The countryside deserves more balance

I have just watched the highly anticipated Countryfile episode featuring the GWCT’S commendable work at Allerton. Having read the GWCT’S email trailing the episode, I was disappointed when I watched the show on iplayer. It seems the BBC Countryfile team work to their own hidden agenda.

There was much talk about the Allerton Project and some of its achievements but precious little mention of the GWCT’S many years of commitment and involvement. Viewers with good eyesight might just have noted the spokesman’s jacket with its GWCT logo.

Similarly, the BBC Winterwatch presenters were lamenting the sad decline in Bewick’s swan numbers, with lead shot immediately being suggested as a cause. They might be correct, but

I think lead shot fired

for the vast majority of guns used in most forms of shooting.

This season, for the first time, a range of steel cartridges suitable for game shooting were available from all the major manufacturers, and much of my shooting was done with a new 20-bore steel cartridge with a biodegradable wad.

Change is in the air and on this issue we should not be resisting. If you shoot with an older gun, get your gunsmith to check it over, then get hold of some steel cartridges for next season. I promise you that as you sit down to fill in your gamebook on the last day of next season, you, like me, will be wondering what all the fuss was about.

Tim Bonner, Hertfordshire from guns on the migration route nearer the arctic tundra is a bigger issue than swans digesting spent lead shot on UK shores.

If only the BBC would give a communicator such as Dr Mike Swan the opportunity to give these shows a balanced viewpoint. Mark Lorne, by email to Antiques Roadshow. But I must beg to differ with his comments regarding the pinfire shotgun (Gunroom, 19 January). I don’t think it is a rarity to encounter a pinfire shotgun made by a British maker in the decade after 1851. Following the Great Exhibition, the demand of the day was much greater than he suggests and they seem to have been built by all the top gunsmiths. I have had over the years examples by Boss, Lang, Woodward and Dickson of Edinburgh.

Based just on observation at arms shows, the most prolific maker of Best pinfires was Westley Richards; I have seen more of its pinfire guns than any other.

Many of the Best guns were converted into centrefire in the 1870s, and I suspect there are a fair few owners who don’t know their centrefire guns were originally pinfires.

I am sure Bill has been round many antique arms fairs and has