which yarn expands when wet to close the holes in the fabric making it showerproof are as good as I have ever found. I like a zip full length on the front - makes no more noise than an over the head smock, and a hood for occasional use...

Although I have used such trailers for boar on the continent I have not been responsible for building them. I have however been responsible for assembling and placing many ground seats. The trick I was taught was to build the seat first, and then the hut and shooting sill (with associated elbow...

The points above about AGHEs are well made. They are not even distributed in proportion to the deer and the revival of smaller game dealerships would be a good thing - so long as they are policed and enforced - that has been the problem in the past. I well remember talking to rural policemen...

With your .243 I suspect that, on fallow, many of your rounds are not exiting, and if they do exit it is not necessarily in line with the entry. There is also a tendency for lighter bullets to follow ribs or other bones around the carcass and that is why, when UK stalkers had less choice of...

1. In the words of Andrew Holliman vet' at the VI centre in Cumbria - "learn to recognise the variation in the normal". You must do that before you can spot the abnormal. 2 Are you planning to eat the lungs yourself or to feed them to your dog(s)? Or will they be going in the bin. Were they...

I am fairly sure ( a bit grainy) that it's a racoon. They have been around in central Scotland for a very long time - more than fifty years certainly.

I confess I always thought the Animal By-Products Order applies to wild game meat by-products.

Same two first words. Since the First World War, when Death Duties, then Estate Duty, then Capital Transfer Tax and finally in its current form of Inheritance Tax there has been a toll on the ownership of larger estates in Scotland. What were proportionately fairly small subsidies, initially...

I must state a former vested interest in the BDS. I was a member of the Management C'ttee in the late 80s until the charity was incorporated and then a Trustee/Director until 2004. I remain a Life Member. The Society is an animal welfare CHARITY with 3 (briefly summarised) aims; Research...

The key words here are about being airtight; you do NOT want "interstitial condensation" where the temperature gradient across the insulation leads to condensation within the insulation. Believe me (retired Chartered Surveyor - albeit a Land Agent) please? But yes it is worth doing with a damp...

Weaver Warranty

In general terms........ The longer the barrel the more powder will burn behind the bullet before it exits the barrel. This leads to higher velocities - usually around 50 fps per 2 inches of barrel length in medium calibres. There should be less muzzle blast also from a longer barrel for a given...

In the days when I used to run DSC courses I used to get the students to travel to the Cumbrian Veterinary Investigation, as they were then called, centre near Penrith where there was a wonderfully charismatic chief Vet called Andrew Holliman. Almost his first words to the students were,"...

See my post #133 above......... One of the other points in our thinking on the BDS Management Committee and later Board of Directors was that we were anti-state control of deer management. The USA has a quite sophisticated system of state control of culling effort BUT it tends to be lagged by at...