AND SO IT BEGINS…
The first day of the season is always special as Nick Ridley
makes a good start on an early partridge and duck day
Idon’t know about anyone else but as September gets closer I start to get very restless. Normally I have a few days booked on a local flightpond, but this year due to the dry weather there was very little water and the chance of bagging a few mallard looked unlikely. A couple of the bigger partridge shoots locally had postponed their opening days due to the wheat not being cut in time, so I really was feeling a bit frustrated especially as I had not long got back from a rabbiting trip in Yorkshire and the dogs had performed really well.
My regular shoots do not start until the middle of October so it looked as though I was going to have to be patient and wait a few more weeks. But a couple of evenings ago I got a phone call asking if I could pick-up on an early partridge and duck day, I thought about it for a millisecond and quickly said “yes!”.
Water work
The shoot is quite informal and they were short of dogs, so I decided it would be a good opportunity to give the two cockers, Harry and Fuss, a good work out. As I loaded them into the car it suddenly dawned on me that I really hadn’t done much water work with either of them and I hoped that there wouldn’t be too many ducks shot over the ponds. I knew Fuss was quite good and Harry was fine if he got a mark on a shot bird, but he would struggle if it was a blind retrieve.
The first day of the season is always special and it was great to catch up with the latest countryside gossip and chat about cover-crops, the prospects for the forthcoming pheasant season and, inevitably, the conversation always revolves around the trials and tribulations of training gundogs. It was really nice to see a few new dogs although you could see that their owners were getting a little stressed, and to be honest my heart rate had increased. Nothing can really prepare the dogs for a proper shoot day and I am sure their adrenaline levels increase just as much as my blood pressure. As we walked to the first duck drive I kept the dogs on their leads, that way I knew exactly where they were and a silent approach was the order of the day. The pond was over the opposite side of a hedge and I had been asked to pick-up along the edge of a stubble field.
I had a couple of Guns positioned out in front of me and neither of them had dogs so I was hopeful we would get some work.
First drive
I could hear the crack of the beaters’ flags and so I slipped the leads off