Indulge yourself...

Moonraker68

Well-Known Member
Something to lift your spirits on a grey Sunday in January:-

We are fortunate enough to live in paradise as far as country sports are concerned; the UK is arguably THE destination for driven game, deer stalking & fishing (whether game or coarse). I suspect most SD members have either previously used (or still use) a shotgun, rimfire rifle or a fishing rod in addition to a stalking rifle.

What is the single sporting memory that will sustain you during old age?
 
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Something to lift your spirits on a grey Sunday in January:-

We are fortunate enough to live in paradise as far as country sports are concerned; the UK is arguably THE destination for driven game, deer stalking & fishing (whether game or coarse). I suspect most SD members have either previously used (or still use) a shotgun, rimfire rifle or a fishing rod in addition to a stalking rifle.

What is the single sporting memory that will sustain you during old age?
Hi Rupert
Sharon Oliver down by the long jump sand pit when i was at school now she was a sport or shooting a wild boar with an SLR for a troop barbeque while on exercise in germany in the mid 70s
Geordie
 
my achievement was to save a penalty at wembley and we won the fa cup .td
 
training birds of prey to catch quarry ,lamping with my first lurcher , and shooting my first roe :D
 
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Left and right at woodcock when roughshooting with my dad,anytime I successfully get a wounded deer with my dog/dogs
 
For me it's always the firsts. My first air rifle, my first rabbit, first deer, first roe buck first British deer.The only notable bird shooting moment was getting a pigeon with one barrel on my shotgun and then seeing another one drop out of the sky about 40 yards behind it. Complete fluke.
 
So many,but,one that sticks with me is when I was given my first knife,it was a folding pocket knife and I would of been about 5 yrs old.....a coming of age so to speak.

M
 
For me it was watching an otter eat crayfish while fly fishing.

That was on the Suir in Ireland, so maybe it doesn't count.

This is a good thread.
 
My first 30lb carp back in the 80's is special to me, and a pink-foot goose from the north bank of the Tay. Not my first goose but it was in Scotland on a wild November morning and a great retrieve for the dog too - never forget them
 
Holding my lurcher,with one hand around her neck and the other under her chest.
While a hare was runing straight at us, her heart was beating so fast i thought if was going to explode.
Happy care free days.
 
My first red stag was a bit of a non-event; I was staying on Islay and my one day's stalking was hampered by patchy mist. We called it a day and were heading back, when the stalker crept upto a small brow and spotted a single stag lying in the heather on the other side of a small glen. A short crawl to the firing point and that was it.

Two years later, I booked another single day. This time with Jimmy Tod at Tarvie in Perthshire; the estate is owned by the Colman family, and all the houses are painted mustard yellow. We spotted a small group of stags early on, but it took us about 2 hours to stalk into them over heather and rock. They were lying down, watching in every direction, and we had to wait for another 30 minutes before they got up and a shot presented itself. I've got a nice 11 eleven pointer skull mount to remind me of the day.
 
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I had a superb spaniel who won second place in the pick-up at Tatton Park Game Fair and then her daughter won second place in the pick-up at the first Harewood Game fair a few years later. Wonderful dogs!!!! Wonderful memories.



You can drive a horse to water but a pencil must be lead.
 
We are very very lucky in the UK. Excellent numbers of most of our quarry species and very long seasons compared to many other countries. Speaking to one of my collegues yesterday here in Norway and he spent many fruitless trips trying to get the one Roe he was allowed this winter, the season ended on the 23rd December and he still did not get his beast. There is alot of public land but they can also lease private land, the difference is they have a very limited cull they are allowed to take. Even on the leased land, they 'buy' three or four Roe or a couple of Reds and thats all they can take. Well thats how I understand it. They seem to have a heck of alot of land to go at, getting somewhere to shoot is easy, getting something to shoot at is difficult, kind of the opposite to what we generally have here.

As for memories, it is all about firsts, and also about screw ups! Had the best goose flight of my life just before Christmas on the Norfolk coast, skein and skein over my head, 30 to 40 yards up, and my head went, I could'nt hit them! I think the score was about 14 empties for a single pink!, I actually put (threw) the gun down and photographed the rest of the flight. Still trying to forget about it now.....
 
Walked up partridge many years ago, getting a right and left at them. My Springer retrieved both to hand, then went out and picked another, I had not seen drop. A right left and centre, I think.
 
Waking up any morning I am going out shooting or fishing, and thinking "here we go again" :)

I agree that we are lucky here in the UK. I have a pal who is a keeper in Germany. The green party have gained a majority and you won't believe the amount of grief and bad publicity he has to put up with. Non-native species such as fallow are not allowed. The local paper ran a story about there being fallow on the estate and how cruel it is that they were being culled. My mate didn't really want them wiping out but when the police saw the article they warned him that unless he does so, they will send their team in to do it! Cause and effect eh?
 
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