(I am nearly 87 and have cancer so don't go telling me I am an idle git for using my 40-year-old Land Rover as a high seat).
Anyway, last Saturday I got into position by a Suffolk footpath on fairly open farm land, fields the size of airports and flat as a pancake, and, whilst standing up in the roof hatch started to scan with the thermal.
The time was five past five am and, although deer shooting legal timewise, the light was only just coming up.
No deer in sight but there were two squarish white blobs way over the far side of the next field. These were also on a footpath and about one third of a mile away.
My first thought was that the farmer, or one of his workers, had dumped something out there.
Scanning around and around through 360 degrees, you can't do that in a normal high seat very often, I kept passing over these two squarish white blobs.
Then, on one pass, one of the blobs moved a bit. This caught my attention, could they be two deer after all? Maybe muntjac or CWD having a kip? I was tempted to have a shufty through the scope but refrained and got my binos out.
Thank the gods that I did because it turned out to be two people, both women I think, sitting on two folding chairs, wrapped up in blankets and with balaclavas and woolly hats, armed with flasks etc, and staring at the soon-to-be rising sun. It was now ten past five am and just 2 degrees centigrade with a fairly brisk wind, although they were in the lee of a substantial hedge.
They stayed there for the next hour or more and apart from fidgeting with the blankets in the freshening wind, never moved a muscle.
In front of them was a vast expanse of winter wheat, then a hedge, then another similar field. It was not much above freezing with an increasing wind and the skies were clear blue after it got light. Apart from the sun, nothing else was moving, so maybe sunrise was why they were there. They certainly weren't studying the wildlife because, apart from a couple of hares, there wasn't any.
This area is remote Suffolk farmland. Acres and acres of it. The position of the 'picnickers' was remote in the extreme. The footpath is hardly ever used and doesn't really go anywhere.
Just before six thirty a local bloke came striding along the path that I was parked by. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, and he complained that the munties were ravaging his garden, again, and he walked off in the direction of the two white blobs. I did ask him to give the blobs my regards.
Lesson is that we must never point a rifle, as I very nearly did, at an unidentified white blob. Binoculars still have their uses.
Anyway, last Saturday I got into position by a Suffolk footpath on fairly open farm land, fields the size of airports and flat as a pancake, and, whilst standing up in the roof hatch started to scan with the thermal.
The time was five past five am and, although deer shooting legal timewise, the light was only just coming up.
No deer in sight but there were two squarish white blobs way over the far side of the next field. These were also on a footpath and about one third of a mile away.
My first thought was that the farmer, or one of his workers, had dumped something out there.
Scanning around and around through 360 degrees, you can't do that in a normal high seat very often, I kept passing over these two squarish white blobs.
Then, on one pass, one of the blobs moved a bit. This caught my attention, could they be two deer after all? Maybe muntjac or CWD having a kip? I was tempted to have a shufty through the scope but refrained and got my binos out.
Thank the gods that I did because it turned out to be two people, both women I think, sitting on two folding chairs, wrapped up in blankets and with balaclavas and woolly hats, armed with flasks etc, and staring at the soon-to-be rising sun. It was now ten past five am and just 2 degrees centigrade with a fairly brisk wind, although they were in the lee of a substantial hedge.
They stayed there for the next hour or more and apart from fidgeting with the blankets in the freshening wind, never moved a muscle.
In front of them was a vast expanse of winter wheat, then a hedge, then another similar field. It was not much above freezing with an increasing wind and the skies were clear blue after it got light. Apart from the sun, nothing else was moving, so maybe sunrise was why they were there. They certainly weren't studying the wildlife because, apart from a couple of hares, there wasn't any.
This area is remote Suffolk farmland. Acres and acres of it. The position of the 'picnickers' was remote in the extreme. The footpath is hardly ever used and doesn't really go anywhere.
Just before six thirty a local bloke came striding along the path that I was parked by. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, and he complained that the munties were ravaging his garden, again, and he walked off in the direction of the two white blobs. I did ask him to give the blobs my regards.
Lesson is that we must never point a rifle, as I very nearly did, at an unidentified white blob. Binoculars still have their uses.
