Thin times, fat fowl

As temperatures plummet and rivers freeze solid, fowlers must use their discretion — if the birds are in good order make the most of it, says Petrel

You just can’t win, can you? Any wildfowler might be forgiven for asking this question during recent weeks. For months during the autumn and well into winter, he has been brainwashed with the notion that his sport is not worthy of the name until hard weather makes it so uncomfortable for him that he can eventually take advantage of conditions that make the ducks and geese easier to approach and therefore collect a reasonable bag.

For weeks and weeks, he waits and waits for just the right conditions and then, all of a sudden, when that time comes, he is confronted with a national figure who tells him on the television or wireless that now he should hold fire, for the birds are so poor that they are not worth eating and so tame that the thrill of outwitting these wildfowl — the two factors that justify entirely the sport of wildfowling — are missing.

As a result of these entreaties, the public tends to brand anyone who carries a gun and a fistful of ducks at such a time as an outcast, whereas they make no noise at all about the number of surface-feeding ducks displayed for sale in the markets of those towns to which some flightpond operators are sending them at a fat profit because they are shooting more than they can give away.

Since the onset of the big freeze, for which so many of us have waited for so many seasons, my companions and I have shot more mallard and teal than we have achieved since the hard weather of six seasons ago. Bags have comprised double figures on several occasions. Elsewhere, friends have killed 40 and 50 ducks a day without suffering a pang of conscience, and no wonder, in the light of findings that have not supported the dramatic claims of those that are so quick to call a halt to sport before it has even begun.

Hordes

Birds have been in remarkably good condition for the time of year. Pigeons hang in great grey bunches in the butchers’ shops of Berkshire. Never mind that the man who shot them was only paid 3d apiece. None of them is thin; no more than any of the 20 that I shot on kale a fortnight ago before I realised that I could not afford to repel on my own the raiding hordes without some sort of subsidy from the farmer.

Packed with acorns or greenstuff, they were fat enough to command a wholesale price more in keeping with the 2s still being asked for them on the retail hook, though they were not offered for sale and would not have earned more than a few pence.

This morning a tattered pochard specimen arrived in this office in thin condition. A fortnight ago, a member of our invading party shot an old

whitefront in Ireland on which, as he put it, “you could strike a match”.

The pochard’s broken wing and blown-away head had made me think that here we had a wounded bird despatched on the water after who knows how long, while the goose was plainly an oldie that would never get fat again — and had not kept condition in spite of the favourable environment afforded it since its arrival in the balmy southern counties last October. Neither was a typical example in a hard winter that has not been notable for the poor quality of its birds.

I shall undoubtedly by now have been branded by some a renegade or traitor to the wildfowling cause for pressing this point when we have already been asked to use our discretion about shooting wildfowl in severe weather. But my point is this: let us use our discretion. If the fowl are poor — and the first two or three shot will soon reveal if this is so — let us stop shooting. If they are in good order, let us make the most of our opportunities. There is no need for fowlers throughout the country to lay down their arms merely because temperatures fall below zero.

Wherever there is only open water, ducks are scratching a far from poor living in my neighbourhood. Those who denounce flightponds may care to stop and consider whether the wellfed pond is not an asset to the duck community at large in such a weather.

Only a greedy slaughterer would take unfair advantage of such a water at such a time. If his stream still flows and he keeps feeding it and shooting with discrimination, he deserves his modest harvest in return for the feeding fever bestowed.

Under the oaks in the park some distance from water, mallard by the score still manage to find acorns under the frozen snow where the pigeons have not found them first.

The cress beds, where the water never freezes, are alive with teal, mallard, shoveler and snipe. This year the bittern is not with us; its place has been taken by a couple of Magellan geese, presumably escapees, quite tame and approachable to within a few frustrating feet of a landing net. Some of the beds look as though a scythe has swept through them, so sharp have been the appetites of fowl.

Tame

Anyone who thinks that ducks are tame to the point of giving themselves up in this hard weather should have been with us last Saturday, when we arrived to find some 200 birds in occupation. Anticipating a heavy bag, we sauntered to our hides with teal buzzing about our ears. Shooting a couple, we found them to be in good order and prepared to ‘limit out’.

It took us all afternoon to shoot 13 teal, a couple of mallard and a shoveler. Though odd parties of ducks returned throughout that time, they were as varied as ever and we noticed nothing particularly easy about the shooting.

Since writing the foregoing, another week has passed during which there has been no let-up at all in the weather; if anything, temperatures have been lower.

On our latest expedition to the shoot, discretion prompted an early examination of any ducks shot. Three teal and a mallard later, it was obvious that no honest fowler could justify shooting any more ducks that day for, though not razor breasted, they were a long way from a square meal.

The Magellan geese are still with us. They are a little more wary than they were, perhaps because they have noticed the extra-interested look in our eyes as we sneaked within camera range — and hoped to approach even closer. They let us get within 15 yards and then take off, lifting into the air with that typical shelduck double laugh and leaving the outward visible mark of their disdain upon the snow.

All sorts of machinations have been planned with an eye on their encompassment, and next Thursday may see me stalking in a whiter-thanwhite sheet behind a brighter-thanbright torch.

“The ducks were a long way from a square meal”

This article was first published in the 1 February 1963 issue of Shooting Times.

“Anticipating a heavy bag, we sauntered nonchalantly to our hides with teal buzzing about our ears”

“Another week has passed during which there has been no let-up at all in the weather; if anything temperatures have been lower”

“If the fowl are poor — and the first few shot will soon reveal if this is so — let us stop shooting”