A Gardiner of earthly delights

Bill Harriman looks at what £500 could have bought you at a recent auction in Scotland

The Editor’s bounty is unlimited. Yet again he has favoured me with a virtual £500 for me to buy something at auction. By the time you have deducted the auctioneer’s premium, this leaves me with about £350. This time I have looked at Gavin Gardiner’s most recent sale, held last month at Gleneagles. The prices quoted are the hammer price only.

No slip ups

You can never have too many gunslips to protect your guns. In choosing a slip, I go for leather as it wipes down easily. Where I shoot near Shrewsbury is home to some of the most glutinous mud known to man. It was so bad that I had to throw away a fabric gunslip that had become plastered with half of Shropshire after last season. Had I invested £240, I might have had six slips, two of them made from ostrich skin to boot.

For those of you unfamiliar with such exotic materials, ostrich skin has numerous small, raised pores that held the feathers. Its knobbly surface is very attractive. It is always a good idea to keep a spare slip in your boot and, in any case, nice slips always make welcome presents.

Record keeper

It is terribly infra dig to brag about how many birds we had in the last drive. That said, it is personally very satisfying to keep a tally of what you have shot during the day. A note in a diary or game book makes for very satisfying reading in future years.

The best way of doing this is to use a Norfolk liar game counter. Antique ones are ruinously expensive so a modern copy by legendary riflemakers John Rigby for £120 is real value for money. This one has dials for pheasants, partridges, hares and rabbits and comes in a nice leather case. I think the name is rather pejorative; I know of no evidence to suggest people from East Anglia are any more mendacious than others in this sceptr’d isle. In the spirit of presenting regional balance, I shall henceforth refer to any such device used in Wales as a “Flintshire fibber”.

Ingenious gadgets

Nobody wants a day’s sport ruined because they have a stuck case that won’t eject. An extractor is something SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE • 47

gun rack made by J & R Guram made £300

A traditional Norfolk liar made by John Rigby

Leather and ostrich-skin gunslips. Left: This